What Does It Mean to Be Conservative?

What does it mean to be a conservative in America?  Leftist groups label conservatives as selfish, power-hungry, profit-mongers that desire nothing more than their own individual success.  Conservatives have been consistently shamed into inaction with these messages.

Why have these negative labels been successful?  Is it because conservatives are really just out for money, power, and themselves? Many have gathered to answer the question of just what a conservative is and in 1964, Frank Meyer, called together a group that included a broad base of political thinkers to help create the tenets of conservatism:

• They accept “an objective moral order” of “immutable standards by which human conduct should be judged.”
• Whether they emphasize human rights and freedoms or duties and responsibilities, they unanimously value “the human person” as the center of political and social thought.
• They oppose liberal attempts to use the State “to enforce ideological patterns on human beings.”
• They reject the centralized power and direction necessary to the “planning” of society.
• They join in the defense of the Constitution “as originally conceived.”
• They are devoted to Western civilization and acknowledge the need to defend it against the “messianic” intentions of Communism.

America was founded on the rights of the individual and limited government.  Conservatives pride themselves on protecting those concepts.

Left-wing radicals use labels to vilify those on the right. Attacking conservative ideology would win the liberal movement no ground – most Americans base their lives on conservative principles whether they know it or not.

Saul Alinsky understood that attacking the basic conservative tenets would offend some of the liberal base as well.  In order to achieve a sea-change in the American order, liberals had to use radical tactics to consolidate power by ridicule – not the reasoned debate liberals so often herald.  Saul Alinsky said, “My aim here is to suggest how to organize for power: how to get it and how to use it.” This is not to be done with assistance to the poor, nor even by organizing the poor to demand assistance.”.

Alinsky was an organizational genius.  By shaming the middle-class into believing that their successes were not due to their own hard work but were instead due to being lucky, the whole idea of the classic American dream could be questioned.  These strategies have started to shift power from the American individual to the liberal ideal of a collective – and more succinctly, an elitist-controlled collectivist empire.  The little bits of power that had been spread among a great majority of Americans could then be high-jacked and given to a chosen few leaders and advisers in the central government – the true elitists.

Centralizing power into the federal government violates a basic principal of conservatism and so the battle lines are drawn.  Liberals would argue that by allowing the government to provide for its citizens, greater equality is achieved.  Equality is the underhanded promise of socialism to which an answer might be that of Orwell, “all animals are created equal, some more equal than others.”.

The elitist media and leadership are shoving crap down the throats of Americans.  Understand that every move is about making you more dependent upon them, more understanding of them, and just more… them.  Being a conservative is simply realizing that fact and not going gently into that good night.