If I asked you what “conservative” meant, in the political context, what would your answer be? What about if I asked you to define “political liberal?” It’s certainly not easy to come up with a succinct and definitive answer to these questions, and I doubt it ever has been. However, I believe that our basic criteria for evaluating these labels have changed dramatically over the past thirty to forty years, to a disturbing and disheartening degree.
I was raised in a single-parent home, with my mother working the night shift as a nurse for infants in intensive care. Between her going to work around six o’clock in the evening, and getting her much-needed sleep during the day, I needed additional guidance that my mom was regretfully unable to provide. Luckily, we lived close to her sister and parents, and other family members stepped in and helped to raise me. One of these people was my grandpa, who for a long time was my only male role model and someone I looked up to immensely. My grandpa is a massive history buff, I attribute my intense patriotism to our chats when I was just a little kid. I would spend every weekend at his house watching historical documentaries and asking him about the people on TV talking in front of podiums. But most of all, I reveled as he spun me stories of our founding fathers: Washington crossing the Delaware, Sam Adams and the Boston Tea Party, and the signing of the Declaration of Independence. My grandpa was a revolutionary war re-enactor and after about a year of me begging to join him (even though I was far too young), he got me some authentic dress and took me along to join the First Virginia, probably to his extreme embarrassment.
As I got older and more mature, we continued our conversation about America and the principles that this country was founded on. As I became more aware of politics and politicians, I noted what his personal views were on the role of government and his reactions to the policies of Congress and the President. I found myself agreeing with him more often than not, although he always encouraged me to make up my own mind. And I did. I remember the first time I asked him what people meant by “conservative,” and “liberal.” He told me that political conservatives held the view that the government should be restrained in its action, and liberals believed that our leaders should have more freedom to intervene and should enjoy less restraints on government action. I then asked him which he believed in. He smiled and said “the right one.”
I grew up believing in a small central government and the freedom for each state to determine its own laws based on the needs and beliefs of its constituency. I also believe in limited federal spending, a more involved local system of government, deeply cautious foreign policy, and using military force as an absolute last resort. Based on these beliefs and my grandfather’s stories and descriptions about the GOP of the old days, I believed myself to be a republican, a federalist, and a true conservative in the definitive sense of the word. But as I got older and became an adult, I developed additional beliefs about social issues, like what the government should and should not pay for, and what people should and shouldn’t be allowed to do. At the same time, I noticed that the Republican party, as I understood it, was appearing more out of sync with my pre-existing understanding of its principles.
I truly started paying attention to politics during George Herbert Walker Bush’s term as president. Shit, I remember my mom waking me up early one day to tell me that America was in a war, and that I should take a moment to think about all the people that might be hurt or killed in the coming weeks. “Iraq invaded Kuwait,” she said, “and we have to go help them, because no one else will.” The first thing I did was look for Iraq and Kuwait on the globe in my room. The second thing I did was ask if I could stay home from school and watch the news, which to my surprise, she allowed. This was the first American war of my lifetime, and from that day I kept a close eye on what was going on in Washington. I wanted to know why and how the lives of my countrymen were being gambled, I guess.
Over the next decade, I noticed that people were talking less and less about what the government’s role should be and more about what private citizens should and shouldn’t be allowed. I was pretty confused by this – it was almost as if everyone had presupposed that the federal government is allowed to tell you what you can and cannot do. Instead of the conversation being about whether the federal government should be able to regulate the social minutiae of America, it was now all about what those regulations should say. And I have to admit that I got caught up in it as well. I took a look at myself and my personal beliefs about things that everyone was talking about. I went right down the list: Abortion – I believe that a baby isn’t a baby until it can survive apart from the mother’s body. Up until then, it’s a part of the mother’s body and subject to her choice, including the choice to abort. Gun control – I believe that the Second Amendment confers the right to maintain militias and keep and bear arms, but not to stockpile AK-47s and devices designed to kill and maim human beings. Immigration – I believe that closing our borders would betray our national heritage and the spirit of a nation founded by immigrants. And on down the list. I was shocked. Was I a liberal? According to the media, I was. According to some others, I was also a “pinko,” a “socialist,” a “communist,” and a “traitor.”
The fact is that the post-Nixon GOP leadership has taken the questions about the federal government’s powers and purpose completely off the table. In the past few decades, the federal government has expanded exponentially, regulates in more areas and with more authority than ever, and our foreign military sojourns and spending (both foreign and domestic) are sky-high. Conservatism or Liberalism now has absolutely nothing to do with these questions. Instead, the application of these labels are now determined by a wholly different criteria. Essentially, we are supposed to believe that one is a liberal or a conservative based on opinions about four or five social issues: gay rights, gun control, the separation of church and state, immigration, and the big one, abortion. How did we get to this point? Why are we obsessed with these issues that, in the grand scheme of things, don’t really matter all that much? The divisiveness of these issues and the petty squabbling that they inspire have done much damage to our national consciousness. Today, the American electorate is more distracted by these small issues than ever before, and to our detriment. Our shortsightedness is crippling our ability to understand and make decisions about the things of far greater importance: war, death, our futures, our children’s futures, and preserving the foundations of our great Union.
I am deeply saddened by what has become of the political conversation in the United States. I lodge much of the blame on the contemporary Republican party, which has betrayed its former principles and become a monstrosity in patriot’s clothing. As one who has always identified with true conservatives and the Grand Old Party of emancipators and heroes, I feel like myself and my country have been left behind.
My grandpa and I don’t talk as much as I would like these days, and when we do, the conversation is about my grandmother’s health or what’s going on around my old hometown. But the other day I asked him about what he thought about the current state of things and the upcoming election. A lifelong Republican, he stood by the party in 2004 even though he was baffled by Bush’s foreign policy choices, and never wavered in election after election even though the party he loved’s ideals were crumbling. He asked me how I thought the first Continental Congress would vote, and after we finished our friendly chuckle, he reminded me that being pro-life or pro-gun wasn’t what makes you a conservative, and blind trust in the government isn’t what makes you a patriot. For the first time, he’s going to walk into the voting booth and pull the lever for a Democrat, because it’s the right thing to do. I’m going to join him.
