That self-avowed \u201cconservative\u201d Republicans pounced upon Cliven Bundy and Donald Sterling no less tenaciously than did those on the left got me to wondering: Why should anyone<\/i>, of any <\/i>race, religion, or political orientation, vote for them?<\/p>\n
Lest my intentions be misunderstood, it should be noted that not only am I a conservative, a Christian, and a traditional Republican voter.\u00a0 I am all this and a philosophy professor to boot.\u00a0 My point is that years spent in the belly of the leftist dominated beast of academia has not weakened\u2014and has only strengthened\u2014my conviction in the rational and moral superiority of conservatism over its competitors (my doctoral dissertation, defended at a militantly leftist institution, was a defense of the classical conservative tradition).<\/p>\n
Still, readers of this column must <\/i>see this that there is nothing particularly conservative about much of today\u2019s conservative movement.\u00a0 There\u2019s even less conservatism to be found within the Republican Party.<\/p>\n
If ever we needed proof of this, the hysteria with which \u201cconservatives\u201d raced to participate in the \u201cFinger-Wagging Olympics,\u201d as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar put it, supplies this proof in spades.<\/p>\n
Traditionally, conservatives have favored what today is referred to as \u201climited government\u201d\u2014i.e. a decentralization of authority and a wide dispersal of power.\u00a0 They have also endorsed the idea that, ultimately, the moral life fleshes itself out within the \u201clittle platoons\u201d\u2014the local communities\u2014that shape the identity and sense of purpose of the individual.\u00a0 Leftists, in glaring contrast, are seized with visions of utopia that are both cause and effect of their obsession with the creation of Omnipotent and Omniscient Government.<\/p>\n
The point: \u201cRacism,\u201d or the campaign to end <\/i>\u201cracism,\u201d to a far <\/i>greater extent than any other pretext, has catapulted the left-wing vision to its present position of cultural dominance.<\/p>\n
First, in the name of fighting \u201cracism,\u201d the American government has been \u201cfundamentally transformed\u201d (to use Barack Obama\u2019s lingo) from the \u201climited,\u201d self-divided set of institutions intended by our Founders into the largely monolithic Leviathan that currently exists today.\u00a0 States\u2019 rights, equality under the law, and individual liberty\u2014the pillars of America\u2019s Constitutional Republic\u2014have been radically subverted for the sake of \u201cEquality,\u201d say, or \u201cSocial Justice\u201d: i.e. for the purpose of combating \u201cracism.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cliven Bundy has been in a fight with the federal government over land that his family had been using for a century.\u00a0 Sean Hannity is among those who upheld the man as something of an emblem of the patriotic spirit that motivated the founding generation in its fight against oppressive government.\u00a0 But as soon as Bundy was (unjustly) depicted as a \u201cracist,\u201d Hannity and other \u201cconservatives\u201d in the media and Congress who had just hours before lionized him dropped Bundy like a hot potato.\u00a0 Worse, so as not to be outdone, Hannity stopped just short of calling Bundy evil, expressing more contempt for Bundy\u2019s David than even Hannity has ever expressed for the Goliath of the federal government.<\/p>\n
And all because Bundy wasn\u2019t so articulate in echoing the standard GOP line that the Democratic Party, with its promotion of all things Big Government, has psychologically bound blacks to a new \u201cplantation.\u201d<\/p>\n
All too predictably, for his efforts, Hannity, like every other Republican who screamed from the rooftops, was mocked even more loudly by the usual suspects on the left.<\/p>\n
But the Donald Sterling brouhaha, possibly more so than any other event, gave the idolaters of Total Government everything for which they could\u2019ve asked:<\/p>\n
With Sterling, the line between the private and the public, thought and deed, is eradicated <\/i>and the citizen, thus, is left utterly defenseless against the onslaught of All Mighty Government.<\/p>\n
Yet \u201cconservatives\u201d and Republicans, if they are bothered by this at all\u2014which, in most instances, it doesn\u2019t appear that they are\u2014aren\u2019t nearly as bothered by it as they are the \u201cracism\u201d of Sterling.<\/p>\n
Secondly, in legitimizing the left\u2019s insinuation that \u201cracism\u201d is the most deadly of sins, the one unforgivable transgression that must be destroyed \u201cby whichever means necessary,\u201d the right advances the cause of Unlimited Government, it is true.\u00a0 However, in doing so, it also abets the left in obliterating the local and the particular, \u201cthe little platoons\u201d of which Edmund Burke wrote and by which moral character is formed.<\/p>\n
Traditional morality\u2014the only bulwark against tyrannical government\u2014is made to give way to a faux morality rooted in Politically Correct policy prescriptions of the day.<\/p>\n
And libertydies.<\/p>\n
The left is fatal to liberty.\u00a0 This we know.\u00a0 But if the left succeeds, as it is now succeeding, the right will be to blame.<\/p>\n
So, the question remains: As long as \u201cconservatives\u201d insist upon facilitating the left\u2019s agenda, why should <\/i>real conservatives and other patriots support them?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
That self-avowed \u201cconservative\u201d Republicans pounced upon Cliven Bundy and Donald Sterling no less tenaciously than did those on the left got me to wondering: Why should anyone, of any race, religion, or political orientation, vote for them? Lest my intentions be misunderstood, it should be noted that not only am I a conservative, a Christian,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n