TODAY'S 'CONSERVATIVES' HAVE FORSAKEN CONSERVATIVE VALUES
Written by David Niose

I'm not really sure what the word "conservative" means anymore. In the old days, it described someone who stood for slow change, someone who was skeptical of ideas that significantly altered the status quo. Over the years the term evolved to include anyone who opposes the notion of big government, one whose philosophy is consistent with a Jeffersonian, laissez-faire view.

None of this sounds very threatening. The problem, however, is that none of this describes the folks who prance around today claiming to be conservatives.

Conservatives get lots of mileage by accusing their opponents of being "tax-and-spend liberals." If liberals get elected, the argument goes, hang on to your wallet. The public has been convinced that fiscal responsibility is clearly the realm of so-called conservatives.

But if that's the case, then why was it that the administration headed by that "liberal" Bill Clinton gave us the only balanced budgets in decades? The current administration, headed by a man who ran as a "compassionate conservative," has produced the most massive deficits ever, budgets that hemorrhage red ink.

Of course, apologists have an explanation for the current state of the budget. Their mantra: "September 11 changed everything." What a great fallback - a national crisis that can be used as a catch-all for every act of poor judgment committed by the "conservatives" who sit in power.

And in the eyes of conservatives, Sept. 11 did indeed change everything, including their understanding of civil liberties. Whereas freedom was once at the core of conservatism, to the point where many conservatives considered themselves libertarians, today's conservatives aren't so concerned about civil liberties. In fact, they are leading the charge to give government the power to pry into the private lives of citizens, always under the guise of regulating morality or ensuring security.

Indeed, if there's a politician sticking his nose into your bedroom, trying to tell you what is moral and what is not, you can bet it is a conservative. If someone is trying to restrict access to birth control or other reproductive rights, almost certainly it's a conservative. And if there's a government agent tapping your phone without a warrant, you can be assured that he got his orders from a conservative. Yet, we are told, freedom is a conservative value.

It was a Republican, Dwight Eisenhower, who warned, back in the days when conservatives arguably had real concerns about the scope of government, that America was threatened by a "military-industrial complex." Under today's conservatives, however, that military-industrial complex has become a behemoth, devouring tax dollars in the name of "national security" in a never-ending war against an elusive, faceless enemy.

Today's conservatives would make any Jeffersonian shudder, not just because of their lack of fiscal restraint, but also because of their moralizing. Traditional Jeffersonian conservatism has roots in the Enlightenment, where rational thinking was esteemed and outward displays of religiosity were discouraged. But that kind of talk is out-of-date for today's conservatives, who, unlike their forbearers, find the notion of secularism to be distasteful. Values can only be defined by conservative religion, they tell us.

Jefferson, of course, was pre-Darwin and lived long before the great modern discoveries that have explained many of the mysteries surrounding the origins of the universe and the evolution of life. Being a man of science, he would no doubt be fascinated by these great advances in human knowledge. Interestingly, however, even though he lived in an age that lacked today's advanced scientific knowledge, he was a religious skeptic and freethinker.

Today's conservatives, however, don't follow this scientific, rationalistic tradition. Sure, conservatives will sometimes use science pragmatically, paying experts to produce scientific opinions that support certain conservative positions (that global warming is a fiction, for example), but this is just a means to achieving policy goals. There is little interest in actually teaching science to children, especially if the facts aren't consistent with conservative religious views.

Hence, defined by today's standards, the word "conservative" means big-spending, fiscally irresponsible, pro-deficit, militaristic, righteous and anti-liberty.

And yet "liberal" is a dirty word?

David A. Niose is a Fitchburg lawyer and an officer of the Washington-based American Humanist Association.