In Europe, a conservative is someone wedded to the past. Whatever that was. In the United States, a conservative wishes to conserve the tradition of the Declaration of Independence, of the Constitution, of liberty. For much of American history, one’s political-party affiliation told you only whether one was born north or south of the Mason-Dixon line. The parties were regional. During the political lifetime of Ronald Reagan, the two parties sorted themselves out along lines of political principle.
If you want the power of the state limited to protecting individual liberty, you become a Republican. If you view the proper role of government as taking things from some people and giving them to others, you join the Democrats.
Today conservatives find themselves in and around the modern Reagan Republican Party. They are excluded from the modern Democratic Party. Conservatives ask only one thing of the government: to be left alone. They do not want the government to steal money from their neighbors and give it to them. They want taxes low and lower. They want property rights protected for all. They want to be in charge of educating their own children. They wish to practice their own faith and transmit it to their children without government help or interference. They want their Second Amendment rights respected. They want their professional and business lives to be left alone by the government. They would not be serfs or civil servants taking orders from an imperial city. Nor would they be czars themselves.
Conservatives are not antigovernment, just as cancer doctors are not anticell. Conservatives oppose government’s growing so large and intrusive that it becomes destructive of human liberty. That is why conservatives respect and support the American military and police. That part of government, properly constrained by the Constitution, is responsible for protecting our liberty. Government quite correctly insists that the Canadians stay on their side of the border and that no one steals our stuff.
American conservatives are a threat to no honest man or woman or any peaceable nation. We wish to be left alone to run our own lives as we choose. And we demand the government provide the same liberty to our fellow countrymen.
Norquist is founder and president of Americans for Tax Reform. The views expressed are solely his own.
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