CONFESSIONS OF A CONSERVATIVE PART TWO

CONFESSIONS OF A CONSERVATIVE PART II :MORALITY, CIVIL LIBERTIES AND FOREIGN POLICY

Secy. Of State Hillary Clinton wants to make tolerance, equality and protection under the law for gay and lesbian persons in the more than 70 countries that criminalize being gay, lesbian, bi-sexual or trans-gendered, a standard for aid and assistance as well as cordial relations with the US. There should be no conservative objection to this and in fact it should be robustly supported by people within the conservative movement.

As I have opined previously, these are about rights for all individual where no one is exempted. This should also not become an opportunity to disingenuously bash conservatives who are looking for fidelity to the Constitution as the bottom line in the conduct of our foreign policy. Gov. Rick Perry allegedly said that this policy Secy. Clinton outlined, constitutes “ a war with people of faith in this country”. If that statement is true and in context, then Gov. Perry is both politically, morally and spiritually wrong in my opinion. Since the latter two are areas where the essence of debate centers on questions of interpretation of dogma and thereby in the realm of opinion or faith, I will focus on the secular realm of politics.

Human rights for all individuals should be at the center of all American Foreign Policy. If it is not, than we are a fraud and not the exceptional nation we claim to be. Unfortunately we see all too frequently that the sanctity of human life expressed in freedom from tyranny, is more of an imperative with some countries than with others. The plight of women and girls in some “friendly” Islamic countries as well as Christian minorities throughout the greater Muslim world comes to mind .

In point of fact we pick and choose who we want to lecture about human rights abuses and excuse those who we do not want to offend for a variety of pragmatic reason usually associated with military and/or economic necessity. Often piety about the rights of certain oppressed groups satisfy domestic political agendas more than they actualize real foreign policy goals or even bedrock statements of principles.

This has been the reality of foreign policy for a very long time for many, if not all countries of the world. But we are not just any country and as enticing or practical the specter of watching what we do and not what we say may be, at the end of the day we have always paid dearly for being “outed” as not being sincere when we sacrifice our principles for expediency. We have gotten in bed, far too often with people that run the gamut from nasty but harmless to malignant and demonic… all in the name of the best interests of this nation. When the inevitable “other shoe drops’ we almost always find ourselves worse off than before.

The rights we champion are who we are. They define us in their practice better than any words can. If we use them as mere enticements or bait for suffering people who think we mean what we say then all we are doing is a kind of diplomatic carnival sideshow. If our real objectives entails ending the absence of freedom and human rights as merely a side effect,fringe benefit or ploy than we damn ourselves by our lack of integrity even while we believe we are playing the historic game of nations brilliantly.

Making human rights for all individuals a center of our foreign policy is not and cannot be construed to be an act of naviete. We must reject this notion because implicit in it, is the belief that we cannot define who we are and determine our own destiny.

Our enemies believe us to be weak because we kowtow to criticism or disarm ourselves unilaterally in the notion that all leaders of all countries will become enchanted by the power of our good intentions and the seduction of our words. None of that has ever worked in a world that has always been a dangerous place. The truest of all axioms in the world of foreign relations and diplomacy if that if you want peace then you should prepare for war. To this truism should be added “and stand always by your ideals without deviation”.

So if we are adding the rights and dignity of LGBT persons as part of the expression of what American freedom means as opposed to freedom elsewhere, than we should be prepared as part of keeping our homeland free, to fight for it elsewhere with every means at our disposal because a world that resembles us in the rights afforded its citizens, is a safer world, a more prosperous world and one where real hope replaces cynicism .

Conservatives should never feel threatened by the fact of any individual simply asking for their natural human rights. We don’t have to agree with or be silent about lifestyle, policy, legislation,, speech or public behavior that we may find privately abhorrent, but we do have to let the world know that even clamorous disagreement doesn’t mean that in our rowdy democracy, it will inevitably end in the denial of human rights or worse.
ERLANDSSON