The Conservative Manifesto (abridged)

After reading a political entry in a friend's blog, I decided it was time for my own political manifesto, or at least an abridgement thereof.

First a little background. My parents are both conservatives. In fact, I dare anyone to find someone more conservative than my parents. If you do, tell my parents about them and they will adjust their views to match, or exceed if possible. Oddly enough, they both come from very Democratic families. I don't use the "L" word because they were not liberal. They were farming and manual labor types who supported the Democratic party of FDR and Truman (and Ronald Reagan and Zell Miller for that matter).

I never strayed too far from my parents, though. I have only voted for a Democrat once, when I was 19, and then only because he was actually a Libertarian. I'm sure that like most people, I simply copied my parents opinions at first. As years went by, though, I learned to think more analytically and kept thinking the same way for my own reasons.

In general, I think the main difference between American Liberal and Conservative thought is summarized in the idea of equality versus freedom. True liberals think that all people should be equal. Everyone should be able to go where they want, have equal access to services, and be given equal opportunities in life. True conservatives believe that people should be free to do what they want with their property. The government should not tell them how to do business, or manage their money or business for them in any way.

I am definitely on the "freedom" side of the scale. When the government tries to make people equal, there will never be a stopping point. If people are guaranteed health care by the government, then why not all types of preventative medicine? Why not gym memberships? Cosmetic surgery?

This basic idea expands into the idea of activist versus strict interpretation of the Constitution. Liberals (activists) think the Constitution is an ideal. They feel that there are rights and freedoms not explicitly written into the Constitution that still should be guaranteed by it. Conservative strict constructionists believe that if it isn't written into the Constitution, then it isn't part of it. There is no such thing as a Constitutional "right to privacy" or "right to abortion" because it is mentioned nowhere in the document.

I also believe strongly in a strict constructionist view of the Constitution. I doubt most Americans have ever read the Constitution, but only have a general idea of what it says. As an engineer I tend to take things at face value. I don't type printf("Hello, World!!!\n"); and expect anything other than "Hello, World!!!" to be printed. In the same way, you don't say "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" and expect the word "God" to be purged from government buildings, state and federal. If you allow the Constitution to be interpreted liberally then you allow the Supreme Court to make whatever it wants to be the law of the land.

I think these basic philosophical ideas then lead me to back most other conservative policies. I believe that taxes should be as low as possible. I believe that private businesses and individuals can, in generals, do better than government agencies, and should be allowed to do their own thing. I believe that the government "safety net" programs have become a mostly solid surface and that the people who have begun living on it need to be allowed to fall through and face the harsh reality of the circus floor below unless they are willing to try to climb out of it on their own power.

On an international level, I also believe in freedom over equality. I believe that the U.S. is free to do as it like in order to maintain our domestic security. I believe that all other countries' opinions are not equal with ours when it comes to our security issues. I also believe that all governments are not equally legitimate.

For these basic reasons I vote straight-ticket in general elections. If a Republican candidate were in some way a total screw-up, I might vote for another candidate, but that hasn't happened since I have been voting. I will admit that I do not believe in 100% of their platform, but for the majority of issues I believe in their stance and in 95% of issues I like their platform over that of the Democrats.