This Time It's Not About Politics, It's About Standing Up for What's Right

There are three levels of attitudes toward politics. The first is through the lens of loyalty, of good guys vs bad guys. People who vote for their party because all their friends, family, role models, and authority figures vote for that party.

The second level is realizing that the first level is pointless tribal warfare. All the sensationalism, the rhetoric, the news commentary, it’s all designed to fire people up for the team against the other team. People at this level hold up their hands and say, “I’m not participating in that,” and they don’t vote or they vote for a third option out of protest. These people sometimes try to play peacemaker by trying to convince others that politics doesn’t matter.

The third level is to recognize how politics works. The rhetoric and sensationalism is indeed showmanship, but it has real consequences. The truth of politics is not in the words, but in the actions. People in the third level vote and take political action. Not out of loyalty to a party or a sense of belonging to a group of “good guys,” but from the principles they hold. They might vote for different parties in different years based on which candidates are best in line with their principles. The more people there are in this category, the better democracy works.

In the past my blog posts have been about ideas, not taking action. But there comes a time when it is no longer appropriate to merely play the philosopher. Right now, at the end of 2020, it’s not about politics, it’s about standing up for what’s right.

Real politics is discussing how to let legitimate immigrants in while keeping out the drug and sex traffickers. It’s debating whether we should focus on welfare or employment programs, or whether we should add more categories to the gender section of official documents. What we have in 2020 is not politics, it’s a man standing atop the gutted remains of a Party, happy to light the world on fire if it shows everyone that he is the one on top. That’s not politics, it’s despotism.

An eagle needs a healthy left wing and a healthy right wing in order to fly. Conservatism, at least what it is supposed to be, looks at traditions and the people who want to change or throw out traditions and says, “Hold on, we don’t know all of the consequences of changing this. Let’s be careful.” Conservatism suggests that maybe man-woman marriage is not just a tool for powerful men to remain powerful, but there may be something highly nurturing about growing up with a mother and a father that is extremely hard to find in other situations. Conservatism suggests that there is something about earning a living for oneself that gives a life purpose at a level that cannot be found when receiving charity or welfare. Conservatism says we should remember the history of ideas that brought us here and remember it well, because there are truths buried within it that we do not fully understand.

It is not conservative to put down protests with violent police force. It is not conservative to brush off major problems like hundreds of thousands of Americans dying from a disease or the global temperature increasing enough to have effects that scar the planet and humanity for centuries. These are not conservatism; they are cultish.

I don’t know if there is anything salvageable of the Republican Party. Perhaps the Democratic Party could split, and the Joe Bidens could be our conservative party and the Bernie Sanderses and Elizabeth Warrens could be our progressive party. Either way, something drastic has to happen to our political system to get us back to a healthy place.

Now is a difficult time to be conservative. Look around. Are the unknown risks of change so great that it’s worse than the trajectory we are currently on? It is good to be cautious and not to rush things, but there comes a time when your house is on fire and you have to get out. Enough with the dead weight stubbornness daydreaming about turning the clock back and making America “great” again. If we want to get back to a healthy political climate, we need to cut this brain tumor out of our country’s head. The time for change is now.