I’ve been hard on my liberal friends lately -- not personally, mind you, but more
and more the term “liberal thinking” has become an oxymoron. This week I’d like
to look at the positive side of things and explore all the many ways that the
conservative agenda is -- pardon the pun -- right.
Let’s start with the obvious assumption that most
conservatives make: God Is. We differ
– sometimes mightily – in our understanding of God, but the vast majority of us
are sure He is our creator, and we’re sure because He is manifest in the
careful, artistic patterning and intricate engineering of nature. We see
evidence of His perfections as they came together on the cross to provide
humanity with both purpose and possibility. We recognize the divine worth of
every human being and, at the same time, the flawed essence of human nature and
its need for divine guidance. A
handful of conservative atheists can be found – S.E. Cupp at Glenn Beck’s
station, novelist Ayn Rand, for instance, but most of us stand on the solid,
defensible ground of Christianity, as did the majority of our founding fathers.
Standing on that foundation gives us a natural advantage –
we see human nature for what it is – flawed and unlikely to improve on its own.
History backs us up on that, but the evolutionary approach leaves one with the
unsupportable assertion that man keeps getting better and better. However, the
20th century, instead of demonstrating how far man and society had
evolved, turned out to be the bloodiest in human history. The conservative was not surprised –
check out G.K. Chesterton’s writings from the beginning of last century and it
all sounds like he’s talking about today.
