Dear Stormfields Reader,
At the risk of sounding priggish and preachy, I must state this as openly as possible, especially given all that’s happened and been said (and not said) over the past two weeks or so.
Conservatism is NOT about bigotry; it is about conserving. The ONLY things worth conserving in this vale of tears are human dignity and human liberty–which know and own no skin tones, no races, no ethnicities, no gender, and no religion.
As one of the most obvious examples of this universal quality, please consider St. Augustine. A pagan convert to Christianity, a North African who might have looked Ethiopian, Semitic, or Mediterranean. Arguably, he was the very soul of the West, but he was most certainly NOT a European.
Another rather blatant example would be Jesus. A Jew, raised in a rather Greek culture, in a Roman polity.
From the very beginnings of philosophy in Ancient Greece (roughly 510BC in Miletus), the earliest thinkers were doing everything they could to find a universal principle, holding all peoples in all times and all places together. For those of us in the western tradition, we found the LOGOS of Heraclitus, later adopted by Jews (Memra) and Christians.
At roughly 500BC, Hinduism, Confucianism, and Buddhism, were discovering VERY similar ideas.
If we don’t conserve what is true, good, and beautiful as conservatives, our conservatism is worth less than nothing–it’s downright dangerous.
Conservatism is certainly not about white or black or brown or red or yellow or about man or woman. It’s certainly NOT about supremacy, and its not about power. It’s not about competition, and it’s not about owning lots of stuff.
It’s about the unique dignity of EVERY person ever created.
Yours, Brad.
P.S. I’ve seen several of my friends (folks I really admire) argue that conservatives who claim some form of equality are just succumbing to PC madness. If this is true, the West has been succumbing to it since Heraclitus. And, if true, the Catholic Church is utterly and completely PC and has been from day one.
Stormfields 