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We continue our series of editorials on ten guiding words crucial to the mission of refocusing the conservative movement. We've covered reality, reason, morality, unity, and responsibility - this week we take a look at restraint...
Conservatives value restraint - and not just for government. Just as Jell-O can't jell without a container, a country can't exist without protected borders. Children need the steadying hand of adult supervision to survive and thrive. Personal budgets are necessary to keeping balance between an individual's income and outgo. In fact, anything unrestrained risks self-destruction.
Liberty is not about Anything Goes
America is a country of appetites. We like to grow, achieve, and reach for the best our liberated land has to offer. Unrestrained, each of these activities can become tainted and addictive. It's not far from prosperity to greed; power to corruption; dedication to obsession. It was Daniel Webster who suggested, "Liberty exists in proportion to wholesome restraint." We can infer that the opposite is also true.
Perhaps nowhere is our lack of restraint more apparent than America's recent shift from an economy of production to one of consumption. America today is increasingly more about taking than giving, and evidence comes in our persisting tendency to live beyond our means through the labors and loans of others.
Nature is Self-correcting - So is America
Conservatives appreciate reality and understand that the basis of reality is nature. Nature, by design, is restrained and self-correcting. All around us nature is persistently upholding the strong as it discards the weak. Wind blows down rotten trees. Predators eat wounded animals. Drought and famine routinely filter out those not strong enough to adapt. Humans, cultures, and countries - including our own - are not exempt from nature's self-corrective forces.
Nature, and by inference the higher authority that created that nature, rewards those who self-correct through personal initiative. We need not wait for the heavy and often painful hand of the natural order to bring us back to reality. Conservatives have the capacity to recapture America, but we are not going to do it sitting in front of a television.
Indulgence and Liberty are Different
When applied with persistency, principles and values are reliable forms of cultural and personal restraint. The hosts of semi-principled politicians guiding America are restrained more by what they can get away with than what they believe in. The 'anything goes' model of liberal progressives confuses personal indulgence with personal liberty. As Dwight Eisenhower once noted, "A people that values its privileges above its principles soon looses both."
In an America that is increasingly governed by excess, the Constitution remains a restraining guidebook. President Barack Obama has stated that the Constitution is a "charter of negative liberties" - his disdain is misplaced, but he is right. Our founding fathers knew that restrictions were surely as important as liberties and opportunities. These wise men predicted the corruptive potentials of the 'something for nothing' crowd some two hundred years ago. Knowing man, they did their best to restrain the opportunities to pillage and plunder America's potentials.
Principles Restrain while Power Corrupts
Those look for answers as to why the Republican Party has lost its way can look to the substitution of power for principles. Power is highly addictive and always needs more. It's like a balloon that keeps taking air - until it pops. Witness the Republican red carpet that ushered in the most harmful socialistic juggernaut in our country's history.
On the other hand, principles are naturally self-restraining. If you stick by them, they will stick by you and assure that corruption and self-correction are the harvest of others. In the short-term, it's not easy to be principle led - in the long term, it is infinitely less painful.
A more current voice for the importance of restraint was Clint Eastwood's 'Dirty Harry' Callahan. Dirty Harry - recognizing their self-serving agenda - had little patience for progressives in any guise. He got it right when he glared into the eye of a bad guy and offered, "A man's got to know his limitations." Dirty Harry was a smart conservative...
Next week - we'll take a look at the importance of the rule of law to the conservative movement...
Dr. Carl Mumpower
www.thecandidconservative.com
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