Who WE Conservatives ARE

"Who WE Conservatives are
By T.H. Culhane

Sept. 11, 2019
(This is a script for my Irish American alter-ego “Rough Limerick” -- a true American conservative, responding to Rush Limbaugh’s speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference, and connecting the 11 core principles of American Conservatism to our much needed action plans for environmental stewardship and climate crisis mitigation and adaptation.)
Let me tell you who we conservatives are… I mean we real conservatives, not the neo-cons and the paleo-cons who are actually in my mind both actually pseudo-cons -- and that is how I will refer to them -- as PSEUDO-CONS and let me tell you how we true conservatives think of climate change and what we need to do about it.

Before we get started, I want to tell you what being a conservative has traditionally been defined to be, so you can see why I can confidently claim to be a true conservative, a traditional conservative and then further claim that people who depart from these principles are actually “Pseudo-cons” -- are actually CON-MEN, and con-women, stealing and distorting the conservative label for their own selfish or political agendas, among them denial of the science of climate change and our moral duty to mitigate and adapt to it. .

When you look up Conservatism in America on Wikipedia you find 11 core principles that guide us as conservatives in America, very clearly stated:

1.  A conservative defends Family values: “the ideology that puts priority on family and family values through a Familialism that prioritizes the needs of the family over the needs of individuals, and advocates for a welfare system where families, rather than the government, take responsibility for the care of their members.

Such a conservative would help his or her own family and community of families self-provision. We help each other create better welfare in our neighborhoods through neighborhood watch programs and hands-on learning programs and backyard wildlife programs, rewilding our communities, growing our own healthy food alternatives so our children grow up strong and healthy and providing our own local energy in microgrids so our homes are inflation resistant and natural disaster resilient.

2. A conservative defends a Free market:

“a system in which the prices for goods and services are determined by the open market and by consumers. In a free market, the laws and forces of supply and demand are free from any intervention by a government or other authority and from all forms of economic privilege, monopolies and artificial scarcities.”

Such a conservative would never conscience the site of people buying up cases of bottled water before a hurricane when the tap water is perfectly fine to drink and the coming rain storms, with a little bit of rain capture implemented -- perhaps just a bucket or basin placed outside -- would provide plenty of water. Such a conservative would never allow so few companies to dominate the energy and waste markets that we would ever feel trapped into paying high rates for electricity or garbage pick up or other utilities, or overprice decentralized energy generation devices so that we would ever have to worry about the effects of a “blackout”.

“ Proponents of the concept of free market contrast it with a regulated market in which a government intervenes in supply and demand through various methods such as tariffs used to restrict trade and to protect the local economy. In an idealized free-market economy, prices for goods and services are set freely by the forces of supply and demand and are allowed to reach their point of equilibrium without intervention by government policy."

No conservative would ever use protectionism to protect inferior technologies or bad practices at home or restrict our adoption or use of better technologies and practices from abroad.

3. A conservative defends Free trade: “a trade policy that does not restrict imports or exports; it can also be understood as the free market idea applied to international trade. In government, free trade is predominantly advocated by political parties that hold liberal economic positions while economically left-wing and nationalist political parties generally support protectionism, the opposite of free trade.”

We conservatives are not left wing, so why are we flying around in circles over this issue, and blaming the “liberals” for trying to regulate pollution and restrict the bad effects of the bad technologies -- the negative externalities -- that crony capitalism, as opposed to true free market capitalism - has forced us into purchasing or using or depending on? What we true conservatives want is a de-regulation of the goods and the good that good goods can give us, and instead regulation of the bad effects of the backwards technologies and practices that interfere with our sovereign liberties and hurt our families.

So let’s explore another tenet of traditional conservatism in America:

4.  A conservative defends Classical liberalism: This is much different from the “social liberalism” or “leftist liberalism” which advocates government intervention and control to fix problems and from which we get the current term “liberal”.

“CLASSICAL LIBERALISM is a political ideology and a branch of liberalism which advocates civil liberties under the rule of law with an emphasis on economic freedom.”
You and I should have the economic freedom to choose paper over plastic, to buy products that aren’t wrapped in single use plastic, to choose healthy food over unhealthy food at a BETTER PRICE, because ultimately it is cheaper to produce sustainable products since they have fewer inputs. We shouldn’t have to pay ridiculous taxes to the government that cause severe market distortions by providing gross subsidies to the petrochemical industry and the agroindustrial companies and the weapons manufacturers. The increasingly moribund and dirty coal industry, according to Rick Perry’s plan, is now getting subsidized to the tune of some 10.6 billion dollars over the next ten years. (see https://www.theguardian.com/.../subsidize-coal-nuclear...)

This is not at all what the early economists had in mind when they developed the theories of capital accumulation and its “invisible hand” benefits that guided American business. The kind of Classical liberalism that conservatives champion is:

“Closely related to economic liberalism, it developed in the early 19th century, building on ideas from the previous century as a response to urbanisation and to the Industrial Revolution in Europe and the United States. Notable individuals whose ideas contributed to classical liberalism include John Locke, Jean-Baptiste Say, Thomas Robert Malthus and David Ricardo. It drew on the classical economic ideas espoused by Adam Smith in Book One of The Wealth of Nations and on a belief in natural law, utilitarianism and progress.

Despite this, America, under the guise of pseudo-conservativism, is falling behind rather than progressing. And regarding our founding conservative principles of utilitarianism, well for that we need to examine what utilitarianism really means -- and no it doesn’t mean that everything in nature should be used up by people.

According to wikipedia “Utilitarianism is a family of consequentialist ethical theories that promotes actions that maximize happiness and well-being for the majority of a population.” A majority, not just an elite.

“ Although different varieties of utilitarianism admit different characterizations, the basic idea behind all of them is to in some sense maximize utility, which is often defined in terms of well-being or related concepts. For instance, Jeremy Bentham, the founder of utilitarianism, described utility as

"that property in any object, whereby it tends to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness...[or] to prevent the happening of mischief, pain, evil, or unhappiness to the party whose interest is considered.”

“Utilitarianism is a version of consequentialism, which states that the consequences of any action are the only standard of right and wrong. Unlike other forms of consequentialism, such as egoism and altruism, utilitarianism considers the interests of all beings equally.”

This is consistent with deep ecology, defeats the nasty and ultimately Nazi notion that the end justifies the means, and moves us toward a deep consideration of the larger consequences of each thing we do to preserve our individual rights and freedoms.

Classical liberalism thus frames the larger conservative ideal of following another important principle of conservativism which is,

5.  "A conservative defends Natural Law: which is “ implied to be objective and universal, existing independently of human understanding, and independently of the positive law of a given state, political order, legislature or society at large. Historically, natural law refers to the use of reason to analyze human nature to deduce binding rules of moral behavior from nature's or God's creation of reality and mankind."

This principle of conservativism is important in that we are steadfast in our commitment to science and reason, refusing to do things based on fear or reflex or knee jerk reactions or in a panic. As true conservatives we can never reject science. Our belief in the value of reason and study is also consistent with our application of our rationale observations of cause and effect to ensure consistency with our over-arching spiritual values, which guide the rest of our core conservative principles like .

6. A conservative defends Judeo-Christian Values: We Conservatives believe that we find moral guidance for the application of our reason-based policies through our faith in a gospel that preaches the existence of and possibility for a personal relationship with a loving God who promises grace and forgiveness. This in turn then suggests another principle:

7. "A conservative defends Moral absolutism, ”an ethical view that all actions are intrinsically right or wrong. Stealing, for instance, might be considered to be always immoral, even if done for the well-being of others (e.g., stealing food to feed a starving family), and even if it does in the end promote such a good.”"

As Moral absolutists we as conservatives cannot ever claim that the end justifies the means, and we conservatives are duty bound to try to find alternative moral paths to a good outcome if confronted with a shortcut that seems promising and expedient but nonetheless could cause harm. Cheating is not allowed.

This then leads to another conservative principle:

8. "A conservative defends the Rule of law: “The authority and influence of law in society, especially when viewed as a constraint on individual and institutional behavior; (hence) the principle whereby all members of a society (including those in government) are considered equally subject to publicly disclosed legal codes and processes."

Because we abide by the rule of law, no person, no matter how rich or powerful can ever be considered above the law, and no institution or corporation can engage in or be excused from doing things that violate the law or cause harm. A true conservative can not with good conscience allow elites to get away with lying, cheating, stealing, manipulating, polluting, or destroying the global commons or public lands or allowing activities on private lands to contaminate or negatively influence connected or down-stream communities, environments or ecosystems or cause suffering, extinctions or disruptions to natural systems.


This leads us to this principle:

9. "A conservative defends Limited Government where the government is empowered by law from a starting point of having no power, or where governmental power is restricted by law, usually in a written constitution. The United States Constitution presents an example of the federal government not possessing any power except what is delegated to it by the Constitution — with the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution making explicit that powers not specifically delegated to the federal government are reserved for the people and the states."

Too often the pseudo cons preach limited government while manipulating the legal system to interfere with our local and individual rights and compromise our sovereignty through paid mercenary threats from private hired security companies, such as we saw at Standing Rock during the native people’s peaceful prayers against oil pipelines that were threatening their waters, and through covert and overt police and military threats and actions when people try to protect the forests and ecosystems and life support systems they depend on from destruction by mining and ranching and drilling and real estate development interests.

10. A conservative defends Republicanism.

 That doesn’t mean we become card carrying members of the now hijacked “Republican party”.

I, for example, as a conservative, have always been skeptical of our football team like political party system and have remained an independent voter my entire life. True Republicanism “stresses liberty and unalienable individual rights as central values, making people sovereign as a whole; rejects monarchy, aristocracy and inherited political power, (so no family dynasties, and no mixing business and governance)...

 Republicanism “expects citizens to be virtuous and faithful in their performance of civic duties, and vilifies corruption. American republicanism was articulated and first practiced by the Founding Fathers in the 18th century. For them, "republicanism represented more than a particular form of government. It was a way of life, a core ideology, an uncompromising commitment to liberty, and a total rejection of aristocracy."

In this total rejection, a true conversative would never cozy up to totalitarian leaders or tyrants or dictators or arrogant uber-rich business tycoons whose wealth comes from unsustainable and unjust practices. We fought a revolution in 1776 to break free of such systems. We true conservatives aren’t compromising now.

Finally, we have a principle of conservatism that has been grossly misunderstood and misapplied:

11. "A conservative defends Tradition."

That doesn’t mean we ever defend stupidity or inefficiency or cruelty or unsustainable practices or any of the things our parents or grandparents or even ancestors may have done that messed things up. Those aren’t traditions -- they are mistakes that we learned from and, having made those mistakes for too long and seen the awful consequences, rightfully rejected. Why would we ever defend a practice that ultimately hurt anyone? And how could we even consider bad behavior “traditional”, no matter how many people or, better said, “SHEEPLE” got caught up in doing it or how many years the suffering a given practice caused until we overthrew it? Just because people who came before us did something for many years, like, just to give a seemingly trivial but actually rather harmful practice, bagging and burning leaves in the fall, or destroying biodiversity and poisoning our land and water for the sake of a manicured lawn, doesn’t make that kind of barbarity “tradition”. True conservatives don’t conserve such short sighted actions, no matter how long they persisted in a corrupt and badly educated system. We call these practices “bad historical legacy issues”

The word tradition itself derives from the Latin tradere literally meaning to TRADE, to transmit, to hand over, to “give for safekeeping” and conservatives, true conservatives, see conservation values as the things to conserve and pass on, safekeeping our wildlife safekeeping our air and water and landscapes for generations to come… these are the truly traditional values we conserve. Tradition “emphasizes the need for the principles of natural law and transcendent moral order, hierarchy and organic unity, agrarianism, classicism and high culture, and the intersecting spheres of loyalty.” It does not include loyalty to Monsanto or its shareholders.

Though too often distorted by the pseudo-cons, our true conservative interest in tradition dovetails nicely with today’s ideas about sustainability and best practices -- the traditions we champion, often embedded in the best of our churches and other religious institutions and in family lore and education systems, are things that have been proven to work, things that persisted for many generations because they represented the transmitted wisdom of the ages. We conservatives look to traditional agroforestry and silvopastoral practices encoded in the wisdom of our first nation’s peoples and indigenous people around the world. We look to ethical traditions of animal husbandry without cruelty, or plant-based diets grown organically in polycultural permaculture plots as traditions to upkeep or reintroduce.

The problem with “traditional thinking” as harped on by the pseudo-cons is that the things they call “traditional” are usually rather recent in origin, and are mostly not things that worked at all, like humanity’s recent historical experiments with gender inequality and oppression of women and minorities, which may have operated in some psychotic aristocratic societies for thousands of years, but which have always been indicative of the kind of tyranny we reviled in our constitution and broke with Europe to get away from two centuries ago, though it took us 150 more years to erase its toxic influence on us and we are still feeling the effects of these cruel practices of intolerance and racism and gender prejudice.

 These are not traditions, these are aberrations kept alive by despots and tyrants and uneducated mobs. As anthropology and archeology shows us, egalitarianism and cooperation and respect for natural law and ecosystem balance are what characterized most human societies for most of human history. War mongering city states with citizens addicted to deforestation and monoculture techniques and grain agriculture, mining resources faster than their replacement and expanding through raping and pillaging, conquest and slaver -- these are recent inventions that have almost always led to the collapse of the civilizations that blundered into them.

 It takes tyrants to continue such cruel stupidities, and propaganda and threat and a bad education system to make people believe these are normal and traditional parts of the human condition.
True traditional values, the ones that have lasted through the wisdom of the ages and that will last, and which define sustainability, are actually the “inalienable rights” that our founding fathers enshrined in our constitution. Read again, what it says in the preamble to understand what it means to be a true conservative who values our constitution and the traditions that created it:

It reads,

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men (and by extension, wo-men) are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends (and that would include destructive of our planetary ecosystem based life support systems of climate homeostasis and biodiversity) , it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

And here is where the long staying power, the sustainability of tradition becomes important to think about. The constitution says,

“ Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes;( certainly not for the enrichment of or the whims of a given political group or individual or corporation) “ and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new guards for their future security.”

And I would argue as a conservative that this is where we are today, suffering under a long train of abuses and usurpations -- having been abused and usurped by those I am calling “pseudo-cons”, these con-men and con-women, people who misquote the scriptures of our Judeo-Christian theological tradition for selfish ends, who I therefore say are not REPUBLICANS at all, but are rather “WRONGBIBLICANS” -- wolves in sheep’s clothing who have hijacked the original republican anti-slavery party by using willfully wrong interpretations of the Bible and mis-appropriations of scripture for evil and selfish purposes.

 These wrongbiblicans are in fact using the wrong bible as the source of guidance -- wrongbiblicans take us back to the time of Leviticus in the old testament to defend their dubious moral compass, often defending its documentation of humanity's worst intolerance and violent and extremist behaviors, rather than turning to the wisdom and grace of Christ’s words and those of his disciples in the new testament, which superseded and completed the old testament. Only a truly wrongbiblican would eschew the new testament and its hope inspiring promises. Only a wrongbiblican would ignore the life affirming sustainability promised in our true Gospel, our good news compass that guides us through our lives through love and with love. The WrongBiblicans, ignoring Christ and using the wrong bible passages to instill loathing and fear and doubt and shame and guilt are not conservatives, but con-men, and they are can not be true Republicans, faithful to Lincoln’s call for freedom and unity, as they are not dedicated to that “uncompromising commitment to liberty” that our founders fought and died for.


And so, when we speak of our conservative commitment to liberty we have to talk about our conservative commitment to adult responsibility, to a commitment to quit whining and complaining like babies and passing the buck about the environmental damage we have done, to commit to effective climate change mitigation and adaptation, to the best practice traditions that can drawdown the excess carbon dioxide and methane, and chloroflurocarbons and nitrous oxides that our activities have irresponsibly and criminally put into our common atmosphere, and the toxins our activities have irresponsibly and criminally poured into our waters and landscapes.

Lastly I want to quote, of all people, the pseudo-con commentator Rush Limbaugh from his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference to comment on what was right and wrong about the perspective he is propagandizing. Limbaugh said,
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzyBv2Q5PRk)

“Let me tell you who WE conservatives are… we LOVE people. “ And he was right about that. He went on, “ When we look out over the united states of america, when we are anywhere, when we see a goup of people such as this or are anywhere , we see Americans, we don’t see groups, we don’t see victims, we don’t see people we want to exploit, what we see is potential! “
I agree with this too, though I am also responsible enough as a conservative adult to acknowledge the damage and suffering my actions have caused. Only children try to shirk responsibility and claim there have been no victims to our irresponsible behaviors. We don’t see people as “victims” but we do want to stop harming others.

Limbaugh rightly said,

“We do not look out across the country, and see the average American, the person who makes this country work, we do not see that person with contempt, we don’t think that person doesn’t have what it takes, we believe that person can be the best he or she wants to be if certain things are just removed from their path like onerous taxes, regulations, and too much government.”

And I agree with him, except he targets the wrong taxes and regulations and government, just as wrongbiblicans keep targeting the wrong parts of our holy books to make their arguments. Conservatives like ME indeed think we should not be taxed for items or practices or equipment that can help us become more self-sufficient, we shouldn’t be paying more for healthy food and should not have regulations that prevent us from turning our lawns into victory gardens, should not have laws that prevent us from growing food in the suburbs or the city, or laws that prevent us or hinder us from producing our own power at home, going off the grid or helping the community micro-grid and contributing to the national grid through de-centralized independent power production and purchasing agreements. 

We don’t think the government should be putting tariffs on solar panels from China or India or Germany or doing anything to limit our freedom to trade our goods, when they are truly good, for the goods of other lands that are good. We don’t want nanny state government or even municipalities to “take care” of our production and consumption residuals -- what you may still call “garbage” and “sewage”, we expect every family and neighborhood and community to man and woman up and “take care of our own shit”.

We believe in fostering a nation of adults who take responsibility and therefore have the freedom and choice and rights to defend ourselves and our families and property and community and take care of them, and who, in doing so, also DO NO HARM, neither with our guns or our practices.

Limbaugh went on to say, “We love and revere our founding documents, the constitution and the declaration of independence. We believe that the preamble of the constitution contains an inarguable truth, that we are all endowed by our creator with inalienable rights, among them life, liberty… freedom… and the pursuit of happiness. Now those of you watching at home may be wondering, why is this being applauded. We conservatives think all three are under assault…”

And then the crowd cheers, but the pseudo cons out there, also cheering their vague comprehension of our declaration of independence, don’t seem to understand what is really assaulting our freedoms and rights -- our near total dependence on oligarch controlled fossil fuels, whether foreign or domestic, our unconscionable daily combustion of those vital strategic assets and stored sources of hydrocarbon energy and material wealth for trivial things when other forms of renewable energy are readily available but blocked by restrictive government and lobbyist controls and disinformation and price fixing… the fact, for example, that in China and India solar electric panels and vacuum tube solar hot water systems and biodigesters can be purchased almost anywhere at a price even they can afford, and superfast electric trains and electric cars and motorcycles make public transit a joy, while these same amenities are made by tariffs and price fixing and regulations here so expensive and burdensome that very few Americans think they will ever be worth it.

The pseudo cons make up weird fantasies suggesting climate change is a Chinese Hoax meant to destroy us so they can prosper by selling us solutions to what pseudo-cons swear is a fictional problem , assaulting our freedoms for getting good information and getting a good education and getting good durable, sustainable goods into our own economy or manufactured in our nation.
Real conservatives, WE conservatives, love people, all people, and we love all of God’s creation, human and non-human, all beings great and small, and we don’t make victims of them, and we take care of our own shit, and we don’t give people shit, and we don’t destroy what God created. We conservatives believe in a government of the people, by the people, for the people, with liberty and justice, and sustainability, for all and for all time. That is what it means to be a conservative in the anthropocene, the age of climate change. And these are the values we must conserve to be sustainable."