Pillars of Conservatism

Alright, as requested. Now, take this for what its worth…essentially my opinion and views based on my teachings in college, my own research, and my own thoughts more so than a technical definition one may find in a wiki article or text book. And...um, as a general warning as I look back over this, its long. So this first post is a general over view with each post after going into more detail

In general, “Conservatism” in a general sense consists of 4 pillars or legs. The key with these pillars is that for it to be truly successful and have a chance for longevity on a national stage they must remain in a relatively equal balance so everything remains level. If you chop off a leg or two, or make one significantly larger than the others, it makes things unstable and muddies the message.

The four pillars are essentially as followed:

Fiscal Conservatism – A balanced, small budget focusing on necessary things primarily mixed with the least amount of money removed from the private citizens.

Social Conservatism – Belief in the founding principles of the United States, in moral/ethical views, and upholding of tradition.

Governmental Conservatism – Striving for the smallest sized government that is the least involved in peoples lives as possible and not infringing upon state rights.

Militaristic Conservatism – Peace through Strength, believing a strong military is the backbone of a strong country, while believing the military’s job is national defense not world policing.

What falls into these different groups?

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Fiscal Conservatism

In regards to fiscal conservatism you have a number of important things. In regards to taxation, it is striving for the lowest taxes possible. Placing taxes on things essentially acts as a deterrent and demonization to do said thing. Additionally, the more money funneled into government is the more money that gets routed through needless bureaucracies and helps to further “bloat” the government (touching into Governmental Conservatism here).

The other part of this is government spending. Every business, every family, has to essentially make a budget whether it is on paper or in their head. In general, the fiscally sound ones make said budget with regards to how much money they actually HAVE and strive not to have to take out loans to cover things. The government needs to do the same. The government should not create budgets that in and of themselves REQUIRE it to take out loans to actually reach that budget. “Luxury” type items, or in this case programs and expenditures, should not be taking up large hunks of the budget while we’re sitting on a significant amount of debt. We should avoid programs that essentially put us into a never ending “spend cycle” where the people of today are paying for the people of yesterday (for example, social security you pay does not go into any sort of account making it definite that you get your money back, but instead just gets rolled in with the general federal monies).

Essentially, when faced with an issue where there is an issue with money for the government and the choice is take out a loan, raise taxes, or spend less and cut back on luxury programs this ideology believes the answer is the latter…cut back on the luxuries. The founding principle of America is liberty and freedom, and those things should not be taken away (in the form of taxes from the government) simply for the government to have more money to do things it wasn’t designed and meant to do anyways.

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Social Conservatism

Social Conservatism is easily one of the most debated of the four, and one of the four most reliant on adherence to another pillar for it not to become a large problem. The foundation of his country was built on the belief of liberty, freedom, and self determination. It is a land of opportunity, and has a tradition and culture that accepts all that come to it as long as they embrace America itself. Its foundation is found within the Constitution which his not just a “piece of paper” or a “living document” but is the foundation upon which this country was built. Social conservatism is based in part off of these things.

The other part of it is built off the history of this country, which frankly is generally Christian in values. Whether it is a “Christian nation” or not is easily debatable, and that I will not touch. However, it is inconceivable to make the argument that throughout its inception and history the United States of America, its government, its culture, and its tradition was not shaped, melded, and became intertwined with the general moral compass of Christian people. In general, Social Conservatism believes in the promotion of these type of principles to have a more moral and successful citizenry.

From these things you can branch off into a number of topics. Some issues of the immigration debate come into play here. Immigration has a long and storied tradition within our country. However, in the past, immigrants came to America not in hopes of simply “benefiting” from it but to become a true part of it. They did not come here simply to grab jobs, but they came here to find a new life and a new home. They came here to be Americans first and nationality second generally (while yes, in pockets of the country during the early days the various racial prejudices of their homelands remained, those groups still generally held strong ties to the thought of being “American”). It was about assimilation, not integration. For many, these views and ideals are not as often found within the current majority (or at least vocal minority) of legal and specifically illegal immigrants into the country.

Many other traditional things that most people think of when you hear “social conservatism” is there. The belief that abortion is the ending of a life, that traditional marriage and traditional lifestyles should be the ones promoted, that rampant drug and alcohol usage is a bad thing,. That citizens should not need to answer “why” they need a weapon because the only needed answer is its their right. That while the minority should never be forced into the majority’s will in regards to religion, that the minority should not be able to stifle the expression of said religion by the majority either. The list goes on and is fairly stereotypical.

Here is where Social Conservatism gets tricky. In recent years, especially under GWB, it has completely forgone the next pillar I’m about to explain, thus making it an extremely dangerous and generally unconservative thing.

The key with most social conservative policies is it is not the government’s job to enforce them (specifically when it comes to more of the tradition/morality things) but to enforce against the legislated removal of destruction of them and at most to encourage them.

For example, lets take civil unions (I could do a whole second major post on my thoughts in regards to civil unions/marriage). Through traditional social conservatism in general there should not be a national passage of such as it goes against the traditional reason why government approve marriage and its bonuses were created (because the belief it’s a societal well being for people to become married and have a stable unit to then raise a family). HOWEVER, based on the next pillar, a constitutional ban keeping States from making their own decisions on this should ALSO not occur.

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Governmental Conservatism

This ones an important one and has slowly been dying out sadly. Governmental Conservatism is rooted in the belief that the larger the government is bloated, the more the bureaucracy becomes less efficient and the more the budget increases. Additionally, the more government is involved in peoples lives the less freedom the population has, the incentive to be self-reliant is reduced, and the larger the government becomes.

The Federal Government primarily was meant to help protect the country, deal with matters that transcend multiple states, and assure the basic rights of the people. This has bloated to out of control levels.

Public Welfare is, to a point, a job of the government. It has reached epic levels beyond that which it was meant for and beyond what conservatives feel is needed. In general, the view in regards to the current welfare structure is that it creates a class of people dependent on the government, thus reducing incentive to strike out on their own and also creating a class of people who will perpetually vote for those that wish to continually grow the government and thus give more things to them. At the same time, it does little to nothing to truly give incentives or opportunities for these people to strike out on their own, improve themselves, or contribute to the country in exchange for the assistance they’re receiving.

Programs like Social Security and Welfare are large transfers of wealth that are essentially handled in an extremely fiscally irresponsible way by the government with each generation being mortgaged onto the next one while taking their current money to put to other generally non-essential projects.

Regulation after regulation are placed upon businesses and corporations, increasing the costs of doing business and decreasing productivity. Historically as well, these regulations are placed on business and then a decade later, when the inevitable fall out of these regulations occur those same people that placed the regulations upon these business point to them and go “See, Capitalism has failed!”. Take the regulations in place for refineries and drilling upon our own sources of oil. Many on the left, and rightfully so, point out that it’ll take 10 years for us to even capitalize on any oil we’d get if we started increasing refineries and drilling for oil today. What they leave out however is that these things were not taking place 10 years ago which could’ve helped to prevent the situation which is causing us to talk about it today if the regulations weren’t in place that makes it financially foolish to create new refineries or drill within our own borders. Trust in the free markets and remove government as much as possible from them. Traditionally the biggest problems that occur in the free market can actually be traced back to issues caused due to the government getting involved in said free market.

The Government is not here to make our lives better and to make sure everybody gets by. It is a wonderful and utopian ideal, but it is simply not one in which America is founded on. The various societies that has tried to build itself upon those ideals have inevitably failed due to the fact it IS a utopian thought. To change America into a country in which it is the Governments job to provide for its people, to help them in every facet of life, to decide what is “fair” for who to have what and to be the arbiter of taking from one to give a better life to another is to destroy the foundations upon which this country was founded upon. The thing that set America apart from these people is that while the ability to fail and fail hard is present it is tempered by the fact that allowing for that to happen also allows one to potentially succeed to the highest and most wild heights. Many places seek to have government act as an arbiter, trying to manipulate and regulate the population to attempt at best to raise everyone to a happy medium level where the variation from top to bottom is smallest. Generally this fails. America’s ideals instead focus on something different, having government for the most part separate from this process and allowing PEOPLE to aspire for whatever height they can reach, generally causing a larger discrepancy from top to bottom.

It is not the governments job to tell us what’s best for us, but instead should be for the most part staying out of peoples lives. In general, governments should not be telling parents how to raise their kids or adults how they spend their free time. Businesses should not have massive things on how they run their private enterprise dictated to them by the government. In general, the government should not be dipping its fingers into sectors of private and public life that it has no reasonable reason to be involved in and if it absolutely must due to some other national need that is justifiable it should strive to do so through positive reinforcement rather than restrictions of freedom.

Finally, in general, we are the United States of America. The job of our government should be, first and foremost, worry about the well being of its citizens and not necessarily what is best or most agreed upon by the rest of the world. We should not be handicapping American Business or the American people through large scale agreements on the world state by accepting large regulations or spending large amounts of tax payer money on things that are generally only mildly (if that) in the interest of the United States people and are generally out of the U.S. jurisdiction to be sure it is being done ethically and on the level.

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Militaristic Conservatism

And in comes the last one. As Ronald Reagan put it, “Peace through Strength”. The belief that a country must have a strong, well put together, well equipped, and top of the line military to assure its citizens safety. Reducing our military significantly, or responding to threats or acts against us in an appeasing or weak way perpetuates a weakened and vulnerable view of the country. Addressing threats to national security as compartmentalized, domestic issues is generally a failed form of dealing with such threats. While our military should be used primarily for defensive purposes, we should not be complacent in identifying threats and taking action when needed against clear ones.

That said, the conservative view point is the fact that we are not here to police the world. While some involvement on the world state is helpful due to the proliferation of free trade and the greater necessity it has on our economy, it should be kept to a minimum. Nation building is a costly endeavor, funneling U.S. tax payers money away from them into other areas of the world without a great national need.

However, when and if we act militaristically, we must act fully and completely. War is an ugly, brutal, and frightful thing. It is why we should not engage in it unless necessary, but if we engage on it we should do it with 100% focus and resolve. Few things are more damaging to our troops, our countries moral and image, and the safety of the nation than failure once into a war situation. We must understand that propaganda is a tool used by the other side no matter what we do and if we allow our actions and tactics to largely be influenced based on “image” that will be tarnished no matter what we do then we are going to run into situations where we either severely hinder our success or outright fail.

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Alright, so you have your four main pillars. Now, as I said, the key is having all of these essentially on a relatively even keel. Have one too big or one too small, or have a few just out right missing, and you’re going to run into issues.

Currently, there are essentially four main segments of the conservative movement. Libertarians, Paleoconservatives, the Religious Right, and Necons.

Libertarians are extremely strong in regards to their views on Fiscal and Governmental conservatism, while generally weaker on social and militaristic. Neocons on the other hand are generally weak fiscally and governmentally, strong socially, and a mixture in regards to militaristic (strong military, but interventionist and nation building in view). Paleoconservatives are your closest to the “traditional” types, generally being pretty clear cut across the board. Finally, the religious right is a strange one, generally EXTREMELY heavy on the social conservative side but can vary gigantically in the other 3.

The key for conservatives is going to be someone that can understand the indepth philosophy of conservatism, find a way to articulate it intelligently and charismatically in a succinct manner, and figure out ways to bring all four groups on board without falling into the pitfalls of any particular group.

The key is striking a balance where you adhere to all four pillars, enough to pull in most from all of those groupings without running into the problems that going extreme to any one of those 4 causes. This will also present the republicans with a general platform that is likely enough to win over many independents and moderates.

The last person to really fill this role however was Ronald Reagan, with Newt Gingrich in 1994 possibly being the closest outside of that one.

Now naturally EVERY facet of policy does not fit perfectly into these four pillars, but most do and others that don’t can loosely be connected to them. However, in general, this is your foundation in which the rest is built upon.

The problem is, and will become even more with Obama, the American population has became more and more spoiled and content with the idea that the government is there to support and prop them up. The thought that health care is a right, owning a home is a right, having a job is a right, being supported in retirement is a right, going to school is a right, etc creates a situation where the general populations desire to be self-sufficient, self-reliant, and thus responsible for themselves instead of having the government responsible for them. Due to this, Democrats are able to paint themselves as the people that will “help” those people by giving them more of the same thing while Republicans are “out to get them” by wishing to take them away, while it can easily be looked at as Democrats wish for these people to remain dependents while Republicans are wishing for them to have the opportunities presented to them to actually strive for greatness rather then be content in dependency.

Couple this with the traditional democratic party tactic of getting ahold of issues and then manipulating it in such a way to present a “you’re either with us or against” us scenario.

Take environmentalism.

Conservative ideology does not necessarily say that recycling is bad, that conservation is bad, that wishing to reduce pollution is bad, that striving to be less wasteful is bad. The issue comes in when the government is used to severely limit freedom of individuals and corporations to force them into these things, often times at the expense of the free market or personal liberty, instead of simply offering incentives to do such things or advocating but not enforcing. So when conservatives go against laws that FORCE these things upon people it is then presented by democrats as “Democrats, for the environment; Republicans, against the environment.”

So what its going to come down to is a conservative that can convince the members of their own party that taking any of their particular ideologies to an extreme level is a bad thing, while being all around a staunch conservative, but is able to explain to people why being self-reliant and breaking the dependency on the government is actually more beneficial to them then simply relying on the government to provide for their every want and need.

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Zyphlin said:

Disagree with you greatly dana, but no surprise there. You seem to believe that the Libertarian view of conservative is the only thing that's truly conservatism. I strongly disagree with that notion but am not surprised by it due to the fact that I've noticed routinely that arrogance and/or superiority are traits that are routinely found in libertarian individuals in regards to their political view points.

I believe all four of those pillars are fully intwined with conservative values and beliefs. I believe the different factions within conservatism come about based on which ones the different groups find most important. Currently, Republicans focus mostly on the Social and Military aspect while Libertarians seem to focus far more on the Fiscal and Governmental.

I see NOTHING about Social Conservatism that in and of itself runs automatically against the rest of conservative ideology. I think its completely possible to be socially conservative while being in line with the other pillars as well. HOWEVER, I think that ROUTINELY...especially recently...people go so heavily overboard on the Social pillar and have pulled back so greatly on the governmental teir that it seems out of whack. I think you're also stereotyping far to much Dana, assuming that the past 8 years is exactly what the social pillar is and is meant to be. I honestly am wondering if you read my stance and view on the pillar or simply saw the name and decided "Gah, Social, Extreme religious right, go off stereotypes, go off stereotypes!".

Against using the government to promote "non-traditional" or forbid "traditional" things, for a strong immigration policy focusing on assimilation over intigration, standardizing the language used in the country, believing that abortion is the unlawful killing and thus removal of rights of another person, etc....these social views ARE conservative views and stances, though you may disagree with them, and they don't necessarily interfere with the other pillars.

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danarhea said:

I would agree with the part that is bolded as long as it is kept at the local and state level. However, Social Conservatives, much like Liberals, want the government to legislate their agenda for ALL people, not just those in their locality or state. Just because people here in Texas have one ideal of morality should not give them the right to legislate what they feel should be lawful to the people in California any more than the people of California should have the right to legislate what should be lawful in Texas. That is why I oppose Roe v. Wade. That is also why I oppose amending the Constitution to outlaw gay marriage. No self respecting Paleocon would use the government to force his or her belief on other regions, but would advocate that the Federal government maintain a hands-off policy and let the states decide these issues for themselves.

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Zyphlin said:

Dana, I gotta ask honestly. Did you read my posts, specifically the one about social conservatism? Because you seem to be creating a strawman and trying to debate it. I'm not meaning this insulting, though I Know it may come that way. It just seems we're talking about two entirely separate things and I don't know if I just did a really, really crappy job of articulating myself in that section I guess.

A social conservative, AKA someone who focuses on just social issues of conservatism and gives a damn about the rest, yes, you are right in your assessment.

HOWEVER

That does NOT mean that social conservatism is not conservatism, and that does not mean social conservatism can be practiced alongside the other pillars.

Just because the people who focus the most on it currently don't do that does not mean its impossible to do it, nor does it mean that conservative ideals socially can not be pushed without respecting the other pillars.

At one point, you're arguing "against" me when you're in reality agreeing with me (when you bad mouth social conservatism, which is my point...people focusing only one a SPECIFIC branch or two are not viable and cause more harm than good). At another point, you seem to be COMPLETELY ignoring my posts and my points, focusing specifically only on SOCIAL CONSERVATIVES as a mentality and group and not Social Conservatism as a philosophy of conservatism

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danarhea said:

Social Conservatism - Not truly Conservatism, as it frequently flies in the face of Governmental Conservatism. If you believe in limited Federal government, then you cannot embrace Social Conservatism without being in favor of expanded Federal government - The two concepts are mutually exclusive.

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Militaristic Conservatism - A mixed bag here, as the need to be secure within our borders is sometimes trumped by intervention into foreign affairs that have nothing to do with security. The result is usually blowback that has an opposite effect on what we attempt to achieve. This is Neoconservatism, and not the brand of Paleoconservatism that true Conservatives have traditionally embraced. It is what poisoned the Bush administration, and caused the downfall of the Republican party. Note that what Neconservatives attemped in the Middle East was also attempted by Democrats in Vietnam and Southeast Asia. The Neocons should have learned from history that you cannot bring Democracy to other nations through the barrel of a gun. Militaristic Conservatism, in its extreme, is not Conservatism at all, but a kind of bastardized Liberalism on steroids.

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Zyphlin said:

Alright then, I'll ask again Dana...

Against using the government to promote "non-traditional" or forbid "traditional" things, for a strong immigration policy focusing on assimilation over intigration, standardizing the language used in the country, believing that abortion is the unlawful killing and thus removal of rights of another person.

All of those are things that could be pursued at the national level. Are you saying its impossible to strive for those ideals without severely imposing on the other pillars?

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danarhea said:

In your list, on all but abortion, you make a valid point. However, on abortion

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gay rights

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marijuana possession

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I do not believe the Federal government has the right to intervene.

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Zyphlin said:

Alright then, I'll ask again Dana...

Against using the government to promote "non-traditional" or forbid "traditional" things, for a strong immigration policy focusing on assimilation over integration, standardizing the language used in the country, believing that abortion is the unlawful killing and thus removal of rights of another person.

All of those are things that could be pursued at the national level. Are you saying its impossible to strive for those ideals without severely imposing on the other pillars?

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danarhea said:

In your list, on all but abortion, you make a valid point. However, on abortion, gay rights, marijuana possession, and on other issues, I do not believe the Federal government has the right to intervene. Liberals attempt to push gun control nationally, but it does not make them right either. In the end, the 10th Amendment is what should rule. Otherwise, you expand government into the personal lives of Americans, which is anti-Conservative.

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