North Star Writers Group

I hate labels, and I hate being labeled. It’s so limiting. After all, opinions change. If they don’t, then someone needs to start thinking again – or at least that’s my opinion.

And yet, I am becoming more and more comfortable at this point in my young but weathered life, to call myself a conservative. Maybe it’s because exposure to the likes of Rosie O’Donnell, Michael Moore, George Clooney and Jesse Jackson tends to upset my stomach. But I’m told that a defining conservative characteristic is rationality, and writing off a large portion of our country because of a handful of people would not be rational.

How can someone who hates being labeled feel comfortable with such a powerful and occasionally affronting label as “conservative”?

Liberalism originally meant exactly what the word means. Liberate means to make free. To believe in liberalism is to believe in freedom. Martin Luther was a liberal, spearheading one of the most radical changes in the history of the church. George Washington was a liberal, helping to set free an entire territory from the unfair demands of Britain. Elizabeth Stanton was a liberal, initiating the movement for equal rights under the law, including the right to vote, the right to own property and the right to work. Abraham Lincoln was a liberal, ending slavery by signing the Emancipation Proclamation. Martin Luther King Jr. was a liberal, bringing racism into the limelight and helping everyone to understand the transcendence of humanity. And for what it’s worth, Jesus would have been considered a liberal as well, as He considered all people alike, rich and poor, Jew and Gentile. We should all be liberals.

But at some point, liberalism stopped meaning “belief in freedom,” and became convoluted. Perhaps it was around the time of FDR’s New Deal, or more likely, during the Vietnam War, but somewhere, somehow, liberalism took on compassion as a defining characteristic – not a beautiful, loving, harmless kind of compassion, but a naïve one, I think. If you were to ask 100 conservatives to express their primary gripe with the modern liberal movement, 15 would say something offensive and nasty, 10 would be too busy counting their money and the rest would probably repeatedly describe liberals as naïve. That’s where I find myself. I think a lot of liberals – smart ones, kind ones, loving ones, ones with wonderful families, ones who give money to charity – are naïve and misled.

It’s a funny thing. If you consider the above list of famous liberals, you’ll probably notice that every group being opposed was considered the conservative group at the time – from the Pharisees to the British to the slave owners. When I think of the conservative party, I think of a group that is generally resistant to change. I think of the conservative movement as the “whoa, whoa, whoa” movement, because they’re always saying, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, let’s not get carried away.” It’s not necessarily fixated on the truth as much as it is fixated on the comfort of tradition – at least, historically speaking.

But maybe, just maybe, human rights are finally where they ought to be in America. It’s always dangerous to think that anyone or any society has finally arrived at the truth because the world is always changing. There will always be new problems, whether they arise because of technology or some crazy person on the other side of the world trying to kill us.

But belief in freedom does not mean anything and everything is acceptable. Freedom is not the same as tolerance. To suggest that war is necessary to achieve peace is, according to many, illogical. The belief that too much responsibility is put on the government to lift up the impoverished is considered uncompassionate. To vehemently oppose the influx of illegal aliens is apparently borderline racism. Today, it is considered outdated and bigoted to say that sex ought to be between a man and a woman. Nowadays, to suggest that sex ought not be experienced with more than one person in a lifetime is considered outrageous. It has become rude and judgmental to say that abortion is wrong.

Although I’d hope that we are all liberals at heart, liberalism and conservatism have changed. And I can’t help but wonder if, finally, those who are saying, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, let’s not get carried away,” are clinging to a few traditions and ideas that are worthwhile. If this is what modern conservatism is, then for once, I am very comfortable being labeled.

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This is Column # NS067. Request permission to publish here.