E!! The True Conservative Story™

 Leslie Carbone has a very moving post up over at dontgomovement.com.  I like her passion.

Many are saying this election was a failure of Conservatism.  Not so.  It was the product of poor Republican leadership and big government policies.  Fiscal discipline went out the window.  Earmarks were snatched up eagerly.  Corruption scandals sprang up too often.  Communication and message management were poor.

In short, the Republican party became undisciplined, greedy, weak and ineffective.  This dirtied and eroded the Republican brand such that it became unrecognizable and uninspiring. 

We need new leadership.  We need new voices and/or the renewing and rejuvination of existing voices.  Our elected officials need to stop concerning themselves with power grabs, pandering, and placating.  We must unapologetically and unashamedly stand on True Conservative values.

We need to get back to basics and get on message, recognizing that effective and persuasive communication matters.  As Laura Ingraham said today, “We must cultivate a new generation of leaders who are both proud of their conservative beliefs and comfortable articulating them with vision, clarify and optimism.” 

I hereby invoke part of Russell Kirk’s introduction to Ten Conservative Principles:

Perhaps it would be well, most of the time, to use this word “conservative” as an adjective chiefly. For there exists no Model Conservative, and conservatism is the negation of ideology: it is a state of mind, a type of character, a way of looking at the civil social order.

The attitude we call conservatism is sustained by a body of sentiments, rather than by a system of ideological dogmata. It is almost true that a conservative may be defined as a person who thinks himself such. The conservative movement or body of opinion can accommodate a considerable diversity of views on a good many subjects, there being no Test Act or Thirty-Nine Articles of the conservative creed.

In essence, the conservative person is simply one who finds the permanent things more pleasing than Chaos and Old Night. (Yet conservatives know, with Burke, that healthy “change is the means of our preservation.”) A people’s historic continuity of experience, says the conservative, offers a guide to policy far better than the abstract designs of coffee-house philosophers.

I have always loved Kirk’s Ten and that intro.  Not an ideology but ”a state of mind, a type of character, a way of looking at the social order.”

Conservatives are skeptical of change for its own sake and will always pause to ask, “but what are the unintended consequences?”  Conservatives value that which has been good, and is good, and are not eager to dismiss that good in favor of untested new ideas.  Conservatives are open minded but cautious.  Social experiments are looked upon with great skepticism.  As Kirk later writes:

Therefore the intelligent conservative endeavors to reconcile the claims of Permanence and the claims of Progression. He thinks that the liberal and the radical, blind to the just claims of Permanence, would endanger the heritage bequeathed to us, in an endeavor to hurry us into some dubious Terrestrial Paradise. The conservative, in short, favors reasoned and temperate progress; he is opposed to the cult of Progress, whose votaries believe that everything new necessarily is superior to everything old.

Just so.

This post on the values of capitalism over on Overcoming Bias is just excellent.

It starts with this quote:

“The financial crisis is not the crisis of capitalism.  It is the crisis of a system that has distanced itself from the most fundamental values of capitalism, which betrayed the spirit of capitalism.”
        — Nicolas Sarkozy

and includes gems like:

The fundamental morality of capitalism lies in the voluntary nature of its trades, consented to by all parties, and therefore providing a gain to all.

and

Vigorous work is praiseworthy but should be accompanied by equally vigorous results.

and

No one has a right to their job.  Not the janitor, not the CEO, no one.  It would be like a rationalist having a right to their own opinion.  At some point you’ve got to fire the saddle-makers and close down the industry. 

and

No company has a right to its continued existence.  Change happens.

and

A high standard of living is the just reward of hard work and intelligence.  If other people or other places have lower standards of living, then the problem is the lower standard, not the higher one.  Raise others up, don’t lower yourself.  A high standard of living is a good thing, not a bad one – a universal moral generalization that includes you in particular.  If you’ve earned your wealth honestly, enjoy it without regrets.

and

People safeguard, nourish, and improve that which they know will not be taken away from them.  Tax a little if you must, but at some point you must let people own what they buy.

and

In countries that are lawful and just, the government is the referee, not a player.  If the referee runs onto the field and kicks the football, things are starting to get scary.

and

Making money is a virtuous endeavor, despite all the lies that have been told about it, and should properly be found in the company of other virtues.  Those who set out to make money should not think of themselves as fallen, but should rather conduct themselves with honor, pride, and self-respect, as part of the grand pageantry of human civilization rising up from the dirt, and continuing forward into the future.

Amen!

I think we must stick with the traditional ingredients of cold-filtered Conservatism and persuade people - through the intelligent and passionate presentation of facts and ideas - that it is well worth preserving.