Does anybody really know what a Conservative is? Does anybody really care?

A couple of days ago I wrote a piece about how the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) had become a place where conservatism had been replaced by compromise. And I concluded that conservatism was in danger of being destroyed unless Conservatives rededicated themselves to their principles.

Here’s how I defined it:

The root word of conservative is conserve. Conservatives are supposed to work to conserve the principle of our God-given rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and to conserve the constitution designed to protect those rights. Since these rights come from God and not the government, there is the added responsibility to conserve morality. For as John Adams once said, “Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Unfortunately, many so-called Conservatives are ignorant about what the word really means. In a piece written for Conservative Review by Steve Deace on this topic, he shows us some of the consequences of this ignorance.

“If you grabbed 10 self-proclaimed conservatives at CPAC this weekend and asked them to define conservatism, would you get basically the same definition (specific wording aside)?

“You may not even get a definition at all in some cases. You’d get a list of principles or issue preferences instead. But don’t we have to know what a word actually means before we can correctly use it in a sentence?

“And now we’re even putting modifiers in front of the word: Christian conservative, social conservative, fiscal conservative, libertarian conservative, etc. As if it’s possible to conserve some things that are good for people while not conserving the others.”

Quite honestly, these modified labels are nothing more than lipstick on a pig–a cosmetic change to disguise the true nature of fake conservatives. For example, let’s look at abortion.

A so-called fiscal conservative might be in favor of the federal government bringing an end to Planned Parenthood funding while allowing the states to decide if they want to give them any money. The problem with this kind of conservatism is that out-of-control judges have taken that power away from the states. Or a libertarian conservative might say that the Supreme Court should overturn Roe v. Wade a let the states decide if they even want to make abortion available. While that sounds like a good Tenth Amendment argument, it fails to protect the right to life endowed to every person by our Creator.

We see similar behavior from liberals when they need to hide their fraudulent motivations. For instance, liberals will often say that abortion should be “safe, legal, but rare” even though they want unlimited access. Why should it be rare if it’s a constitutionally protected “right?” When hyphenated conservatives say that abortion should be returned to the states, they are equally hypocritical. If abortion is murder at the federal level, isn’t it still murder at the state level?

While there are those who claim that the day of the conservative has come and gone–even some Republicans say this–the truth is that genuine conservatism is the only hope America has left if she is to survive.

 

David Leach is the owner of The Strident Conservative, your source for opinion that’s politically incorrect and always “right.” His articles can also be found on RedState.com.

His daily radio commentary is nationally syndicated with Salem Radio Network and can be heard on stations across America.