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Maybe you are relatively new to this idea of conservatism. Maybe you were afraid of conservatives or conservatism because you thought we are just a bunch of greedy, self-centered people. Maybe you just prefer to ‘stay out of it’, but you’ve been paying attention to the news of the day and have a new level of “caring” about what happens in the public square. Maybe you once believed that the government was “for you” but now what the Democrats (and some Republicans) have been doing over the last 2-4 years (or longer!) has made you think again. So let me explain in detail what being conservative, or better what being a Constitutional conservative means to me.
The more I learn about things, the more I come around to the description of my political beliefs as a Constitutional conservative. I am not into labels, but that is a rather descriptive term for my beliefs. In general, whether it is economics, monetary policy, national defense, or just human behavior – I find that the wisdom contained within the design of the Constitution pales in comparison to anything I can conceive or hope to find elsewhere in history.
I enjoy listening to talk radio shows when I can, and one I frequent in particular is the Mark Levin Show. He has free podcasts you can download which naturally help me follow along tremendously, but my attraction isn’t just that. He frequently raises the political debate to something higher than the events of the day. He includes a brand of education, history, and political philosophy that I find appealing. That, plus he does not suffer fools very long on the program!
Anyway as was a little behind on the programs and trying to catch up, this week I was glad I did not skip past the program from Tuesday, April 19th. For the opening monologue, Mark treated us to about eight minutes of pure conservative philosophy. I found it so relevant and well-thought-out that I decided to type up a quick transcript from that monologue, and share it here. It appears quite long of course, but it’s just a few paragraphs so I hope you’ll take time to read through the whole thing. If you’d like to hear the audio version yourself, you can download the program for yourself on the podcast site HERE:
We are Americans. So for the Founding Fathers, individual liberty was not possible without private property rights. For the Founding Fathers, the only legitimate government was not only one that was instituted with the consent of the people, but one that would preserve and protect the individual’s right to property. Jefferson talked about it, talked about ‘tyranny of the legislature.’ So the consent of the governed is only part of it.
But the government never has the authority to be tyrannical; it never has the authority to seize your property illegitimately. Private property represents the individual’s labor, your labor, your initiative, your industriousness, your ambition, and so forth. We all have an equal right, an unalienable right as they wrote in the Declaration to pursue happiness. That especially involves the pursuit of property and wealth – not that materialism makes you happy, the point was so you can at least subsist, but even more expand your wealth and improve your lifestyle and that of your family. We do not have a “right” to equal results and outcomes. And this is the battle – we do not have a right to make demands on the labor and property and wealth of another individual, for that individual also has unalienable rights.
The purpose of government in the United States of America, according to the Founders is first and foremost to protect and preserve the individual’s unalienable rights. These rights are God-given natural rights: no man, no government has the authority to deny them or destroy them. That is not to say that we as a community or society ought not look out for our fellow man; we did this even before there was a massive, leviathan State. We did this through good works, through charity, through churches and synagogues, through volunteerism, through good acts all the time. Most of us do not mind being taxed at a rational level to help take care of those who are truly incapable of survival due to physical or mental disabilities. That is different than redistributing the wealth. That is different than “spreading the wealth.” That is different than class warfare.
Our Constitution is intended to protect us from a central government that would take advantage of us as individuals. It does not grant power to the federal government to violate our unalienable rights. It does not authorize the federal government to take the fruits of our labor, whether physical or intellectual, to “spread the wealth” for “economic justice” or anything of the sort. The Constitution does not empower anyone, especially the President of the United States, to take our labor, our property, our wealth from us and our families in order to equalize economic outcomes. I don’t care what you are worth. To say that some person has a right to another person’s labor simply because one person demands it, or because a politician thinks it can be put to better use, or because a group of people think it can be put to better use and vote that way, does not make it Constitutional nor does it make it moral, and it clearly violates the unalienable rights of the person who is being targeted. When the government seizes the power to take what you have earned with your own labor and put it to an illegitimate use, then government has power that is not recognized in the Declaration or the Constitution.
Since property rights are inextricably tied to an individual’s liberty, the government is expanding its power not only over your labor, but over you, as a human being. This is exactly what is happening today. This is exactly what you hear Obama saying in these speeches. He is claiming a power he does not have. That is, the power to decide whose labor is to be protected by the government, and whose labor is to be seized by the government. Obama is saying that the government has the power to take whatever it needs from an individual, thereby punishing that individual and rewarding some other individual who has not earned it. They call this “a right.” You have a “right” to health care, a “right” to go to school; you have a “right” to this, a “right” to that. But somebody else is losing their liberty, in support of this politician who is stealing from one to give to another. And by the way, not altruistically either, but for power and votes. This is said to be “just”; this is said to be “fair.” This is said to be “compassionate,” yet it violates the individual’s unalienable rights and the limits the Constitution places on the federal government. There is nothing fair, just, or compassionate about it.
The reason why liberals cannot tell you ‘what are the limits of this new power’ is because there are not any limits. The government identifies what’s unequal, what program it wants to fund or create, what “entitlement” it wants to create or expand, calls it a “right” and then plunders individuals that it targets. You might think ‘why do I care? Let me have my piece.’ … Your children are also, under God granted unalienable rights, recognized by our Declaration. Your children, and their labor, and their motivation, and their ambition, and their industry, and who they want to be, and how they want to be, is also protected by the United States Constitution. If Obama and people like him, people of this alien ideology who reject unalienable rights, who reject the limits of the Constitution are successful, then what are you? What are your children? They will not have the freedom that your parents and grandparents had. They will not have the ability to be successful, to pursue opportunities, to improve their lifestyles, to take care of their families the way that you, your parents, and your grandparents have. This is fundamental ladies and gentlemen…we need to get back to first principles. … What is an American? What is the American society? What is the American culture? It’s completely different; it’s the opposite of what you hear Obama saying day in and day out. [emphasis added]
Mark Levin, The Mark Levin Show, 4/19/2011 ~2:00-10:30
In essence, as a conservative I want every American to be successful. No exceptions – even corporations. I do not want the government to pick winners; I want customers to pick winners. The Declaration of Independence talks about “the pursuit of happiness” as a God-given right, among other “unalienable rights” for a host of reasons. As Mark Levin plainly states above: this is a right of equal opportunity in modern language, but not a right to equal results. Unequal results are part of humanity, and not evidence of unequal opportunity! Stated another way, we are all gifted with equal value, but we are all gifted differently. It is up to each of us to make the best of our God-given gifts and abilities, and live accordingly. Society may place different monetary values upon people, but not God.
The Constitution is therefore written as a document not just to design the government, but to act as a protection of the people and these unalienable rights from government. In other words, the founding fathers had personal experience of government tyranny ‘doing what is best for the people,’ and they also knew the host of similar governments throughout history. To be kind, the track record for such governments was not good with respect to the people living within them.
The Founders’ vision for the United States of America was very different. This would not be just a group of tyrants we can vote in and vote out (pure democracy), but instead it is a government that is literally of the people: a republic. In other words, the federal government’s role is to protect the unalienable rights of its people, and frankly nothing more. This government is designed to be like a physicians’ creed: first, do no harm. The Founders knew that even the perfectly designed government was still a stupid, blunt instrument compared to individuals with liberty engineering their lives as best they see fit. We are not all separate individuals – we do have a responsibility to uphold a civil society. Rather, the Founders understood that a country made of individuals with liberty over their own lives is collectively stronger than any other design. The Founders recognized the basic nature of human spirit – that a person is generally their own best advocate for what works best in their life. A person’s self-interest creates the strongest human condition for that person. Thus, they built a government that recognizes this truth: individual liberty must be protected.
President Obama is now talking about a mythical “social contract” that exists within government. The first social contract within our Constitutional government is to do no harm. If you’ve been paying attention over the last 2 years, President Obama and statists like him have kept trying to sell us on the idea that they can fix what ails us, and you won’t have to pay for it! Mythical “rich people” will pay for these remedies. They even tried selling the idea that we could borrow and spend more (as we have already borrowed vast sums) to fix the economy. This “stimulus” did not work as advertised, and instead has saddled future generations with more burdensome debt (we already had a lot) while delivering a barely average economy – in this country where exceptional is normal. Instead of admitting error, the statists now preach to us ‘you don’t know how bad it would have been without the government spending this money!’ Doesn’t this all sound like a snake-oil sales pitch you would see on the TV at 1 a.m.?
So what kind of “social contract” do we owe to the generation behind us? In literal terms, we are spending funds today that the next generation (our children) has not even earned to pay taxes upon. Is this a truly moral position to hold? Reform-minded plans like Paul Ryan’s “Path to Prosperity” take nearly a generation to merely zero out the annual deficit, or spending what we do not have today. At the end of this plan we would still be left with a mountain of debt that must be addressed! However even a moderate plan such as Paul Ryan’s is blasted by these statists as “unfair,” as though these Goldilocks have a better plan.
President Obama and the statists he leads are still talking about “investing in the future” with what amounts to our fourth mortgage. Again, snake oil salesmen don’t admit they sold you plain water, they sell you on their next-best great idea.
A Constitutional conservative like me is instead looking for a better way. As a country, our family budget is a sick joke. Our economy is a diamond that has lost its shine. Our public education system is failing the next generation we are hoping can pay today’s bills. Our energy policy appears aimless and disconnected from our economy’s need to grow. Our immigration policies create an underclass that lives as interlopers in our society, afraid to assimilate for fear of getting caught and ‘sent back home’. Government bureaucrats seek to prevent job creation unless their personal preferences (unions) are met. Our failure to pay for today’s bills with today’s money raises the price of everything (inflation, interest rates, and commodities) and weakens the very businesses we need to succeed.
The real “social contract” exists within the American people, not within its representative government. The statist vision of government has literally short-circuited the social contract of civil society. We have collectively abdicated our role to “love our neighbor” to governments around us. Our civil society gets weaker every time we think “the government will take care this.” No government employee or agency or program will care for or about your neighbor better than you and the rest of your neighbors…or themselves. Whether or not our society values something is NOT reflected with government programs:
Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all.
We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.
— Frédéric Bastiat, The Law — 1850
When I look for candidates to support and send to places of political power, I am looking for Constitutional conservatives who are interested in restoring Constitutional “first principles” as Mark Levin clearly states above. Leadership requires leadership.
If you’re interested in reading more about conservative ideals, I strongly urge you to pick up a copy of Mark Levin’s fine book “Liberty and Tyranny”. It is easy reading, and if you set your mind to it you can knock it out in a weekend. The “conservative manifesto” at the end is particularly powerful. Tune into Mark’s program (or download it) once in awhile – just be advised that he can use terse language (I don’t listen when children can hear). Seek out the “recommended reading” on RedState or on Mark’s site.
I think you will find that the more you educate yourself about the Founding of this United States of America; you will also call yourself a Constitutional conservative.
BA Cyclone 
Pingback: What does “Constitutional conservative” mean? | RedState
“We all have an equal right, an unalienable right as they wrote in the Declaration to pursue happiness. That especially involves the pursuit of property and wealth – not that materialism makes you happy, the point was so you can at least subsist, but even more expand your wealth and improve your lifestyle and that of your family. We do not have a ‘right’ to equal results and outcomes.”
===
Ah, yes… “so you can at least subsist, but even more.” That’s great, but the problem is that, left to its own devices, the system favors the wealthy more and more until the non-wealthy can no longer subsist, forget expanding their wealth.
This is not a theoretical concern. For a bit over 30 years, we have operated under a conservative paradigm that has made a fetish out of bare-knuckled free-marketism while promising the magic of trickle-down. It has worked fantastically for the wealthiest 5% but not at all for the rest of America. Adjusted for inflation, wages have been stagnant since the 80s, and have even dropped since 2000.
In 1970, a man with a highschool diploma could work 40 hours a week and feed a wife and child. Today, two college educated people working 55 hours each have to add things up over and over again to see if they can afford a home or a child. This didn’t just happen. It’s the direct result of conservatism.
It is interesting that you reach back into history and pick out 1970 as your baseline for comparison. In truth, since about 1964 this country has seen some of the most expansive government policy it has ever seen. The period of 1964-1980 was a period of government largesse probably only rivaled by the “New Deal” debacle of the 1930s. Presidents Johnson, Nixon, and Carter all focused greater power into Washington, away from the people at large. None of this was in any way conservative. Were it not for Ronald Reagan’s conservative revolution coming to power in 1981, the Cold War might have ended quite differently. Instead his relatively drastic conservative reforms unleashed two decades of prosperity.
Conversely, your correlation of tax policies to economics leaves much to be desired. The trajectory of tax policy in this country has increasingly become to saddle the top 5% of the income brackets with the entire income tax bill for running the federal government.
This is destructive, because the actual people who pay income taxes out of those brackets are usually small- and medium-sized businesses, the real job creators.of the economy. These people are creating wealth and jobs — but their productivity is penalized by a group that believes other people who did not create this wealth deserve it more than the wealth creators. This is not the American ideal this country was founded upon.
Further, there simply does not exist enough “rich” to satisfy the hunger of the federal government. If we were to levy a 100% tax rate upon the “rich” 1% of our nation, the resulting tax revenues would not even close the deficit forecast for THIS year. Clearly, the problem with our public financing is not our tax policy, it is that we are vastly outspending our ability to collect revenues. Public federal spending should never exceed 18% of GDP.
In truth, wealth (wage) stagnation has been largely caused by government do-gooders who debased our currency from precious metals and have been inflating our currency to create fake-growth. The more we focus power upon a central government, the more we will see the poorest among us suffer from the unintended consequences of their ‘great ideas’ for the next great program to create wealth.
Where are these extra taxes on the rich for the last 30 years? It is common knowledge that the tax rates for the rich have only dropped. Reagan and Bush slashed them. Yet, according to your logic and the logic of all conservatives who routinely say that the rich pay a burdensome share of tax revenues, they are somehow getting taxed more? This is a very basic failure of reasoning and critical thinking, or perhaps you are deliberately misleading.
The plain truth is that the rich simply have increased their share of the national income. They pay more in taxes because they are hoarding much more income, it’s that simple. Look at the numbers of the income gap between the richest 1-5% and the rest of the country. It’s the same trend, even moreso. 20% of all income goes to the richest 1%. 80% of the nation’s income growth over the last quarter century has also gone to the top 1%.
So I’m afraid that argument fails miserably.
The problems with your assertions and vague generalities is that they have no factual basis.
You apparently equate tax rates with tax receipts. Reagan absolutely slashed published rates, but it is likely more accurate to say Reagan vastly simplified rates. No person ever actually paid a 90% income tax rate before Reagan’s reforms took place — these rates were heavily based upon deductions and “favored activities” to reduce actual tax burdens. What Reagan primarily did was flatten and simplify the tax burden, and the medium-term result was a BOOM of prosperity…which ultimately increased revenue inflows.
Here is a chart that demonstrates part of that story:
The reason you will hear a conservative say that “it’s about spending, not taxes” is because historically tax revenues versus national GDP have average 18%. Federal spending above 18% will almost always lead to deficit spending:
What that original rainbow chart perfectly demonstrates is that the share of federal income tax burden over the past six decades is grow more weighted to “the rich”, not less. You attribute some vague assumption of tax policy as contributing to income equality, but the truth behind those numbers is quite the opposite of reality. The past 60 years has seen the most robust growth of government and social engineering projects in our country’s history. The “War on Poverty” is an abject failure:
Rather, it should not be the job of the federal government to engineer socioeconomic outcomes. I think the results of 60 years of centralized government social planning is quite obviously failure. The mere blip in history of Ronald Reagan’s conservative revolution is the exception, not the rule. The only other blip of conservative reforms that I can recall was the “Contract with America” period from 1994-1996, where Bill Clinton was dragged to the center by conservatives in the House. Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Bush 41, Clinton, Bush 43 — these were hardly “conservative” periods of government except only by comparison to Obama. Each era saw massive growth in government power, at the expense of individual liberty…the only variables seemed to be where and at what rate government grew.
Instead the ideal should be that government assures the fair playing field — equal opportunity, but not necessarily equal results. The only possible way to assure the relative prosperity of all is for government to be limited in the view of the U.S. Constitution — that humans have the unique and sovereign right over their own wealth and prosperity. No government of imperfect people can fully outpace the individual choices of millions of Americans, who will always know more about and care more about their own lives than any group of government officials or bureaucrats.
The conservative view is to trust people with their own liberty. The statist view is to trust people only as subjects of the government.
This is truly stupid. As if many of the Founders themselves weren’t huge liberal intellectuals. If they were around today, they’d be considered Ivy League elitist radicals by you. Thomas Jefferson pushed for public schools that taught comprehensive liberal arts education! As if the only way to read the constitution is to be an extreme laissez-faire Ayn Randist (yet paradoxically fundamentalist Christian no doubt) . AM Radio is poisonous, it’s pure propaganda, and not even well veiled. If you really want to learn about American History or the Founders or the Constitution, pick up real books by real scholars, or better yet actually take a course, not listen to talk radio republican activists.
Frankly, I am not sure I understand your point. The Founders were absolutely liberal, but in a classical sense. They would not consider themselves “liberal” in today’s lexicon, neo-liberals if you will.
liberal: of or constituting a political party in the United Kingdom associated with ideals of individual especially economic freedom, greater individual participation in government, and constitutional, political, and administrative reforms designed to secure these objectives. Merriam-Webster
The Constitution is absolutely built upon scholarly understanding of the most modern thought of political theory and logic at the time. The American Founding, and the Constitution itself is fundamentally based upon the political thinking of John Locke, Adam Smith, and others.
The Constitution and the design of our government was the most radical idea of its time, and frankly still stands unrivaled in the world in its unbridled focus to recognize that rights and laws truly emanate from God, through man, and up to Government. Government wields power at the pleasure of its people, not the other way around. Government does not grant rights; rather the people allow some rights to be used in part by Government for the function of a civil society. The Constitution’s focus is to design government, put it into a box, and thus preserve liberty and freedom for its people. It is sad that many people seek to ignore it, weaken it, or outright change the meaning of the Constitution’s intent to fit the whim of the day. The story of human history is, almost without exception, one of tyranny, despotism, and outright oppression. The Founders’ view for the United States was fundamentally different.
The Constitution is a contract between the people and its government. It must always be treated as just that — it can only be fully understood as written and ratified by the States and therefore its people. To view the Constitution any other way is to pretend that it is not a contract, but a general outline that changes with the winds of feelings or weather. This is not a basis for stable government.
The Founders instead wrote a document that was even greater than themselves. They designed a government that recognized Liberty was the highest public value. Government by imperfect men over other imperfect men was doomed to fail without the strictest of controls. Separation of powers, strictly defined duties, and broad protections of individual rights and States’ rights were critical to the authorship of the Constitution.
It isn’t just American history you need to study to understand the magnitude and importance of the Constitution, it is the broader history of humans and their relationships to Government in general throughout the world.
The U.S. Constitution was by far the most progressive document ever written up to that point in human history, possibly only rivaled by the Magna Carta…and possibly unmatched ever since. Any aim that seeks to weaken our Constitution by interpretation or ignorance is the opposite of progress.
As we celebrate our Independence Day holiday this weekend, I ask you to think about this — are we merely celebrating our independence from Great Britain, or do we celebrate something much greater? Were the American revolutionaries only objecting to a monarchy simply due to its great distance, thus wishing their Government based closer in geography — or was their objection even more fundamental?
I think their scholarly work in our Constitution is evidence enough that their vision for these United States was far more grand. It is the Constitution that protects that vision, and it is our protection of it and our respect for it that keeps our Freedom and Liberty alive and well.
You stray from the point quite a bit into teary eyed mythologizing of the Founders and the Constitution. It was indeed a radical document and they were indeed amazing men, but it does us no good to turn them into Prophets and turn the Constitution into scripture. The Constitution was absolutely meant to be built upon and interpreted with the times. It would be worded far differently if it were meant to be purely read in a fundamentalist, originalist manner.
My point though was that the Founders would be considered liberal radicals by modern day conservatives who like to worship their historically revised ideas of them.
You say you disagree with my point, but you serve it quite well with certain lines: “The U.S. Constitution was by far the most PROGRESSIVE document ever written up to that point in human history”
“The Constitution is absolutely built upon scholarly understanding of the most modern thought of political theory and logic at the time.”
Yes, “scholarly,” “modern thought,” these notions are anathema to conservatives now, who hate what goes on in the leading universities, hate progressive, scientific thinking and new solutions. They want to regress back to old ways of thinking, outdated, demonstrably wrong theories and ideas, religion not reason.
The Founders were inspired by the Enlightenment, not the Bible. It was precisely the purpose of the Enlightenment to discard dogma, religious and otherwise, and develop new ideas and forever hone them to become better with empirical reasoning. Again, this does not fall into the view that the Constitution must never be reinterpreted or evolved. It’s a bit scary to read Conservatives who want to go back to 1787, 3/5th clauses and all.
I could go on, but let me reiterate that Jefferson himself pioneered the idea of public schools for everybody, and teaching ordinary people liberal arts and sciences, and not just narrow vocational skills. This is a fundamentally liberal idea, even in the modern sense, conservatives still oppose public schooling.
Again, you’d do very well to go to school rather than just listen to idiots like Mark Levin. Keep in mind Obama is a constitutional scholar. These Ivy League educated scholars are MUCH more knowledgeable about the constitution than your average “Constitutional Conservative.” And as a result, they tend to be much more open to varying and more complex interpretations. It is a very deep subject that requires many years of study and Law to truly understand. It is not a black and white subject, and it is absurd that conservatives try to claim the Constitution and the Founding Fathers as their own. Liberals could just as easily steal the argument.
Your smarmy attitude does not serve the attraction of your argument well.
Further, your reference to the “3/5ths clause” speaks to your own lack of schooling or intelligence on the context and purpose of the Constitution as it was written and ratified. The debate on such topics, and the significance of the document in the context of the founding of a country is readily available for anyone who cares to read the Convention debates. I can appreciate why someone whose mind is made up might choose not to educate themselves on such intellectual debates. In my experience, discarding something that came before me as old or irrelevant generally leads to disastrous results. Instead, I have found it more wise to understand the context, and the “why” if you will as to why something was designed in a particular fashion. This requires more scholarship, but usually leads to more successful results.
Frankly, this sentiment is most scary to anyone with sense or intelligence. “reinterpreted or evolved”? The Constitution is a contract between the several States and its government. It does not require “evolution”, unless the people follow a well-defined process of Amendment. It’s all right there in the Constitution. The sentiment you describe is amendment by fiat — which by pure definition makes the Constitution worthless.
The Constitution is a contractual document penned with words. The words meant something demonstrably factual at the time it was written. These meanings were quite clearly expanded upon through the Federalist Papers, which served to educate the public upon the vision of the Constitution as it was framed. Viewed in that context, it’s quite clear what the Founders meant, and what the people who ratified the document understood that to mean at that time. Context is critical, because without it the basis of the contract is nothing.
Subverting alternate meanings of clauses and words in the name of “modernism” is not for progress, but against it. It is against progress because such actions weaken the very foundational document used to outline the relationship between the Government and its People. It is interesting that generally, the people who seek to re-write the Constitution by fiat “reinterpretation” have a very different view of this relationship.
If you want to “reinterpret” or change the Constitution, you are welcome to it. See Article V.
The People are not subjects of the Government, but rather the Government serves at the pleasure of its people. The power does not originate in Government. The Rights of the People are not declared by any Governmental fiat. This is the nature of the Republic as it was founded, quite contrary to the nature of oligarchy or democratic tyranny you seem to entertain.
Instead, I consider the most progressive idea to return to something closer to the original ideals of Liberty, private property, and capitalism that founded this Country and ultimately made our nation exceptional from its birth.
I think our 100-year experiment mixing socialism with our republican, capitalist civil society has well proven we are presently on the wrong road. I think it’s clear that socialist statism will not work here any better than it has anywhere else in the world. What has made our civil society exceptional is the patent rejection of such notions, but rather our foundation upon personal liberty — and genuinely caring for our neighbors rather than making them subjects of the government.
I encourage you to read The Law by Frédéric Bastiat. It’s a quick, easy read and you don’t even have to buy the book. (PDF)