Image courtesy of Bonnie Natko under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
As professor Clyde Wilson likes to say, “Conservatives never conserved anything.” The Republican Party, the so-called home of conservatives, has come to represent just another approach to big government. The neo-cons clearly control the Republican Party, and have no intention of abiding by the party’s political platform of limited, local government. In fact, ‘neo-con’ doesn’t mean so much ‘new conservatives’ as it means ‘non-conservatives.’
In a December article, Doug Thompson, of Capitol Hill Blue, comments on President George Bush’s blasphemy and trivializing of the U.S. Constitution. If these reported quotes of GWB are true, the Republican Party is no home to true conservatives. Even if the quotes aren’t true, Bush’s actions while in office, along with the support of his cohorts in Congress, have shown for quite some time that conservatism is dead in Washington D.C. In fact, the major things worth conserving in our Constitution have been dead for some time. Our country, and our form of government are like some bug when you cut off its head. It keeps functioning for a while because it doesn’t know yet that it is dead.
Back in November, Joe Sobran wrote about national socialism in America. Sobran points out that the American brand of national socialism lies in both major political parties, and that this has been the case for at least the last 50 years. Sobran really brought it home to me when he basically asked the question if our current leaders were designing a government for us today, what would it look like? Here’s what Sobran says:
“Such is the servitude Americans are now accustomed to under an increasingly bureaucratic state. Permission, often in the form of legal licensing, is the residue of the old freedom; but we’re supposed to think that this is still “the land of the free,” and that we owe our freedom to the state, its laws, and especially its wars. The more the state grows — that is, the more it fulfills the character of national socialism — the freer we’re told we are.
President Bush, who is not exactly your philosopher-king type, would probably react with surprise, indignation, and bafflement if you called him a national socialist, since, after all, he thinks a fair amount of capitalism should be permitted, even encouraged; and he’s really not all that different from most of our rulers. But that’s the point. Few of these men really know what they think; they came in late in the game, and they play by the rules they see others playing by. What’s philosophy got to do with it? (That was an elective course, wasn’t it?)
Let’s put it this way. If our rulers were all shipwrecked on a desert island with no means of escape, they might eventually build monuments and skyscrapers; but can anyone imagine them creating free institutions? What sort of Republic would this be if it had been founded by the Bushes, Clintons, Kennedys, Bidens, and McCains?”
I can only say, “Thank the Lord that God-fearing, freedom-loving men were the ones who wrote out our Constitution.” The people in power today aren’t fit to lick the boots of those that established our form of government.
What I’ve come to realize is that while I’ve been an advocate for conservatism, and spoken out against liberals and their close cousins the neo-cons, the truth is that we don’t have much worth conserving. What we need is a restoration of liberty and freedom, not the conservation if it, since you can’t conserve what’s gone. Paul Weyrich has been writing a series on ‘The Next Conservatism.’ Conservatism, as preached by ‘conservative leaders’ today is dead.
I’m for Restorationism.
Restore the republic, restore our liberties, restore the feds to limited government, restore states to their prime position, restore the federal courts to their advisory role, and restore fiscal sanity. Restoration of the primacy of the constitution over the antics of politicians, lobbyists and corporate elites is what is needed. This cannot be done be ‘reinvigorating’ conservatism in the Republican Party. We are past due for starting over in a new political party. The people are past due in taking back their government and restoring what the founders bequeathed us.
“Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact.”