| Why
I Am a Conservative
by Joseph Bast.
I was
a socialist at the age of 15, a libertarian at 19, and a conservative
(albeit a libertarianconservative
or conservative-libertarian) at 26. For the past 20 years I have
been a full-time
advocate for limited government. I’ve been able to study an
intellectual tradition that traces its
origins to history’s greatest thinkers and bravest doers,
to work with people I greatly respect, and
to help free people from the tyranny – often petty but sometimes
deadly – of government. That is
why I am a conservative.
When
I was 15, I wrote a class paper on life in the Soviet Union based
largely on a glossy promotional booklet supplied by one of the communist
country’s propaganda arms in Washington DC.
I was so impressed by the country’s free health care, universal
education, commitment to equality, absence of crime and pollution,
etc. that I clipped out an 8-1/2" x 11" picture of Lenin,
framed it with cardboard and aluminum foil, and hung it over my
bed. Being a socialist made for fun debates with teachers, high
school buddies, and a favorite aunt for a few years, but then I
read Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged and bounced to the right. As
a freshman at the University of Chicago I was taught the classical
liberal tradition and joined a campus libertarian club. Soon I was
a Friedman-style libertarian majoring in economics. One might say
I still am.
At
26, I was hired by David Padden to start The Heartland Institute,
a "think tank " in Chicago
devoted to reducing the size and cost of government. Padden, a libertarian,
taught me that
libertarianism is a political theory about the proper role of government,
not a moral theory about
how to live your life or a philosophy that explains "the permanent
things. " Nor, I would soon
discover on my own, is libertarianism a social or political movement
sufficiently large or self
aware to have political consequences.
In
the conservative movement, I found guidance on moral issues and
allies in the real world
willing to tackle the difficult task of shrinking the state. Conservative
writers such as Peter
Berger, Robert Conquest, M. Stanton Evans, Russell Kirk, Frank Meyer,
Michael Novak,
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and Richard Weaver were indispensable guides
to understanding
freedom and its opposite, statism. Conservative think tanks such
as The Heritage Foundation,
American Enterprise Institute, and Hoover Institution provided models
for my own research and
writing and continue to show how ideas, properly applied to current
issues, can change public
policy.
Over
the years I’ve worked with men of great genius and dedication,
including Gary Becker,
Richard Epstein, Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell, Justice Clarence
Thomas, Walter Williams,
and scores of lesser-known but just-as-remarkable scholars. I also
have gotten to know the heads
of scores of conservative and libertarian think tanks, many of them
doing cutting-edge work on
such issues as school reform, tax reduction, and economic liberty.
Being on the "same side " as
people of such remarkable talent and knowledge removes any doubts
about the integrity of our
principles.
The
conservative movement, because it is a movement and not simply a
theory or doctrine, has
members who sometimes disagree. Probably the biggest gap is between
libertarian-conservatives
like me and social- or cultural-conservatives such as Gary Bauer
and Pat Buchanan. Is it proper
to use government force to change the way people choose to live
their lives?
Liberals
do not object to using social insurance and income redistribution
schemes to protect
people from the adverse consequences of their own destructive choices.
The results have been
disastrous. Social-conservatives also seem willing to resort to
government force, though for a
different reason: to have government punish people for acting in
ways that violate Biblical or
traditional moral standards. Could the results be any better?
Most
conservatives I know want to be left alone, not to impose their
values on others. They
support new laws only to defend their culture from atheists, gays,
radical environmentalists, and
others who avail themselves of government laws and bureaucracies.
Choosing between "fighting
fire with fire " and unilateral disarmament isn’t easy,
even for libertarians.
These
disagreements are minor distractions among friends and allies. Conservatives
share a
commitment to finding the truth and a willingness to question prevailing
wisdom. Conservatives
in the public policy arena today are far more likely to be intellectuals
– in the sense of people
who love to read books (especially old books) and get to the roots
of complicated issues – than are liberals, who seem to rely
on fundraising letters, polls, and The Nation to back up what they
think they know. Conservatives usually understand history; liberals
simply ignore it.
Finally,
and most important to me given the mission of The Heartland Institute,
is conservatives are much more willing to take their chances in
a less-government world than are liberals. Perhaps this is because
liberals are at the end of a long and successful run of using government
to impose their beliefs on people and are intent on protecting existing
government laws and programs, whereas conservatives are looking
for allies and justifications to repeal laws and programs that threaten
their values.
Whatever
their reasons, conservatives aren’t afraid to empower people
by letting them spend and invest their own money, choose a college
and a career, own their own homes and cars, defend themselves and
their families (with guns if necessary), and choose the schools
their children attend. Liberals somehow have ended up on the wrong
side on all these matters. That’s why I am a conservative.
Joseph
L. Bast is president of The Heartland Institute and coauthor of
several books, the latest being Education & Capitalism (Hoover
Institution Press, 2004).
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