From Francis Beckwith: Thoughts on the Election at Between Two Worlds*:
In politics, it's never the end of the world, even if it seems like it.
Nor is it the beginning of a new one, even if it seems like it.
This is not to say that Senator Barack Obama's victory, combined with the increased margins in the House and Senate for the party that supports abortion rights, expansion of government, and increased intervention in the economy, will not make it politically difficult for conservative ideas to receive a fair hearing in the halls of power or the mainstream media. But it does mean that conservatives have an opportunity to hone, clarify, and articulate their ideas without the burden of a political leadership that has not only failed to practice them but has failed to intelligently and attractively defend the few conservative ideas they actually retained.
Like many conservatives of my generation (b. 1960), I came of age when there was a vibrancy and excitement for the works of authors such as Bill Buckley, Russell Kirk, Frederick Hayek, Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, Henry Hazlitt, Hadley Arkes, and George Gilder. Our political heroes included Washington, Lincoln, Churchill, Reagan, and Thatcher.
Sadly, this present generation is rarely put in contact with these leading lights and their works. Instead, young conservatives as well as young liberals are tutored almost exclusively by blogs and bombast, by "stars" whose command of the intellectual roots of conservatism is an inch deep and a mile wide. We've come from "Don't immanentize the eschaton" to "Sean, you're a great American."
Not only that, but the new "intellectual roots" of the conservative party appear suspiciously adventitious, and not so dissimilar from those of their opponents.
It seems that, these days, what the conservative party stands for is up for grabs. I'm not really sure what "conservative" means any more; nor, I suspect, are many others, both within and outside the party. I'm fairly certain, though, that the party has no future if it becomes something that behaves no differently than the liberal party ("liberal" also presenting certain challenges of definition). For example, how far does it go for a young woman to say that she's "liberal" of sexual behavior, yet pro-life? Should she become pregnant out of wedlock, will she keep the baby? Will she put the baby up for adoption? How will this play out for their future, or ours, economically and otherwise?
The trouble is, if you start separating certain conservative principles from others, or mixing-and-matching with certain (opposing) liberal principles, sooner or later, one is going to catch up with the other. Not that the conservative party should define itself by whatever the "other" party(ies) isn't, but by what is truly good and wise. And though, as they say, morality can't be legislated, responsibility can (to an extent), and the resulting maturity can't help but (ahem) "trickle down."
Similarly, one party cannot rise above the dirty politics and disingenuous behavior of another if it plays by the same dirty politics.
*HT: Chad Toney via the Facebook group, "Hopefully God Will Give Obama the Grace To Change His Views On Abortion."
