In Witness, Whittaker Chambers notes that feeling men of all stripes cannot help but be moved by the plight of their fellow man as they stuggle through the world – daily facing the curse of the world and struggling with disease, poverty, injustice, and death. He observes that the Communist is responding to this crisis by trying to ensure that all men are treated justly. The truly idealistic Communist seeks the good of all in his effort to promote a fully egalatarian society through the power of government.
The results of the last election affirm the insight of Chambers in stating that you cannot fight such a revolutionary spirit by simply standing for the status quo ante. The furor of the revolutionary can only be overcome by a counter-revolutionary spirit that is just as zealous in standing for an opposing principle.
Many pundits these days are rejoicing or mourning the death of conservatism based on a cursory analysis of the last election. There is ample bickering within the Republican party about the decisions made in the campaign and about the reasons for their defeat. I have heard of several who espouse a more moderate party going forward to try to win the middle and stand against the extreme liberal (socialistic and even communistic) forces represented by President-Elect Obama and his forthcoming administration.
It seems to me that the lesson of history, and the wisdom of Whittaker Chambers in particular, rails against such a course. It is not a moderate or lukewarm philosophy that can stand against the power of the revolutionaries who want to turn the United States into a mothering, protecting entity that will at least ostensibly attempt to provide justice and succor to all. It seems to me that what is required is an empassioned, articulate defense of the principles of liberty that conservatism represents.
What is required is a shout from the rooftops that socialism and communism are evil – that even though these concepts seem prima facie to be noble and good, they make great promises about the good of society and being fair to all – they fail to account for the fact that every human being has a soul. That to oppress the soul of a single human being for any well-meaning cause is to commit the greatest of atrocities. The abstract good of the collective can never be allowed to cause harm to the individual. The conservative also desires to save the world – but one life at a time, one family at a time – in the small, but also in the concrete. This is why The Forgotten Man must never be forgotten.
President-Elect Obama made a comment on the stump about selfishness. His claim is apparently that the desire of an individual to act as a free moral agent – making his own decisions about his life, liberty, and property – constitutes a selfish act. The desire to reduce the scope of government – and lets not forget that government exists by consent of the governed - and act freely with the ability and substance that we have – is not selfish – but simply the only sane course of action. In a masterful verbal pivot he compares his childhood act of sharing his own lunchtime sandwich with another child to the federal government taxing working Americans and redistributing those funds to others. This is more akin to a young Obama forcing one child to give a portion of his sandwich to another.
