I am a pro-life, values-based conservative.
I wish and act to conserve the conditions that have allowed human life to flourish on this planet for the past 12,000 years, conditions whose continuance today is threatened.
I wish and act to conserve the values — of cooperation, respect, and physical and emotional sustenance — that have enabled human sociality and creativity to flourish amidst a diverse array of life forms, whose diversity and cohesion today is threatened.
I wish and act to conserve the movement toward protecting the dignity of all humans and all sentient beings.
Those who act today to dismantle those conditions, defile those values, and imperil that movement can claim only to conserve their own wealth and privilege at the expense of others.
It’s time to decide what should be conserved and what should be uprooted.
Be a conservative. Vote them out.
I was with you … up until the “Vote them out.” Surely, for us ‘conservatives’, there are better values than choosing among those with a lust for power who will force others to live by our values (or those they claim to defend in order to gain votes). If humans lived in egalitarian societies and despised those who would dominate and control them, why wouldn’t we choose to conserve that way of life?
Thanks for that, Don. I agree with you that politics is a dirty game to the extent that those in it are lusting for power (to force others to follow their ways). But to reduce it to that is unfair. Democratic politics, at their best (and they are far from their best in their current state in the U.S.), are about political engagement in order to make the world better, or at least keep it from getting worse. There’s a longstanding debate over whether egalitarian society is best built by withdrawing from the world entirely and starting one’s own (mini-) society, or by working within and through the structures that exist to change them. The first strategy hasn’t borne much fruit historically (that I can think of); the second has. (Most positive changes have involved either voting, or running for office, or demonstrating so as to appeal to those with power, or revolting so as to take over power, or a combination of all of these.)
When I say “vote them out” I don’t mean that that’s the only thing we should do; far from it. I’m just trying to be relevant (with an election coming up). Two more years of this kind of governance will be two more years of digging ourselves into an ever deeper hole. In comparison, almost any change would be to the better.