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?

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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.