Posted by
Matty on Sunday, December 30, 2007 5:09:31 AM
I have said it many times before: no one legislates morality like a liberal.
Why has this been called into question so often by the same leftists whose motto used to be (and truly--silently--still is) "the personal is political"? These are the same people who want to take tax money from people and apply it to ways they perceive to be moral or, as my friend Zach oddly put it, efficacious; in doing so, they inflict their moral visions on all parties involved much more blatantly and consistently than any conservative policy ever could or would.
I will take this a step further: a conservative in the United States should truly be close to a libertarian in many respects. Libertarians have almost nothing to do with the legislation of morality. Do I say this since I align with the libertarian philosophy in many ways? Yes, because I believe this also aligns me with conservatism. We conservatives believe in a strict following and interpretation of the Constitution. We do not ideologically, as so many accuse Bush, try to skirt the document. The document is clearly founded on the libertarian positions of mistrust of government and supreme sovereignty from the people. Liberals and their plans for large, centralized government are the ones who must ignore, skirt, spit upon, and otherwise hate the Constitution.
If people on the Right happen to be religious, so be it. It reinforces the idea of natural rights from our Creator quite well. When we are all equal, we are all free. This does not entail any morality not already guaranteed us by our Founders, whatever you perceive them to be (God, Jefferson, etc.).
Ask yourself, after all, why we rarely, if ever, hear the term "small-government conservative" anymore. Which of us, by definition, is not?