From: john@anasazi.com (John R. Moore)
Subject: Re: What is a Conservative?
Reply-To: john@anasazi.com
Organization: Anasazi, Inc.  Phoenix, Arizona USA
Distribution: usa
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1992 19:32:00 GMT

Keywords: 

In article <1992Nov11.162009.9147@cbnewsj.cb.att.com> johna@cbnewsj.cb.att.com (john.a.welsh) writes:
]> >Conservatives believe in limited government and the empowerment of the 
]> >individual 
]
]This sounds more like true conservatism.  A conservative seems to
]have a more stringent standard for right and wrong and a greater 
]desire to see individual freedom within a this standard.  One of

This is starting to get silly. There is no such thing as a "true conservative."
There are several conservative wings of the Republican party, and they only
have the "limited governmant and empowerment of the individual" clause
in common. We have:
  -The religious right. These are conservatives who believe in enforcing
   strong moral codes (theirs, of course)
  -Libertarian conservatives. These are conservatives who believe in
   "personal liberties" in addition to limited government.

The religious right wants to enforce morality, regardless of the
whether the act punished hurts anyone. The libertarian conservatives only want
to enforce libertarian morality (your rights end where someone else's
rights are violated). Thus libertarian conservatives don't believe
that government should be in the business of enforcing victimless
crimes. HOWEVER: abortion can be considered an act with a victim,
so some of us (libertarian conservatives) are anti-abortion (at least 
at the point that the fetus acquires rights).

The "empowerment of the individual" that conservatives believe in has
as a corollary the need for holding individuals responsible for their
own actions. This is why all types of conservatives tend to be stronger on 
punishing criminals, less willing to believe that "society is at fault" for
individual failings, less willing to use the coercive powers of government
to give aid preferentially (whether we are talking affirmative action, gay
rights, or welfare, or anti-rich taxes), less likely to confuse entitlements 
with rights, and not willing to give "rights" to groups. It is truly amazing 
what is readily derivable from the basic philosophy of empowerment of the 
individual!

Naturally, there are all sorts of positions in between these two, and
there is furthermore the orthogonal dimension of foreign policy (isolationist
or activist).

A simple way to diagnose liberalism is to determine whether the patient
trusts individuals, or wants "society" (read government) to fix
everything that is wrong. Liberals believe in the ultimate perfectability
of the man, while conservatives accept the inherent imperfections of
man.

Conservatives believe in the rights AND RESPONSIBILITIES of individuals.
Liberals believe that only groups have rights, and that rights are
a tool of government to be used to achieve utopia.

]Rush's truths is that right and wrong is not a matter of individual
]choice, another is that there is a God and a yet another is that

Most conservatives also accept that right and wrong are indeed not
matters of individual choice (ie, we reject moral relativism). Religion
is not a prerequisite for this believe.


-- 
John Moore NJ7E, 7525 Clearwater Pkwy, Scottsdale, AZ 85253  (602-951-9326)
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