Inaugural Edition-
People ask all the time. These days you simply can't get away from it, and if you refuse to answer they invariably believe the worst.
"So are you liberal or conservative?" Sometimes it's asked as "Democrat or Republican", but the base meaning remains the same. And I tell them.
"I am a real conservative."
As though programmed (though we will get into the educational system later), modern "liberals" see death camps with crosses above them, air choked with smog and ash, people living in hovels at the foot of grand palaces for the few lucky ultra-wealthy.
Immediately modern "religious conservatives" see an ally of Christianity, a holy warrior devoted to casting down sinning Homo's, creating a Constitutional Amendment banning abortion and carrying the cross to distant lands.
Then the "business conservatives" with visions of being the CEO of the company they work for, the ease of buying up or shutting down all competition, dumping their waste wherever they can buy land to do so, paying their workers the minimum they can without pushing them to leave. Dollar signs like sugarplums dancing.
These people are tools.
I don't really blame those who call themselves liberal for hating conservatives; the term has been prostituted by the so-called right for decades. What those examples truly are? Theocrats and fascists, both by actual definition: The Church as the State or the Business as the State, both seeking to undermine personal liberty just as much as modern progressive liberals seek to do.
Conservatism is neither of these things. To be a conservative requires a sublimation of what may be your most closely held personal beliefs so that we all may be free to do what we will as individuals; believing the governments sole role is to ensure the freedom of it's citizens so long an action by one does not harm another.
It is a system of perfect balance- for every right there is a commensurate responsibility. This means you cannot lay an argument before the State saying McDonald's is at fault for you spilling hot coffee on yourself, seeking millions for your own stupidity, rewarding a person's foolishness with other people's money.
It is a system in which you are allowed to do whatever boneheaded thing you wish so long as it does not harm another or take that which another has earned by either the sweat of their back or their brow. A system of non-interference in the daily lives of those under it.
This is the system for which our founding fathers bled and died, pledged their fortunes and honor. They realized the harm of a system in which one set of beliefs, even if matching their own, was allowed to dominate the lives of the unwilling; they saw the destruction wrought on the spirit of the people by oligarchs and aristocrats that had not earned their positions, coming by their titles by fortunate birth rather than individual merit, strength, goodness and self-sacrifice.
They did not wish to do away with aristocracy, but expand it to any who would be willing to go the distance, make the hard choices and painful risks associated with the chance at true individual greatness. An aristocracy open to all regardless of birth or station- the only bar to greatness being within ourselves.
They saw the truth of the world: that though all men are created equal, what one does after that is up to that person alone, and the best way for the state to support this is to get out of their way.
They knew that a people in awe of and in debt to their government could not be free. They saw that individuals were nobler and stronger only if they earned that nobility and strength, that the value of a thing is precisely equal to what one is willing to pay to get it.
A true conservative knows that a Right is something inherent to the human condition, that they stem not from the power of the State but from the power within every individual. A right costs nothing to any who do not exercise it: A person with free will has the right to speak their mind, even if that gets them killed in the process- it takes nothing from another. A person has the right to use lethal force to protect their life- but that is solely dependent upon that person buying a weapon or training their hands and no person must pay for another person's weapon by force.
And that is, in the end, what government truly is: naked force.
No matter how one wishes to soften it by providing "entitlements" to the people, no matter how many pretty speeches in great stone buildings, the government is organized coercive force.
When the State sets up a system by which money is taken from those who succeed to give to those who fail, it enslaves both those who succeed and those who fail; making the latter slaves to those who provide for them and the former by impoverishing them. Hunger is a great motivator- trust me, I have gone hungry enough to know this.
Conservatism comes down to one thing: Courage. Courage to let others live their lives though they do not do it by our own faith so long as they do not harm us, courage in the face of things we do not agree with so long as they do not take what we have earned, and always courage in the face of our own mortality. Know that you will die, and that it is the price of living, and that it is up to you alone to make that life worthwhile before the inevitable comes. No amount of government cash or health care or regulation will make your life one worth living- that is entirely up to you alone.
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