Musings
Lyn Nofziger mutters: "Ronald Reagan’s longtime aide, Michael Deaver, has contracted to write--or rather compile--a book in which numerous persons will tell why they are conservatives. The title of the book not surprisingly will be Why I Am a Conservative.
I have been asked to contribute but will not. What I would like to write about instead is why these days I, as a conservative, have difficulty being a Republican.
And, believe me, it is getting harder and harder by the day.
When I was younger and still in the business of making speeches I would tell Republican groups to whom I was speaking that I was a Republican because Republicans tend--the key word is “tend”--to leave me alone more than Democrats do.
The belief that government should leave people pretty much alone, that it should butt out of their lives, that it should protect us from each other but not from ourselves is key to my being whatever it is I am.
Of course I feel strongly about some other things to, but they’re kind of related to that belief that government should leave me alone.
I believe in small, limited government, government that does for the individual only those things he cannot do or do so well for himself, and these are pretty well enumerated in the first ten amendments to the constitution. Where they are not, the ninth amendment fills the void. It reads: The enumeration in the constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
I take that to include the right to privacy in one’s home and the right to be let alone.
I further believe that taxes should be minimal, that they should not be used as a means of sharing the wealth, that the money a person makes by the sweat of his brow or by any other legal means for the most part should be his to keep and spend as he sees fit. It should not be taken from him to support others or to build or support projects that are not needed by the people or are not in the best interests of all the people.
I believe that government’s police powers should be severely limited.
I believe that the federal government’s power should be limited and that most legitimate powers of government should be vested in the states.
There was a time when most Americans believed as I do. No longer,
There was a time when the Republican party supported those things in which I believe. No longer.
A congress controlled in both houses by Republicans spends money like drunken sailors on projects that have nothing to do with the well-being of the nation. It is a congress that usurps the rights and powers of the states which all too often yield them in return for grants of federal tax money which should not have been taken from them in the first place.
A Republican president regularly joins with congress in an annual spending orgy.
A Republican president joins with the congress in making laws that infringe on privacy, that increase police powers, that assert government’s right to tell individuals not only what not to do but also what they must do.
It has reached the point, and I have said this before, that there isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between the two parties. And that is primarily because Republicans as a party have moved leftward, leaving those of us who have not moved with them flailing around looking for a place to go, a party to join, a leader to follow. Unfortunely, today we are a small minority so for the most part we stay as Republicans hoping to move the party back toward constitutional conservatism.
But I don’t kid myself. It’s not going to happen anytime soon."
Thank you, Mr. Nofziger, for so aptly putting into words those thoughts I have been harboring.
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