Are You Conservative or Liberal?
A LAWYER’S OPENING STATEMENT!
As a Constitution Lawyer, I will admit right up-front that I am biased to our Constitution, and to the way our great nation was founded well over 200 years ago. I am not a neutral, unprejudiced thinker. I come with a set of standards that I believe, represent, and voice. As a lawyer, this is my “Opening Statement.” Don’t all lawyers make one?
I’ve thought a lot about the changes we’ve had in the political arena in America, especially over the past 50 years, since the mid-1960’s. After John F. Kennedy was assassinated, on November 22, 1963, politics changed drastically. Change can be good, and change can be bad.
To me, there is a very easy way to determine whether a politician is liberal or conservative, at least when viewed from the perspective of how they think. This doesn’t define everyone in politics, but it does define the vast-majority of politicians.
The differences between conservatives and liberals can at least partially be seen and defined by what their names indicate and represent.
Conservative politicians want to CONSERVE things. They basically want to conserve two very general things:
(1) Our American Constitution, what it says, stands for, and that it governs.
(2) Moral laws, and ways of right living, that mainly come from God, and more particularly from his 10 commandments.
Most of them want to be under authority to both our Constitution and to God’s ways, and they let these two things control them, at least to a degree. This is mainly their foundation, at least for a good percentage of them. They have a platform on which they stand and from which they try to operate.
Liberal politicians want to be LIBERATED from things. They don’t want to be controlled by either our Constitution, or by God. They want to be free to let their mind and conscience lead them to pass any laws they want to dream up. They have no foundation to stand on or guide them. And the laws they pass can, and often do change very often, as their thinking changes.
President Bill Clinton said some striking words that to me were shattering. This was in 1987. What he said set the stage for other liberal politicians to follow him off into the sunset, singing his praises. Here is what he said:
“We are redefining unchangeable ideals
that have guided us from the beginning.”
How do you RE-define UN-changeable ideals? You can’t!
If something is unchangeable, it cannot be redefined. It is like an irresistible force meeting an immovable object.
Only changeable ideals can be changed and redefined. Clinton was merely voicing his liberal view.
From earlier and later things he said, we know that by unchangeable ideals he was talking about (1) our Constitution, and (2) our nation being known as ‘One Nation Under God,’ and ‘In God We Trust.’
This is also what he meant when he said, ‘From the beginning.’ Beginning means when America was formed by our founding fathers.
