Monday, September 8, 2008

What is Conservatism?

The_editrix -- someone we've recently come to know and respect here for her thoughtful, lucid, and eloquent comments -- writes from Germany:

I am sure I don't "get" some details in their right context because I am not American and I don't want to make my criticism of Sarah Palin, who seems to be a nice woman, sound too personal and judgmental. But one thing she isn't: a conservative. I'd like to refer to the discussion at VFR. At one point Lawrence Auster said that Palin "represents something that has replaced conservatism" for which he hadn't yet a name. I replied that there is no name for it because what she is can't be defined as a political stance. All she is, is "unconventional". So she chose not to abort her child, so she has no hangups about shooting, and she happens to be still married to the same man. Is that enough to be be labelled "conservative"? What a toil is that "unconventional" marriage and family life for her husband?

Being conservative is, as I put it at VFR, not a patchwork of non-politically correct items, it is a lifetime concept, a worldview.

The discussion about the pornographic site somebody recently recommended at VFR shows that it is enough to spite just one politically correct issue (in this case feminism) to pass as a "conservative". More cases in point: Those "Islam critics" who happen to be Muslims and, somewhat naturally, tackle Islam first, but would like to abolish religion generally. Hirsi Ali or Irshad Manji come to mind.

[...]

I'm not going to pull anyone's chain here, I put Nora's comments in a separate post because I am hoping that she (and anyone else who wants to give it go) will elaborate more on what it is that constitutes "conservatism" to her mind. I agree with Nora when she says conservatism, genuine conservatism, is a worldview. As I've said so many times at this blog and elsewhere "Worldview is everything". Which is to say, for me, conservative is everything, liberal -- which Auster has described as "the political expression of evil -- is nothing; the void. Beyond that conservatism is hard to put in concrete terms. It is a worldview, a system or a body of deeply held inner convictions, is that right? I mean, most of us identify ourselves as conservatives because we disagree with just about everything liberals and liberalism stands for, thus we are conservatives. But is this enough?

A person calling himself by the name "conservative" may be more inclined to support gun rights, or to think that abortion is morally wrong, or to believe that marriage is a lifelong committment between a man and a woman, but do these things, in and and of themselves, make one a conservative? Or is it the totality of all these beliefs which makes him a conservative?

**********


To add some perspective to this question about what constitutes a genuine conservatism, and since this whole issue (on this particular occasion) surrounds the nomination of Sarah Palin as vice president on the Republican ticket, let's take a look at what Wasilla resident Mrs. Scottie Kania recently wrote about the Palins at VFR.

Mrs. Kania writes:

...but Sarah and Todd are far better parents than you may believe and I can assure you, they are far more heartbroken over their daughter than you will ever know.

Now, I'm not trying to be argumentative for the sake of being argumentative here, no matter how it might appear to some. I respect Mrs. Kania's position, and I do not doubt her sincerity. But I do have an issue with Mrs. Kania's statements.

While Bristol Palin's out of wedlock pregnancy should be a private matter, and while we should all do our best to respect Bristol's and the Palin family's privacy on the matter, the matter became public by virtue of Sarah Palin's acceptance of her nomination to the vice presidency. In other words, it became impossible to keep the matter private at the very moment that Sarah decided on accepting her nomination to the vice presidency. Or to put it another way, the responsibility for this falls squarely on Sarah Palin's shoulders.

At the moment Sarah Palin determined to accept her nomination to the vice presidency, by virtue of her decision she was forced to cast a false image of herself to the general public, that of a professional and family woman who, far from being "heartbroken" over the fact of her 17 year old daughter's illegitimate pregnancy, through her indomitable inner strength and frontier woman toughness had long since conquered the emotionalism of heartbrokenness and had moved forward with her life and her career. It's either that, or, contrary to what Mrs. Kania says, she's not heartbroken over Bristol's pregnancy at all. She can't be heartbroken and not heartbroken at the same time.

And this is the problem isn't it? A woman who is truly heartbroken over her minor daughter's pregnancy is not qualified to serve in a high government position like the vice presidency. If she remains heartbroken, therefore, as Mrs. Kania suggests, she can't let anyone know it. So it's all either a show, or she's not heartbroken at all. Which is it?

To me this gets right to the heart of the matter of what Nora said in her comments quoted above: "One thing she isn't: a conservative." As was said before, conservatism is a world and life view; a lifestyle if you will, something that you strive to live out day in and day out. It informs every decision that one makes, if he is truly conservative. A genuine conservative does not lie for the sake of political expediency, nor does he put his country and his family at risk to advance his political career. And isn't this exactly what Sarah Palin is doing, if in fact she truly is heartbroken over Bristol's pregnancy? And if she's not heartbroken over Bristol's pregnancy, where's her conservatism?

I understand that we put things behind us and life goes on, it must. But I also understand that, generally speaking, these kinds of things do not just go away in a matter of a couple of months. And in case someone wants to try it, I'm not the one claiming that Sarah Palin is heartbroken over Bristol's pregnancy, I'm simply commenting on what a Wasilla resident and friend and neighbor of the Palin family is saying.

On the other hand I think Mrs. Kania may be trying to say that Sarah, by serving the greater good is the better person for it. Consider what she writes:

If anything, since Bristol attends public school, I think this problem may be a testament to Sarah's belief that explicit sex education shouldn't be taught in public school, which is the case up here.

This statement stood out for me because (1) I used to live in Alaska and can confirm that this is indeed the case, and (2) because Mrs. Kania seems to be defending Sarah's absentee momism on the basis that she's serving the greater good by virtue thereof.

As to the first point, it was around 1991 that there was a big stink raised about this issue of explicit sex education in the Alaska public school system. And I do mean explicit sex education taught to children as early as the third grade with homosexual acts interspersed throughout. I won't go into the particularities, you can use your imaginations, but you can rest assured that I exaggerate nothing here, as God and Mrs. Kania are my witnesses. At precisely the same moment in time the homosexual lobby in Anchorage had managed to get a majority of pro-gay leftists elected to the Anchorage city council and there was a big push to add the words "sexual orientation" to Anchorage's very liberal anti-discrimination laws. I was on the ground fighting all of this with everything a 26 or 27 year old military member and young family man could possibly muster. It didn't amount to much in retrospect, but it was the best I could do at the time. Yes; I attended the Anchorage city council meetings held on the issue, and, yes, I got into heated verbal confrontations with the opposition on the ground. I have literally never seen a more hatefilled, confrontational, provoking bunch in my life. Anyone who entertains any notion that the homosexual lobby is moderate, or that it's peaceful and non-confrontational, is living in a fantasy world. But what does all of this have to do with anything, you may be asking...

Well, it establishes a little background for starters. But more importantly, it gets to this question of whether Mrs. Palin was/is justified in abandoning a life of devoted motherhood for a political life to serve the greater good. I think this is what Mrs. Kania is essentially saying, that since Sarah Palin is opposed to explicit sex education in Alaska's public schools -- a fact which affects all Alaska children, not just Sarah's children -- her opposition to it as a high profile and popular influential political figure in Alaska who is serving a cause greater than her immediate family interests justifies her decision to serve the bigger cause.

I can't go along with that for various reasons. But to sum it up let me say that a decision to have and raise a family is a committment that cannot be abandoned in midst of it for any reason. Further to the point, the whole is never greater than the sum of its parts, it is exactly equal to the sum of its parts. In other words, there is a very real possibility that Mrs. Palin, by virtue of abandoning her family life in pursuit of a political career, has actually caused more damage than she's done good, her fight on the side of conservative issues notwithstanding.

8 comments:

Howard J. Harrison said...

This is a well written, cogently argued piece. However, it seems to me that your logic is just a little too hard when you write,

Or to put it another way, the responsibility for this falls squarely on Sarah Palin's shoulders.

Are you sure? Does it not rather fall squarely on Piper Palin's shoulders?

It is sensational to see a pregnant Piper in public with her child's father, but what, exactly, would you have the Palins do under the circumstance?

You have already answered the question, of course, but consider: Might there be no reason that Piper has not yet married the fellow in question other than a desire to avoid the legal red tape associated with marrying before her eighteenth birthday? Premarital sex is clearly wrong but, once the kids have married one another, reasonable folks will perceive no enduring scandal. Not in such a case as this. Had the father been a thirty year-old divorce, it would be different. In this case, the kids, probably under the influence of alcohol, who might well have married anyway, got carried away and made a mistake.

Piper is a big girl. She can take responsibility for, live with and make amends for her own mistake. Now it's a national story rather than the statewide story it would have been, but imagine if Piper had had to live lifelong with the guilt that she had sunk her mother's one chance at the vice presidency.

To retire from national politics because your daughter has gotten pregnancy and marriage slightly out of chronigical order seems an overreaction to me.

I want to make clear, nonetheless: I see your point. I think that you are right. The disagreement is not over the propriety of the factors involved but over their relative proper weight. Life can be messy, sometimes. Maybe they shouldn't have put the kid, Levi Johnston, on the Convention stage, but then maybe there was no really good answer.

I will say this, though. I would be more concerned if Mrs. Palin had a daughter, with children, who had divorced, than I am in Piper's actual case.

Howard

Howard J. Harrison said...

My previous comment not only typoed the adjective chronological (perhaps among other words) but also inadvertently exchanged Piper Palin's name with Bristol's. But I suppose that the comment's point will come through nonetheless.

Thanks for the platform.

Terry Morris said...

Howard,

I almost forgot to respond before leaving. I don't have time right now to answer you, but I did want to at least acknowledge you as is proper.

Thanks for stopping by and taking the time to comment. I'll answer you later tonight.

-Terry

P.S. Glad you caught the name error. :-)

Vanishing American said...

Terry - as regards Mrs. Palin's candidacy preventing the family from keeping Bristol's pregnancy from the public eye -- she was already governor of Alaska, and the news would be made public anyway. So her candidacy is not the reason why the family's ''dirty linen'' is being aired publicly.

And if she had remained only governor and not a VP candidate, should she have then resigned, knowing that Bristol's pregnancy would be publicized?

If she had resigned, as conservatives seem to think she was duty-bound to do, would the 'scandal' not still have made the papers? "Ex-governor's daughter pregnant, unwed" or 'Palin's daughter in hasty marriage''? Even if she had resigned, it would have been talked about, if only by her political enemies.

Remember, too, that the left (Daily Kos, et al) had already spread scurrilous rumors about Bristol being Trig's mother, so that rumor had to be addressed; there was no way it could go unanswered. So there is the family's privacy compromised right there. Sarah Palin was put into a position of having to put the truth out there. What else does a ''conservative'' do but tell the truth?

Why, I am wondering, was there no comparable outrage and no denunciation of Dick and Lynne Cheney as parental failures because of their openly gay daughter and her sperm-donor pregnancy? I don't remember any outrage about that. And I don't see why the Palin situation is so much worse. I truly don't. Biblically, homosexuality is much more serious than unmarried pregnancy, which is dealt with by having the couple marry, as long as the father is not already married.
-VA

The_Editrix said...

I think the Palins are measured by a different yardstick because they consider themselves conservatives. If a child of a liberal is a failure, that is, to put it bluntly, only what one would expect.

One can't be at the forefront of a movement and then not live by its rules.

Terry Morris said...

VA, I appreciate your perspective on this.

The bottom line for me is that Mrs. Palin should not have pursued a political career with four minor children at home. And I'm speaking here of her Governorship of Alaska. I'm not sure where you draw the line, though. Should she have run for Mayor of Wasilla, a city with a population of less than ten thousand? My gut tells me no. I would not permit my wife to do something like that, not that she's a political talent like Sarah Palin, but she has been asked onto certain boards and councils before, even to head them, the same way Sarah Palin got her career started. She even accepted one position like that without my knowledge, but when I learned of it I raised a big stink, citing the fact that we have five minor children yet to be raised, at which point she withdrew. To me, our initial decision to have a moderate sized family meant a committment to see it through to its raising. That's really the bottom line for me; that's where I'm coming from.

As far as Bristol's indiscretions being made public goes, I probably didn't word that exactly right in the article. The point, however, is that Bristol's condition was known by the Palins before Sarah accepted McCain's offer. Sarah is the reason Bristol's situation became national news. Virtually no one in the lower forty eight states gives a hoot about Alaskan politics. So had Sarah rejected McCain's offer Bristol's situation would have remained in Alaska, population: less than 700,000. And let's say for the sake of argument that McCain's interest in Sarah Palin would have eventually brought Bristol's situation to the fore in national news, Sarah Palin would have still been on more solid ground, particularly from a conservative perspective, had she said to McCain, to cite her own words, "thanks but no thanks," on the grounds that she has extenuating family issues that need to be resolved.

I can see no good reason, nor justification, for parading Levi Johnston around at the RNC in any case. Wasilla resident and friend of the family, Mrs. Kania, said that her suspicion was that he was taken to the convention as a protective measure -- to keep him from being interviewed by a Connie Chung style reporter. That may be so, but why the need to parade him around at the convention? He could have been left at the hotel under supervision.

Also, I said in another post that I'm not necessarily in favor of pressuring the offending kids into marriage as a way, or the way, to rectify their wrong. I know of a lot of situations that are very similar to Bristol's in which this was done, which eventually turned into a big nightmare for the entire family. Not that I'm saying they're being forced into marriage, maybe they already had plans to marry. I can't know one way or the other. But if Todd Palin had put the fear of God into that boy when he began seeing Bristol, I imagine we wouldn't be discussing it right now.

The_Editrix said...

The bottom line for me is that Mrs. Palin should not have pursued a political career with four minor children at home. And I'm speaking here of her Governorship of Alaska. I'm not sure where you draw the line, though. Should she have run for Mayor of Wasilla, a city with a population of less than ten thousand? My gut tells me no.
...
The point, however, is that Bristol's condition was known by the Palins before Sarah accepted McCain's offer. Sarah is the reason Bristol's situation became national news.
...
I can see no good reason, nor justification, for parading Levi Johnston around at the RNC in any case. Wasilla resident and friend of the family, Mrs. Kania, said that her suspicion was that he was taken to the convention as a protective measure -- to keep him from being interviewed by a Connie Chung style reporter. That may be so, but why the need to parade him around at the convention? He could have been left at the hotel under supervision.
...
Also, I said in another post that I'm not necessarily in favor of pressuring the offending kids into marriage as a way, or the way, to rectify their wrong... But if Todd Palin had put the fear of God into that boy when he began seeing Bristol, I imagine we wouldn't be discussing it right now.


But Terry! That would have been disgustingly macho. Can you imagine that, given the extent of the process of emasculation even superficially "tough guys" like Todd Palin have undergone, a father could "put the fear of God" into a young man with whom his daughter is going out? That would have surely ended with charges of battery, libel, intimidation, personal injury, mental cruelty and whatever the American law (with which I am not familiar) can offer all the wimps into which the average male has turned.

That said, I totally agree with everything you said.

Btw, I have put up the first of our mutual discussions at my blog. I'll proceed in chronological order.

Terry Morris said...

That would have surely ended with charges of battery, libel, intimidation, personal injury, mental cruelty and whatever the American law (with which I am not familiar) can offer all the wimps into which the average male has turned.

Nora, with respect to American Law, you're not that far off base. In fact, the charges leveled could have just as easily (or in some cases as likely, or more likely) come from the daughter in our hypothetical example, as from the young man in question. That is not unheard of in our society.

However, if anyone, including the DHS, is working under the delusion that that's going to deter me from protecting my daughters, they're dead wrong.

I'll give Todd Palin this much, it's a bit more difficult for an Alaskan like Todd to exercise that kind of paternal discipline and authority over his children than it is for an Okie like myself to do it...