Jan

31

Conservatives and our funny voting

Filed Under Ideas, Random Thoughts 

I don’t get much news anymore, and it’s almost refreshing, especially during an election year.

I have noticed a lot of rumbling about McCain recently. Of course, someone (actually many someones) have questioned his conservative principles. This almost makes me laugh. American’s don’t have a clue what conservatism is anymore. Republicans are not conservatives. At best, they are mid-stream. They look conservative because the other major option is super liberal.

The fact that so many Republicans are libertarian should suggest that American political “conservatism” is not the same thing as philosophic conservatism (ala Burke, Eliot, Weaver). In fact, both major parties are libertarian in some places and authoritarian in others. In America, we debate what should be controlled, not whether we should control. Republicans want to outlaw various social evils (most of them are genuine evils). Democrats want to outlaw other evils (e.g. “hate speech” and “intolerance”). But extreme libertarianism exists in both parties. Curious.

When it comes to picking a political candidate, I think we look at the wrong things too much. We worry about issues and where various candidates stand. Many Christians are willing to make things like abortion supremely important1. If so-and-so doesn’t agree, they don’t get the vote. I think we give the politicians too much credit when we do this. We assume that they will never change their minds, completely fulfill their promises, and manage to not mess everything else up while upholding the “one issue.”

We don’t pick people for their leadership ability anymore. We choose delegates–people who we think agree with us on the important issues. This is the height of the American democratic spirit, and it could destroy our country. We think we live in a democracy. We don’t. It’s a republic. Without getting too far into the subtleties of the difference, the key here is that in a republic, we choose representatives. We confer upon other men the right to make decisions for us. We trust them to make good decisions, even if we disagree. If they blow it, we vote them out in a few years. Politicians live and die on the media and the polls. We profess to hate this, but actually we encourage it by expecting them to decide the way we do, even when they have more and better information. We would be better served to learn the difference between good and bad leadership and character, and ignore all the little intricacies of the candidates’ policies.

Ok. Rant over. But I am serious. It’s a small wonder that we get any good leaders. We don’t seem to care much.


  1. I think Bob Bixby had an article on this some time ago, but I can’t find it now. Paul Matzko has a different sort of take on McCain. back↩

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