Kingsley Guy The Sun Sentinel

March 25, 2012
Kingsley Guy
The Sun Sentinel

RE: “It’s Hard to Define a True Conservative” – Some comments on your column today about how Robert Taft, Hadley Arkes, Strom Thurmond, Thomas Sowell, and Nat Hentoff could sup, with regular spoons, at the same table.

Mr. Guy,

Your article shows the political breadth of the American Conservative movement.

Joe the Plumber, Calvin Coolidge, Tom Osborne, and Bobby Jindal could sit at the same table. It’s hard to leave out Disraeli and Thatcher but I will try to keep the discussion on this side of the Atlantic.

It’s usually easy to spot a Conservative.

He is always aware of “the conflict between order and freedom”.

But…

He is the one who smiles when people call Kipling a racist or a sexist.
He is the one who prefers T.S. Eliot to Rod McKuen.
He is the one who knows that the Davis Bacon Act and the minimum wage couldn’t have had a more harmful effect on American Blacks if noted Klan leader Robert Byrd [D-WVA] had written them.
He is the one who knows that after reading Richard Weaver and Alan Tate he will search in vain for a similar wellspring of knowledge from modern American Liberalism.
He is the one who knows that Buckley was both blessed and buttressed by his dear friend Russell Kirk. Kirk on Burke and Eliot has made this country a richer place.
He is the one who having read Charles Reich and John Rawls knows what it is to have eaten a large bowl of whipped cream.
He is the one who knows that Cicero was the noblest Roman of them all.
He is the one who knows why the Greeks in the agora made democracy a four letter word.
He is the one who knows that the last time temperatures spiked upward we got the Renaissance.
He is the one who knows that Dr. J’s first name is Samuel.
He is the one who knew of the Permanent Things before he knew what they were.
He knows that the saying on the back of the dollar bill – He has blessed our undertakings – is true.
He knows that government, any government, can’t give anything to anyone without first taking it from someone else.
He knows he is a legatee of the magical thing called Western Civilization.
He knows that civilizations from the Fertile Crescent, from the Andes, from the steppes of Russia, from anywhere in Africa combined can’t stand in the shadow of his.
He knows that rights are not given to us by a government but are ours from birth. He knows they are ours from “beyond the stars”.
He knows that the road to Auschwitz begins at an abortion clinic.
He knows that he must preserve the estate accumulated for him by DWEMs. Dead White European Males.
He knows that order is preferable to chaos.
He knows that a miracle happened in Philadelphia in 1787.
He knows that an ounce of gold bought a good suit and shoes for James Madison when he was writing in 1787. He knows that it still will do so today.
He knows that an accounting of his stewardship will be required.
He knows that lists like this that do not mention C.S. Lewis, The Federalist Papers, de Tocqueville, Whittaker Chambers, Hayek, Friedman, Jeffrey Hart, Podhoretz, Chesterton, Solzhenitsyn – I’ll run out of ink – is never adequate.
He knows that “Man is a little bit of straw into which God has breathed”.

And he knows that any country that can give us the hula hoop, the Salk vaccine,
Green Stamps, microwaves and the MRI, the Atomic Bomb, the Green Bay Packer Sweep, giant shrimp, the Big Mac, Texas Bar-B-Q, the DC3 and the SR71, Teflon, Revlamid, safety razors, John Basilone, disposable cameras, CB radio, seltzer, The Duke, spandex, Walt Disney, Harley Hogs, Kemmons Wilson, the Dance Theater of Harlem, September 2, 1945, “A Confederacy of Dunces”, the designated hitter, FedEx, apples at Easter, corn dogs, microprocessors, Omaha Beach, the electric can opener, powdered eggs, one big Wall – down, faded jeans, Beanie Babies, SDI, and Ronald Reagan probably does travel under God’s protection.

We survived disco, leisure suits, and Jimmy Carter.

I almost forgot the Moon shot. Fly there. Pick up some souvenirs. Fly back. Another day at the office.

There is one thing that binds all of the above together. Free men did them. When it is nut cutting time Conservatives stand for freedom. A modern American Liberal stands for…stands for…Midnight Basketball, “fairness”, and everything in life ending in a scoreless tie. Their “Fatal Conceit”, one born of an abundance of non-malodorous fecal matter syndrome, is the Sisyphean task of pushing that rock plus carping about why everybody else isn’t smart like me.


Kevin Smith
WARRIORBARDIT@BELLSOUTH.NET

PS – The definition of a true Liberal begins with “My favorite color is plaid”.