Conserve This
A pet-peeve
What follows is a pet-peeve on political language. Make of it what you will.
I hate how most media outlets continue to refer to the Republican Party here in the U.S. and right-wing political personages and ideas here and elsewhere as “conservative.”
I have always considered myself a certain type of conservative, at least dispositionally. You could say that I think it’s best if we all try to be “quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires” (James 1:19-20). But I’ve had to leave that label behind for a long time now to avoid association with things I can’t countenance. You could also call me a liberal in the sense that “it is for freedom that Christ has set us free” (Gal. 5:1), and I don’t think systems that seek to minutely control every aspect of life are good for humans.
It’s really precisely on these grounds that I’ve drifted from the Republican Party ever since it began to become clear that the Iraq War was based on false intelligence and seemed to be accomplishing little more than an increasing body count and a global backlash to American imperial attitudes. I fled from it altogether since 2015, when it started to be fairly obvious that the party could not contain the Trump phenomenon and began embracing the transvaluation of values that now seems to be nearly complete.
So to my point: there is nothing whatsoever “conservative” about what is going on in America right now. It is a radical revision and reversal of the very things most worth conserving in our national experiment—rule of law, democratic norms, a public square shaped by open debate, a free press that reports the truth accurately, political leaders accountable to voters through public appearances and free and fair elections, the separation of powers, a generally predictable role of government in life, etc.
Instead of conserving anything, those in power have torn down Chesterton’s fence every chance they get—breaking things with glee that took generations to build and may take generations to restore if we are given the opportunity.
The potshots the right takes at things like FEMA, the CDC, NOAA, Special Education funding, and so many other public goods sponsored by the U.S. government are having dramatic real-world consequences now and will only accelerate chaos as their services—which people rely on without realizing it every day—continue to erode. (For an example just this week, look at the catastrophic flooding in coastal communities in Alaska that were poorly predicted and will require a massive response that needs more resources than the state can provide).
This is to say nothing of the rampant corruption and cronyism on full display (not even bothering to hide). Of the gutting and weaponizing of other nonpartisan agencies like the FBI, the DOJ, the FAA, the FCC, and the military. Of the absolutely reprehensible use of ICE as an unaccountable secret police force carrying out unlawful abductions and withholding of due process. All of this is impinging mightily on provisions of the first amendment for freedom of speech, press, and assembly, the fourth amendment (freedom from unreasonable search and seizure), the fifth amendment (requirement of due process), the sixth & seventh amendments (rights to counsel, right to trial for criminal or civil cases), and eighth amendment (freedom from cruel and unusual punishment).
When people say they are protesting with the slogan #nokings, this is precisely what is at issue. The current behaviors of the federal government are aligned too snugly with the overreaches of an unaccountable monarchy. Don’t believe me? Read that most subversive of documents, The Declaration of Independence. What is being done today in the name of “freedom” and "conservatism” are just the sorts of privations of life and liberty that sparked the American Revolution a quarter-millennium ago.
Let us not deceive ourselves either—this is not wholly new. Our government has often failed to live up to these codes and ideals, and it is too easy for us to turn a blind eye toward such abuses until it is our ox being gored. Many constituencies would look at today’s news and see nothing new at all. Even so, I’m laying blame with the people and party in power now, and not the loyal opposition—not least because they told us exactly what they planned to do and how they planned to do it before the election.
But more than all of the current regime’s actions (I use this term rather than “the Administration” because the executive branch could do little of what it has without the gasoline Congress and the Supreme Court have poured on the fire, whether by design or neglect) is the sense of delight in the chaos that pervades our country’s institutions today. There is nothing “conservative” about what is happening now, and certainly not about rejoicing in the destruction of norms and institutions and structures.
It will take some deeper, moral conservatism to build back from whatever ruins the modern right leaves when it finally collapses. We will need a well of remembering to draw from to recapture what could be when we work together for the good of our neighbors as a society, if we are ever again given the chance to build something like what is being torn down around us now. Reality has a habit of outliving its detractors, so despair is not option open to us.
Perhaps the deepest cut continues to be the way Americans who call themselves Christians have also experienced this same transvaluation of values, being instrumentalized by political forces they sought to wield in their favor, and becoming like them. When a people meant to be characterized by radical love of one another, the marginalized, neighbors, and even enemies (all of these are spelled out just in Romans 12, but they're all over the whole of the New Testament) can lionize violence and cruelty, we’ve lost the plot. A “conservative” Christianity that claims to hold on to Scripture but loses Christ is holding on to nothing at all.
As the church is, for better or for worse, my “lane” and my people, this is where I lament and pray and continue to walk in truth where I have opportunity.
