Why I Am a Conservative - Original Intent

Since it has become fashionable for some to portray politically conservative evangelicals as either unthinking lemmings who have been duped by the Republican Party or worse power hungry theocrats bent on establishing a fundamentalist theocracy, I thought I should get back to a topic I started long ago on Why I am a Conservative.  

My only post on the topic so far dealt with the concept of limited government as it is related to the Christian concept of the fallen nature of human beings.  (I had also written on why I fear theocracy). (More)

Today my interest is in “original intent”.  I am one who believes the USA was founded on some very broad principles that owe something to the Christianity of the Reformation.  I happen to believe the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution outline those principles.  Yes, there were other influences on those documents, but even though not everyone held to beliefs identical with the FRC in the 1700s, there was a general consensus among the founders was that the universe was created and had a purpose, that human beings were created in God’s image and had individual intrinsic value and that there were moral laws that applied to rich and poor, king and peasant.

The founding documents were an attempt to pass along foundational principles to future generations.  If the ideas and ideals that led to the American experiment could be forgotten, erased or replaced in a subsequent generation, then the experiment would fail.  If the founders did not intend for future generations to remain on the path they were setting, and  if the founders did not intend to solidify their governmental ideas into a lasting structure, then there would be no point in establishing a government at all or in penning the founding documents.

It comes down to this:  the words of the founding documents were intended to set objective boundaries and limits on what our country should look like – therefore what our country looks like cannot contradict what is written.  Therefore what was written has to have objective and limiting meaning.

Legal theory on the liberal side of the spectrum is fond of the “living document” idea, that the constitution changes and grows as culture changes.  I can say with some degree of confidence that this “living constitution” idea is the main reason most conservative baby boomers became conservative, whether they were religious or not, and Roe v. Wade was the single most influential catalyst.

“Judicial activism” is not, as President Obama absurdly suggested weeks ago, the courts overturning the decision of elected representatives.   Judicial activism is declaring something unconstitutional without building a case that relies on the text and intent of the constitution.  Pro-Life leaders trace the rise of their movement to the Griswold case which delineated a "right to privacy".  To be clear, a right to privacy could have been built from the actual text using concepts such as the forbidding of unwarranted search and seizure as an example.  But what the court unfortunately did was build a right from a wispy and intangible “aura” and fail to define what the limits of such a right might be.  The subsequent result was the overturning of laws in 48 states under Roe on the basis of this ill-defined and constitutionally questionable right to privacy.

Conservatives do not think the constitution a “dead” document – it can be amended based on the procedures laid down by the founders.  Conservatives only ask the questions of “constitutionality” be based in the language of the actual document first and foremost, with due consideration for the historical situation (tyranny) which led to its origin. 

Original intent is not a “Christian” position per se, but it does coincide with conservative theological views regarding how texts such as scripture should be read (what did the author intend) and with law as an extension of God’s character – unchanging standards that apply to all. 

I am not beholden to the Republican party.   But one has to ask, as a citizen, what are my alternatives?  On the issues of limited government and original intent, I would be hard pressed to find even a handful of Democrats I could support.  On these issues, Libertarians might seem attractive but in the end, one party usually wins my vote by default. 

If the constitution can mean anything a judge wants it to mean or can be bent to fit the demands of a new cultural shift then it means nothing and becomes not a living document but an irrelevant document.  Without lasting principles that limit the power of government, we are always a generation away from tyranny.   So I am not a conservative because I think conservatism is equivalent to Christian or because I have been hypnotized by the RNC or because I want to impose a theocracy on unsuspecting secular society.  I am a conservative because I want to preserve the democratic, constitutional republic that has offered a balance of “liberty and law” for over two centuries.