Conservative Revolution


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Written by Laurie Higgins

The once appealing adjective “moderate” has become perverted by pundits and politicians. It has been twisted into an unrecognizable rhetorical weapon that in reality connotes extremism.

“Moderate” politicians are those who don’t see the product of conception between two humans as human, or alternatively, they believe incipient life is undeserving of constitutional protection. How is that moderate?

“Moderate” politicians are those who don’t believe that marriage has an inherent nature central to which is sexual differentiation, or who don’t believe the legal definition of marriage matters. How is that moderate?

“Moderate” politicians believe that religious liberty will remain unmolested even if same-sex unions are legally recognized as “marriages,” or they don’t care if religious liberty is undermined. How is that moderate?

“Moderate” politicians believe either mothers or fathers are dispensable and that they’re interchangeable. How is that moderate?

“Moderate” politicians don’t believe that children have an inherent right to be raised by both a mother and father, preferably their own. How is that moderate?

“Moderate” politicians believe that fiscal issues are vastly more critical to the health of this republic than are the right of preborn babies to exist, the right of children to be raised by a mother and a father, the legal protection of marriage, and the vigorous defense of our first liberty: religious liberty. How is that moderate?

“Moderate” politicians have deceived gullible, compliant conservatives for years, urging them to call a “truce” (or more accurately, a surrender) on the social issues until our state and federal fiscal house is in order. What “moderate” politicians don’t tell their gullible, compliant water-carriers is that they have no intention of ending the truce, because in reality many of them hold in contempt conservative views on life, marriage, and religious liberty. What many “moderate” politicians (henceforth referred to as “immoderates”) do care about are conservative votes and money.

What is perhaps most troubling about the views of many immoderates is their religious hostility. Recently when conservative commenters on a political website dared to refer to God in their comments about the dismantling of marriage or the killing of preborn babies, immoderates said, in effect, “Aha, finally the truth is out. Conservatives extremist fundies want to impose their religious beliefs on the entire country in violation of the separation of church and state.”

Word to immoderates: Conservative people of faith are as fully entitled to have their faith shape decisions regarding elections, laws, and policies as are those who attend liberal churches and synagogues and as those who hold atheistic worldviews. I think Martin Luther King Jr. taught us that lesson.

Again and again, immoderates accuse conservatives of demanding only “pure” candidates, which is patent nonsense. This is just another way to ridicule conservatives who believe that issues related to life, marriage, and religious liberty are at least as important as the almighty fiscal issues that single-issue immoderates view as sacred.

Immoderates apparently haven’t noticed that they themselves are guilty of demanding “purity” in their candidates. Would immoderates vote for a candidate who vigorously promoted Republican positions on marriage, preborn life, religious liberty, immigration, gun control, education, healthcare, and national defense, but openly opposed Republican positions on government spending and debt, tax policy, and energy policy?

I would submit that what we’re facing now is a time unique in modern American history and one which demands radical, countercultural action. We’re facing the dismantling of marriage, which poses a real and imminent threat to religious liberty. We’re facing daily the purchasing of DNA by naturally sterile homosexual couples who see nothing wrong with robbing children of their right to be raised by both a mother and a father.

And we’re seeing Republicans embrace such pernicious non-sense.

Conservatives should ask U.S. Senator Mark Kirk and his fiscal sycophants this question: Do you think the Republican Party will become more or less conservative on issues related to life, marriage, and religious liberty if more men and women who share your views are serving in leadership roles within the Republican Party?

One immoderate recently accused me of “poisoning the well” because of my criticism of the abandonment of conservative principles by Republicans.

My friends, the well has been poisoned by the poisonous, treasonous beliefs and actions of politicians like Mark Kirk and disgraced former chairman of the Illinois Republican Party, Pat Brady, who snaked silently through the halls of the Illinois Capitol rotunda in Springfield last year, hissing into the ears of Republicans, urging them to abandon marriage.

Rather, conservatives are trying to get the antidote into the well before the party has ingested too much poison to survive or be worthy of survival.

Conservatives need to inure themselves to the epithet hurled by immoderates that they, conservatives, are part of the “ultra-right.” This is yet another pejorative intended to ridicule those who rightly believe that protecting human life, protecting the rights of children to be raised by a mother and father, protecting marriage, and protecting religious liberty are critical issues.

Moreover, “ultra-right” is a relative term. Not too many years ago, the values and beliefs of what immoderates and their ideological allies, “progressives,” condescendingly refer to as “ultra-right” would have been utterly mainstream. Such a condescending epithet exposes how relativistic the Republican Party is becoming. Richard Weaver has some important things to say about this kind of relativism in his important book Ideas Have Consequences:

Whoever argues for a restoration of values is sooner or later met with the objection that one cannot return, or as the phrase is likely to be, “you can’t turn the clock back.” By thus assuming that we are prisoners of the moment, the objection well reveals the philosophic position of modernism. The believer in truth, on the other hand, is bound to maintain that the things of highest value are not affected by time; otherwise the very concept of truth becomes impossible. In declaring that we wish to recover lost ideals and values, we are looking toward an ontological realm that is timeless.

The contemporary claim that opposition to abortion, support for true marriage, and opposition to the normalization of homosexuality are fringe positions reflects the moral relativism against which Weaver warns. Conservative views are only extreme to a society that has rejected the idea of objective, transcendent moral truth. Remember, less than fifty years ago, support for abortion and affirmation of volitional homosexual acts would have been viewed as radical, far-left, extreme, fringe positions, and a “truce” on the promotion of these views by politicians would have been unthinkable.

Here is my “nutty” argument in a nutshell:

I believe that policies on fiscal issues are less important than policies on human life, children’s rights, marriage, and religious liberty.

I believe that conservatives must enlarge their vision beyond the next 4, 6, or 8 years. They need to think imaginatively and strategically about the dangerous direction in which the Republican Party is moving—and moving relatively quickly. Conservatives need to anticipate what the party platform will look like in just a couple of election cycles if we continue to hold our noses and carry rancid water for men and women like Mark Kirk, Pat Brady, Tom Cross, and Judy Baar Topinka.

We need to think about the ideological effect these men and women have when they’re in power. It’s not just the policies they pursue or ignore. And it’s not just the backroom deals they make. It’s also the conversations they have with other influential Republicans.

We need to bear in mind that these men and women are not neutral on issues critical to the future of America. They are antagonistic to efforts to protect preborn lives, to protect marriage, and to protect religious liberty. Many of these immoderates are proud of their anti-life, anti-marriage positions. If they are so lacking in wisdom that they don’t recognize how critical marriage is to any society, and if they’re so lacking in wisdom that they don’t recognize that same-sex “marriage” formally endorses the idea that either mothers or fathers are expendable, and if they don’t recognize that religious liberties are daily being attacked, they will never stand up boldly against efforts to deracinate the “social” issues from the Republican Party platform.

One commenter on a political website ordered conservatives to “go start your own party.” Until recently, the Republican Party was the party for conservatives. We didn’t change. The party changed. And now those who changed it want us out.  After they abandon essential planks of the Republican platform that they don’t like, and after they call conservatives crazy whack jobs, and after they tell conservatives to get out of the party, they have the temerity to say that conservatives are “eating their own” and forming “a circular firing squad.”

Remarkable.


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