Based on the very nature of this nation’s origins, it is safe to say, in spite of its revolution, the country has always been conservative. After all, had George Washington not set the precedent by tuning out the clamor for coronation, the United States would have been an unblemished carbon copy of the mother country, from which, to be sure, it owes in large part its political structure and philosophy. In its infancy the US was ruled by the land gentry, scarcely different from the noble class of England, and conceived of the Senate as a reflection of the House of Lords in order to temper rule by commoners. When the industrial revolution took hold some fifty or seventy years later, aristocratic rule was replaced by plutocracy and the division of labor that gave birth to undercurrents of class conflict. That it took a belated and reluctant, civil war to end slavery is another example of a conservative foundation that resisted even a basic moral reinterpretation of the meaning of equality — until, that is, it took a second look at the Declaration and the Constitution. Nor would the New Deal come to pass without the onset of the Great Depression, even then it was loudly condemned and only made possible by the “solid south,” which by then had once more kept the blacks under control.
The ostensible liberal dominance has always been a myth even though it was clear that once Truman began tinkering with civil rights whatever future liberalism might have had was dead in the water. Ascribing today’s politics as “left” and “right” is utter nonsense as if there were a center depicting the rationality of essential values. The Republican party’s claim on core values of the American character is as ludicrous as the Democratic party laying claim to the enhancement of the status of the poor. Neither party stands for anything coherent that would reflect the posture of the people, who have been so displaced and bastardized there is no defining character.
The traditional conservative center in U.S. history is that of freedom under law through which a citizen is protected to an extent and at liberty to face life’s challenges and pursue happiness. In a rather monolithic, young country and prior to modernization this center was applicable and understood to be at high risk in an ever expanding nation. In today’s diversity running rampant in culture and political postures, the center is precariously fractious and indefinable except by sporadic atomized pulsations of demographics that are usually loosely delineated by subcultures, defying a united nation.
A clearly definable center is one that states clearly the objectives of a united nation and not a conglomeration of self-interests and secondary cultures from religion to recreation. Religion is not a definition of citizenship, no more than sports or entertainment fringes. That one is pro-choice or anti-abortion rudely invades the political realm as equally as sexual preference and ancestry. Anti-Castro and pro-Israel also do not belong in the realm of political thinking if it does not directly relate to foreign policy that is defined by the nation’s global defensive interests. The core value of a nation should be the essential facets of a pragmatic politics that maintains defense, economic well-being and constitutional identity; and not individuated identities of its people.
Freedom of expression permits fringes to discuss biases but not outside the primary premises of the country defined by constitutional law driven by that which is in the interest of the general welfare. The removal of a foreign dictatorship is legitimate to discuss but it must stand the test of threatening the defense, tranquility and welfare of this country. To discuss that poverty is a fact of life and ways to alleviate it or not is fruitless unless it can be proven that it does not pose a threat to the general welfare. To argue that equal access to health does not violate the constitutional authority to insure domestic tranquility and to promote the general welfare is dishonest and only legitimate in parsing the manner in which the preamble is arrived at. Roe v Wade should never have been a constitutional amendment for the simple reason that the fourth amendment should have prohibited any state from search and seizure of a woman’s right to believe she carries a fetus merely in the process of becoming and thus not yet a citizen.
The great center of politics, then, is in the Constitution — all else is frivolous indulgence in human interests, not law.
Copyright © 2004 Richard R. Kennedy All rights reserved. Revised: June 22, 2004.