Posted by
Andrews on Thursday, July 03, 2008 4:12:53 PM
I have known several people who had very little interest in politics, who very rarely thought about it at all, yet when presented with hard line conservative positions, seemed surprised that I had to say anything at all. To them saying things like "the government should stay out of business" was akin to saying "water makes things wet", self-evident propositions that only morons need explained.
Unfortunately, I seem to find fewer and fewer such people, and especially among the young. While the young are growing up in an era where the sixties conception of welfare is gone and the idea of forcing welfare recipients to work is no longer objectionable, that seems to be the only conservative doctrine they have absorbed.
For example, as I mentioned before, in another generation the number of civilian casualties on the enemy's side would be a cause for cheers, or at least ambivalence, not excuses, but modern minds have been taught to see soldiers as police in khaki, so they think that only the wrong doers must be harmed.
Likewise they have been indoctrinated int he concept that the role of the courts is to discover rights, to rewrite laws, and all the other trappings of judicial activism. Or to see the involvement of government in business as a natural, normal part of life. And the list goes on and on. Multiculturalism, the extended and distorted view of free speech, the limited or nonexistent rights for commercial activities, the absurd tort system, limitless government licensing and regulation, and on and on and on.
Now, in some ways, conservatives are as much to blame as liberals. The abortion battle, because it is being fought out in the courts, tends to mean that both sides end up granting too much power tot he courts, in hopes that they will be able to use that power when their side wins. Likewise, conservative politicians, or at least politicians who started off conservative, have not been too eager to take government out of business, the schools, or any number of other inappropriate venues.
And, of course, our apologetic defense of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan has not done any favors. Instead of asking why they care about civilian casualties, or pointing to the fact that even the Iraqis aren't complaining about them, we try to argue that their numbers are too high, in effect granting the argument that civilian casualties are a problem in war time. And worse still, we have allowed their baseless accusations about Bush's "lies" and the "missing" WMDs cow us into accepting those lies as the truth. And now we are afraid to point out even obvious points for fear of once again being "proved" liars by the left.
But, of course, by far the greatest blame is on those who promote these ideas, mostly on the left. They have redefined what is common sense, what is political conventional wisdom, to the point that someone who argues for points that the founders would have found unobjectionable is seen as an extremist.
Some of this is unavoidable, some of it is not. We may not have control of the schools, the university, or much of the media, but we do have the chance to get out a message, especially during election years. But far too often, rather than proudly and plainly stating our beliefs, we try to sound like the left. Instead of demanding government end its regulation of a business, we just call for less regulation, thus conceding the left's argument.
We need to stop accepting the argument on the left's terms, and start telling the public how we see things. It may take a little time for the public to become used to our perspective, but if we don't present it, they never will, and the logic of the left, their view of common sense, will continue to win converts, until it becomes the consensus.