Conservatives Aren’t Conservative Anymore
WASHINGTON – Some new polling today reveals that Rick Santorum could be in for a very good day. Contemplate that for a moment. Rick Santorum, a perfect example of religious conservatism or fundamentalist Republicanism, take your pick, but he’s certainly not conservative in the actual meaning of the word. That Rick Santorum also believes abortion is done cavalierly and is better left in the shadows shows religious conservatism at its core (see the video above). I write about this subject at length in my book in a chapter title “Is Freedom Just for Men?” Needless to say, Mr. Santorum couldn’t be more wrong.
Erick Erickson revealed in a post this weekend the fundamental problem with Republicanism today. It’s not conservative at all anymore.
This cannot end well for him, particularly doing this claiming to be a Christian. And it might not end well for the rest of us either. Barack Obama has gone to war with Christians’ consciences and he is perverting God’s word in the process to get his way on public policy. – The Perversion of the Words of Our Lord Jesus Christ by the Sinner Barack H. Obama, by Erick Erickson
In a rambling, self-importantly arrogant post, Erickson pontificates on what he thinks he knows about being a Christian through a literal analysis of the Bible. Then he stands in judgment over Pres. Obama.
The self-righteous never see irony coming.
There is nothing Christian in Erickson’s harangue against Pres. Obama. There is also nothing conservative about it.
Conservatism has a measure of grounding when you listen to analysis of it from people who don’t wrap their religion through their conservative ideology.
A religious conservative can be against abortion. But an ideological conservative, while being against abortion and not wanting to fund it, cannot simultaneously take a person’s liberty away by forcing pregnancy on a woman when natural law protects her right to personal autonomy.
The very notion of conservatism is rooted in personal liberty. Whether religious conservatives like it or not, to be true to conservatism, they must honor that liberty. Today, they do not.
Any conservative with intellectual or political integrity would understand that conservatism of any depth must be rooted in the fundamental idea that interrupting the freedoms of any person through the intrusion of government, whether federal or state, is abridging a person’s autonomy in a manner that is the anti-thesis of conservatism.
Religious conservatism or fundamentalist-based Republicanism is actually a self-righteous marketing attempt to make people like Erickson and his ilk think they are on higher ground and have the ultimate interpretation of right and wrong. You hear it through Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and the rest of the self-righteous radio crowd.
It’s the blatant hypocrisy to claim to be a conservative, but think religious dogma should hold more sway than an individual who’s privacy and personal freedoms are innate to being a person in the first place.
Conservatism without religion can make sense.
Add religion, however, and conservatism becomes authoritarian in nature, relegating women to non-persons, second class citizens and slaves, because the state or federal government, through religious dictates, is now in charge.
Conservatism’s very nature is about doing less, leaving the individual alone to prosper and live without interference, which certainly should include women.
However, since Ronald Reagan invited the “Moral Majority,” which was neither moral or a majority then or now as it exists in other forms, conservatism was bastardized into something that now includes a campaign to take over the domain of a woman’s very body through means of the state or federal government.
Erick Erickson sees no problem with this, because he’s a religious conservative, not a conservative.
You can be religious and you can be a conservative, but once you put the two together in an ideological philosophy you lose the moorings of anything that has integral grounding in what conservatism actually means.
Not even Ron Paul passes this test as a Libertarian. He’s said before that he’s against abortion, because it’s violent, which is perfectly acceptable, but that he’d allow the states to decide the law governing abortions. This fails the basic autonomy test and the very notion of liberty that’s in Libertarianism, which he proved in an interview with Piers Morgan.
The biggest impediment to curtailing abortions is the refusal of religious conservatives and fundamentalist Republicans to accept the primary component to being a person, which is the body that houses the soul, assuming it exists, is something over which no other, certainly no politician, clergy or the state, has control.
This is about personal autonomy and living freely without any dependencies, the first component of personhood. It’s not abortion, but includes it, because religious fundamentalists are using political means to wage a war against the very notion of women’s individual freedom.
If people believing in true liberty don’t start taking religious conservatives on, whatever party they are in, over their fundamentalism, women’s autonomy won’t be sacrosanct one day.
This includes taking on people like Pres. Obama when he decides that a safe pharmaceutical like Plan B can be used as a stick to the contraceptive carrot that came afterward, because women’s individual freedoms remain a bargaining chip for politicians and their supporters.
The ultimate example of this was seen through the Susan G. Komen fiasco last week, when Komen decided to make ideology more important than the health of women, especially poor women, who have been a political football since the Hyde Amendment. Yes, Pres. Obama used poor women as a football too, and he did it through the religious conservative playbook that created Hyde in the first place.
Taylor Marsh is the author of the new book, The Hillary Effect – Politics, Sexism and the Destiny of Loss, which is now available in print on Amazon. Marsh is a veteran political analyst and commentator. She has been profiled in the Washington Post, The New Republic, and has been seen on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, CNN, MSNBC, Al Jazeera English and Al Jazeera Arabic, as well as on radio across the dial and on satellite, including the BBC. Marsh lives in the Washington, D.C. area. This column is cross posted from her new media blog.
18 Responses to “Conservatives Aren’t Conservative Anymore”
My guess is that they would look at it as murder and thus they are not taking away someones individual rights.
“>>>A religious conservative can be against abortion. But an ideological conservative, while being against abortion and not wanting to fund it, cannot simultaneously take a person’s liberty away by forcing pregnancy on a woman when natural law protects her right to personal autonomy.”<<<
The difference between Right Wing Nuts and the “libertarian” conservative.
IMO, you are confusing conservatism with libertarianism.
Also, you are asserting an ethic of: do not make judgements about what an individual ought be permitted to decide for themselves.
In reality, there is no such thing as a state of refusal to interfere with the decisions of another. The question, instead, is a question of where to draw the line about where interference with another ought begin. Adult/youth sex at age 12? Or at 17? Human at gestation? Or at 30 something weeks? And so forth.
IMO, the delineation between conservatives and libertarians is that conservatives support a more traditional concept of cultural standards, whereas libertarians support a less traditional and more permissive concept of cultural standards. Even libertarians believe in drawing inevitably necessary lines of demarcation.
Your argument, re conservatives and abortion, would be valid only if conservatives agreed with you about when life begins. Because they do not, you are making a circular argument.
The only true argument to be made is that conservatives are misguided about when life begins. Abortion, truly, is not an issue which invites argument. It is, simply, an area of disagreement which cannot be resolved.
I saw an online blog (sorry, I don’t remember the site, maybe the League of Women Voters, but not sure) that helped to define the four political stances.
Personal Liberty: Liberal and libertarian
Financial Liberty: Libertarian and conservative
Government intrusion on personal: Progressive and conservative
Government intrusion on finance: progressive and liberal
Now, don’t misunderstand. When referring to these items, they mean that the person tends towards policies that could be construed as the above.
Thus: Intrusion on finance would include higher taxes, more regulation of industries, labor laws, etc.
Intrusion on personal liberties would include drug enforcement, gay marriage and rights, civil rights, obscenity laws, clothing laws, etc.
There are pluses and minuses to each item and there are pro and con arguments for them–often based on one’s brand of politics.
Thus: conservatives, being against abortion on demand, would be looking to restrict certain private practices (namely abortion, of course). They would also likely be against gay marriage, want the government to enforce strict obscenity laws, etc. Progressives might also want these things. Meanwhile, libertarians and liberals would look upon such laws as intrusive on personal liberties.
Not all conservatives will believe in everything usually labeled as conservative. The same is true of all the others. Most of us are leaning towards one of the four levels (although some may be in the exact middle).
There have been 87 blogposts at TMV about the Komen abortion kerfuffle. There is this blogpost’s circular argument which accuses conservatives of hypocrisy re abortion. Why is there not one single blogpost at TMV about an abortion related issue which may well decide the 2012 Presidential Election: President Obama giving the Catholic Church one year to decide how to violate its conscience re abortion and Catholic hospitals?
You guys get to write about what you want on your own blog. You are ignoring a story which is more newsworthy than the Komen story. I can only surmise that you love the Komen story because it allows you easy access to favorite arguments which beat up on conservatives. Thus: 87 blogposts re Komen, and piles and piles of comments in those blogposts. Conversely, you can think of no favorite and easy arguments in defense of Pres. Obama’s forcing the Catholic Church to either violate its conscience or eliminate a large section of its mission to help the poor. Thus: 0 blogposts re Pres. Obama’s decision, even though Pres. Obama’s decision might sway the 2012 Election to Romney and the Republicans.
Do I have to ask if you guys blogged about Pres. Obama’s previous decision which forced the Catholic Church to shut down some of its adoption services? I doubt that I must ask. I suppose I understand your news judgement all too well. You go for the easy negative characterizations of conservatives and Republicans.
The Human Health and Services (Obama and his administration’s) command to all to provide contraception (inserting state into church) is indeed the big story, depsite what the crazier left has to say about Komen.
And no doubt many fear or suspect that where there is a contraception order now, an abortion order can happen later. That slope is indeede slippery, greased by the crazier left. The fears make great sense.
Fear and loathing, in addition to wondering if this wasn’t another big blunder by the administration. Or has the administration written off the often leftist Catholics who want immigration anarchy and boost the Democratic voter base? Are they being taken for granted while being the object of anti-religious activism and pandering to the abortion crowd? Do they assume that the Catholics will vote Democratic in 2012?
As for abortion, the issue (made clear by social conservatives, especially) always has been whether or not the procedure is killing, is murder; it has always been about if developing people have rights, too, or if they are being murdered, if abortion is right or wrong, absolutely so (always) or if there are degrees or forms of exceptions to the general (anti) rule.
(Ignore the crazier liberal flaming and lies as usual about these facts.)
Thank you so much for you calm, reasoned, and fact based rant. Too funny… Do you get out in mixed company much?
desert moderate says:
FEBRUARY 7, 2012 AT 1:05
I am a guest columnist here at TMV. I post periodically.
Pres. Obama’s decision, making sure women who are employed by schools and charities of the Catholic Church have access to what all other women have available to them, is a topic I’ve covered intensely at my own new media blog.
I’m not talking about Libertarianism at all. Today’s conservatives aren’t conservative at all, most are religious conservatives, which is proven all the time through their rhetoric.
johnnyoutlaw says:
FEBRUARY 7, 2012 AT 12:16 PM
Acting strictly within the law, would you let the government, state or federal, tell you what you could do with your own body?
I would outlaw some of the tattoos out there. It’s their body but my field of vision that is offended by their lack of taste and clothing.
Especially egregious are the ones that are obscured by some object stuck in their skin so as to leave you guessing, is it a duck,a chicken, or perhaps Sigmund Freud.
I’ve noticed conservatives hate Obama no matter what he does. I might be wrong on this, but hate isn’t a very Christian thing.
Maybe we should start referring to conservatives as “retro” from now on. They miss The Cure and the Robber Barrons. They long for the days of bell bottoms and maternity homes. See? Retro.
@desert moderate
You must have missed the blog, because we DID discuss it. We did not have as many different posts as Komen, but we definitely did discuss the assault on the Catholic Church.
One can go their to read my comments (which included the closing of adoption serviced, btw).
Speaking as a pro-lifer here, I see no difference between an abortion and a woman sticking her five month old in the oven and turning it on at 500* F. Murder is murder, regardless of whether the person is born or pre-born.
As to the effect on the Catholic Church, I question, first, whether this will survive judicial scrutiny. It infringes on the religious rights of the Catholic Church, and not in any mean way. I suspect it will not stand in the Courts. Second, if we are to so lightly burden the Roman Catholics in this manner, what is to stop, say, San Francisco from barring Jewish parents from circumcising their children, or the federal government from requiring women to keep their heads uncovered in their passport photos?
PJB, troll much? If you don’t want an abortion don’t have one. Otherwise mind your own business.
Z, I happen to be pro-choice, but PJB is no troll. His views are strong but he has a right to them, although I don’t like the graphic distortion comparison.
Dd, I am referring only to the post at hand. “Graphic distortion” indeed.
PJBFan says:
FEBRUARY 7, 2012 AT 10:34 PM
You are obviously ignorant of what a woman goes through when in this type of crisis.
Every woman I’ve talked to in the throes of this decision is as “pro life,” using your choice of words, as anyone, including yourself. The life she’s trying to save is her own, whether it’s physical, emotional or other.
You obviously also believe that personal autonomy is not something that women deserve.
I talk about the subject at length in my book, because I know it first hand.
Z, because you disagree with a comment it is trolling?