I was never really comfortable with the conservative-liberal bifurcation of political thought or action. As a teenager, of course, I took exception to every political utterance my father offered. He was a staunch Republican who stood for absolute moral principles and standards of behavior, deviation from which could muster no excuse whatsoever.
I was a teenage rebel of sorts, but nevertheless signed up or officer training in the Air Force. I had no trouble following commands; it seemed the only practical thing to do. Maybe my father’s stern character helped with that. I accepted the necessity for discipline in the military, at least at the level of a neophyte in that world. Some others did not.
They just didn’t get it. If you signed up for officer training, why would you expect to be treated as a privileged youth—a status you had agreed to abandon. Later, I would realize that things were more complicated than that. Today, well, they are far more complicated than ever.
What is a Conservative?
Now, this is a question that I think far too many answer far too easily. I am not about to wax eloquent on the history and nature of conservatism, not only because this is a blog post that I keep trying to keep to a few hundred words; it is not a political tome of several hundred pages, which is what it would take to scratch the surface of political history. Nevertheless, I think it is useful to just take a look at the basics and go from there.
In order to do that, we must forget all about those extremists for a moment who call themselves ‘conservative,’ and whom mindless media hacks define as conservatives too. We can get to that later. In my book, these political perverts are not conservative at all, except in the sense that some of them seek to ‘conserve’ the political power they think they deserve despite their ‘weird’ words and deeds.
To make basic sense of the concept, just look at its root: conserve. Just what does a conservative want to conserve? Well, in the old days, that is, when I was young, a conservative supported ‘traditional values’ (including, sadly, some that were racist and downright oppressive to others). They held to high moral standards for themselves and expected no less from everyone else—like my father. That meant that they could be counted on to be true to their word—that used to be called honor.
Sure, politicians have always slanted their language to meet the situation, framing things in their own favor. But people like John McCain and others who preceded him could be counted on to uphold the values they espoused, even when it was not politically expedient. They were respected by their liberal counterparts because they were honorable. They respected and held in high regard the principles of the Constitution, whatever their own particular interpretation of its articles and amendments.
Where are the Real Conservatives?
Another thing about political ideology is that it may or may not be structured around fundamental human values. Some ideologies pontificate about righteous principles, yet seem unimpeded by destructive human consequences of political action. From the past, Lenin comes to mind, and of course Putin is the epitome today. Among the early colonists, as well as early and more recent American elites, of course, brutal oppression of their victims all over the world was ‘justified’ by their racist theories of human hierarchies that in their minds reflected Nature. All the while, the slave holding founding fathers could hold values of all men being born equal.
Domination and oppression of racialized and dehumanized populations by those who realized great wealth and power from oppressing others has always existed among some political-economic interests. We must consider the culture of ‘civilization’ at a particular time in order to fully understand human brutality in historical context. However, to understand is not necessarily to condone. A few anti-bellum slavers abandoned the enterprise on moral grounds; I guess they were just not that good at dehumanizing other people who they really knew were just as human as they were.
Those who genuinely wish to preserve human values of compassion, caring, and empathy for others, might be called true conservatives. Even among the elites of British colonialism, we can identify a few who found abhorrent the treatment of people who colonialism defined as sub-human and therefore worthy of whatever abuse their ‘betters’ deemed useful.
The Perversion of a Concept
For a long time now, I have occasionally called myself a ‘conservative liberal,’ or, a ‘liberal conservative’ when trying to explain my political views. It does not often work all that well. That phrasing is intended to express the fact that I look at politics from the perspective of practical action meant to improve the conditions of human lives, which does not fit well with ‘taking sides.’ Shouldn’t politics strive to enable the development and flourishing of our rich range of competencies and needs? In reality, not so much.
‘The common good’ seems to be a declining criterion of political action among those who today claim to be ‘conservative.’ The media unreflexively and uncritically accepts their claims, never considering the contradictions between their claims and their actions. Some reporters have even recast Trump’s hateful racist incoherent babbling into something that sounds like it makes policy sense. He has only one policy: self-aggrandizement through persecution.
These false conservatives’ focus on exclusion and punishment may be a remnant of colonial and imperialist attitudes to the dehumanized ‘others’ our culture once called ‘savages.’ Now, they conveniently call their victims ‘underdeveloped’ or ‘less developed’—which really means those who have been exploited historically and are blamed for their oppression.
Of course, we know of various politicians who self-identify as ‘fiscally conservative’ and ‘socially liberal.’ So, it is clear that no single concept can capture the entirety of a person’s political beliefs. But what concerns me most is the almost complete perversion of the idea of conservatism that was once an expression of holding fast to the highest principles of human life, many of which were enshrined in the American Constitution.
When Kamala Harris says, “we are not going back,” I am pretty sure she is not referring to not restoring constitutional values. Instead, she refers to refusing to accept the perversion of the Constitution by the recent so-called ‘conservatives’ on the Supreme Court and the perversion of politics led by the man who has done more than anyone to destroy the conservative principles that not so long ago were central to the Republican party—along with its commitment to elitism.
One of many things too many folks do not understand about Black folks in America is the strength of Black mothers, aunts, and grandmothers, so well-articulated in Michelle Obama’s DNC speech. Their stable base of life rests on their determination to apply some of the most central human values of self and community to the rather harsh conditions of life in a nation that still carries thinly disguised oppressive features of its history, which are denied by the white nationalist vision of “American Exceptionalism.”
Robert MacNeil Christie, Author 