CONFESSIONS OF A CONSERVATIVE PART ONE

CONFESSIONS OF A CONSERVATIVE. CIVIL LIBERTIES AND HUMAN RIGHTS

The persistent accusation that conservatives are not sympathetic to and are even hateful towards individual civil and human rights for all individuals who live within broadly acceptable norms of lawful behavior is I believe, either not true or overstated for emotional or political reasons.

Some in the LGBT community for example, are currently making that charge due to certain campaign ads by Gov. Rick Perry in Iowa. Others cite the reactions to the efforts of Secy. of State Clinton to protect the civil and human rights of such persons via economic, political and diplomatic sanctions by the US, within the over 70 nations that now criminalize gay and lesbian people.

While it is ironic that Secy. Clinton makes this effort while addressing the inappropriately named UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, her efforts are important nonetheless, and should be supported by all people who believe in the basic natural rights of all individuals. Many if not most conservatives, don't like addressing rights on a group basis. Yet history has an unpleasant way of reminding us that the most prevalent way of demonizing individuals is by demonizing the "group" they either identify with or are associated with by others. Hence the struggle for equality and at times survival often must begin with group identity but should always end with individual liberty.

Hitler began the Holocaust by exterminating people with disabilities. They did not fit into his stereotype of what Aryans should look like and they had, in his opinion, no utilitarian value to the Reich. So they were murdered as a prelude to a larger horror in much the same way that a play goes into rehearsals in order to work out the kinks. Later in the second, and third acts would come homosexuals, Gypsies, Christians and finally the Jews This was done by men and women so ordinary that Hanna Arendt would later describe one of them, Adolph Eichmann, as being an example of the "banality of evil". This should be a reminder to all that true evil sometimes comes not with fangs but with a pleasing smile, making the good guys and the bad guys all the more difficult to sort out.

Because of this I believe we must look to the consequences of what is done in the context of what is said. Denial of civil and human rights to any person who is simply trying to exercise their inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is evil from a civic, moral and spiritual perspective. The advocacy of violence and hatred towards any innocent person alone or in combination with others is not acceptable at any level of human response. Human history is replete with the fear of the "different" as alien and strange leading to the attempted or actual destruction of the " different" while innocent and harmless.






Conservatives believe the Constitution by it's very nature forces us to respect one another on the civic plain. Conservatives who are persons of faith have the Golden Rule to guide them in their treatment of their fellow souls and that guidance is clear and unambiguous. So where does the perception of Conservative indifference or animosity toward persons in groups ranging from the poor to the gay to the non-white emanate from?

I believe that a good portion of that belief flows from the national arguments over identity and discrimination that we as a people have been having since 1776. The timeless struggle to make the Constitution applicable to all, insists on both reason, tension and passion. How could any thing as important as human freedom not be intense and passionate. Ask almost any immigrant and they will tell you how unique and precious are the liberties of this nation in comparison to others.

But these arguments can be intentionally and unintentionally misinterpreted as bias, prejudice, callousness, and hatred due to the reaction to the tactics and strategies employed by all sides. Far too often the "means" become the "ends" with faux objectives eclipsing real goals.

I as a citizen may fight explicit sex education in the public schools for a host of valid moral and parental reasons even when the purpose of that education is the expressed desire to protect young sexually active teens from disease and pregnancy. I as a citizen must also however protect and defend the promoters of that which I may detest from physical and economic harm for the very advocacy that is making me angry. In order to make America work as it was intended to work I cannot and must not let my passion destroy my reason or my reason dilute my passion and prevent me from protecting in reality, that which represents one vital and indispensable right clothed in two adversarial points of view.

Many, if not most conservatives I know, do not support "Gay Marriage". For many their opposition is based on religious grounds. Others see the expansion of civil marriage as a "slippery slope" leading to the destruction of one of histories most fundamental human institutions. Still others believe that the efforts for same sex marriage are nothing more than a plot to erode and degrade the time tested norms of Western and certain non-western civilizations. Yet we must address all of this anxiety and suspicion in the context of what the pursuit of happiness means to individuals who have rights that are inalienable. Issues such as these exemplify the tension we cannot escape that are innate within the great American experiment . Again our struggle with this tension should always be guided by reason, passion, fidelity to the Constitution and harmonious with the tenets of our faith and sense of public and personal virtue.

For me the "Conservative" approach to the civil liberties and human rights of any individual ends with the supremacy of that individual's natural rights and the protections that our laws give them. They should never be victims seeking protections solely for themselves due to the originality of their condition. They only must merely be human.

All of us in this treacherous time need to possess enough humility to always question our beliefs for evidence of error, so that we may maximize "knowing what we do not know". For me this is a path to hopefully obtaining a modicum of wisdom and thereby exhibiting some evidence that I did not spend 68 years on earth wasting my time.
ERLANDSSON