Why I Am a Constitutional Conservative, and not a Libertarian

A commenter once asked me how I am not a libertarian, considering my many libertarian leanings. I suspect that in this commenter's mind is the notion that you have authoritarian figures on the right and left, but libertarians in the middle. So, it was with some interest that I read Ann Coulter's article this week entitled Get Rid of Government-But First Make Me President! I had to laugh at the title, but a little thinking about it seems to take all the merriment out of the laughter.  What Ms. Coulter is doing is making the argument for a small, defined government to oversee those duties that no other institution can practically fulfill.  It is why I am a Constitutional Conservative, and not a libertarian (much less a Libertarian.)  A conservative believes in the fallen nature of man.  No man can avoid sinning, though many are able to live good lives as we on earth define "good."  At the heart of libertarianism is an unspoke philosophy that men are essentially good.  If true, then there is no problem, but if it is not true, and human history tells us it is not, then we need to build checks and balances into government to make it as difficult as possible for someone to obtain concentrated power.

A few weeks ago I had a discussion with someone in which I explained my theory of government. Government started out among our earliest ancestors as the biggest, most ruthless and meanest thug saying to the other members of the tribe "If you pay me, I'll protect you from guys like me." It is no different than a mob protection racket, and things at heart haven't changed in the interim. The thug gets paid, alright, but his protection seems to be at his discretion whenever he decides to bestir himself. A Leftist "friend" immediately drew the wrong conclusion, and blurted "So, you want to get rid of government, huh" It was a statement.

Hmmmmmm.

The point I thought I was making is that because of this tendency of government to promise things it can not deliver, and to intervene where it does not belong, we should keep government small, and confined to those things for which there is no other solution.  In other words, write a Constitution that defines very rigidly the duties of each branch of government, then constantly force the people we hire to run it to stay within those bounds.  Everything else should be left up to other arrangements.  As mortal men (and women), prone to all the sins of men, we need to govern ourselves in some way.  We have tried kings, Pharaohs, sultans, emperors, and the like: the "strong man" theory.  The problem with these forms of government is that they were all composed of men (and women.)  The Left still believes in the idea of the "Right People," a theory that is little different from the "strong man" theory. To the Leftist mind, if they could just find the "right people," then their Utopian ideas would finally be executed as intended.  So, the human race has been treated to a gruesome spectacle of blood and gore caused by dictators of various stripes attempting to force people into a mold of their own dreaming.

Our Constitution was, and remains the first really new idea in governance to come along in history.  As brilliant as it was, however, it has been breached, quite on purpose, by both the Left and the Right in seeking more power over others.  It has become so distorted and so bloated with unnecessary programs that I suspect it could stand a great deal of chopping by Libertarians without doing much damage to the core ideas it embodied.  Cowardly people have failed to utilized the means provided by the Constitution itself to check the other branches of government.  The American people themselves have too often been off watching March Madness or American Idol, while things went awry under their noses.  What we need is to actually remove a president or two for overstepping his Constitutional authority.  That is the way the Constitution is designed to work.  Only two presidents have been impeached, and none has been removed.  If we did remove a president or two more frequently, we would not now find ourselves in this lawless state.  If everyone took his position in Congress seriously, more of them would also be removed.  But because people remain that are vain, venal, and power hungry, does not mean I am willing to abandon the idea of our Constitutional Republic.  While I partially support many libertarian ideas because they make a sense, I am still a conservative working for a restoration of our Constitution.