To me, Conservatism is an attitude about learning the lessons of the past. A philosophical attitude of caution because the history of the world is one of tyranny, poverty and suffering. Conservatism wants to, literally “conserve” the freedom and liberty we enjoy as a result of the great experiment undertaken by our founding fathers. An experiment that has as its heart, the theory that individuals can manage their lives far better than any government of monarchy, meritocracy or dictatorship. Only the most deluded malcontent would not concede that this great American experiment has been extremely successful.
Societies directly opposed to this notion have come and gone, leaving nothing more than dusty pages in historical tomes and the bones of citizens who never had a chance to experience the incredible freedoms Americans take for granted every day. The freedom to worship how we see fit, the freedom to both share and prosper from our ideas (both absurd and ingenious), the freedom to openly congregate and criticize our government and the freedom to participate in a free market. These are examples of activities the vast majority of the population of the world can never participate in.
Opposed to Conservatism, Progressivism is an attitude about an imagined future. A Utopian future where social justice and economic justice is attained through government regulation and state ownership of all wealth generation, or at least, total state regulation of wealth generating enterprise. Disregarded is the notion that the means and proposed form of governments to achieve this utopia have been proven disastrous, flawed and unworkable time and time again. The Soviet Union, Cuba, Venezuela, China and North Korea stand as recent examples of the failures of Socialism. Of course, many claim that these “Marxist” forms of Socialism is not the form of Socialism they want to implement. They believe the only reason that socialism has failed in every attempt (murdering and impoverishing countless billions along the way) is because it “wasn’t done the right way”. Some even claim to support a form of “capitalist socialism” (an idiosyncrasy, to be sure).
The truth is: there is no right way to achieve the “social justice” and “economic equality” promised by Socialism. Governments cannot forcefully pull people up from poverty and squalor… they can only bring everyone else down to equal levels of poverty and squalor through forced confiscation of wealth and private property. Government can guarantee only equal JUSTICE, and even that is dependant on human nature and the morality of those select few whom write and enforce the laws. There must be checks and balances on those who enforce the laws, and those who write the laws. The framers of our Constitution and Bill of Rights recognized this weakness in human nature and the ease which power can corrupt. This is why they implemented a separation of legislative, judicial and executive powers unlike any system implemented before. These checks and balances were essentially a recognition that centralized power inevitably leads to tyranny, a lesson the founders learned through the study of history and philosophy. Socialism has ultimately lead to centralization (and inevitably, tyranny) every time it has ever been tried.
North Korea currently employs the purest form of Marxist Socialism readily evident on the planet. One need only examine the remarkable photo embedded below to determine the horrific results of such systems of government. It is a nighttime satellite image of the Korean peninsula. The dark, desolate expanse in the north is North Korea.
South Korea, by no means an example of capitalism in its purest form, but capitalist, none-the-less, glows with a bright light that brilliantly illustrates the differences of the two societies. The North Korean government has placed such an emphasis on military might that the people are not allowed to enjoy the safety that comes with something as simple as a reprieve from the darkness of night. The people have no say because the Communist government knows better than the proletariat: what is good for the “community”. The wasteful expenditure of costly energy for simple comfort when everyone should be sleeping anyways cannot be justified when nuclear arms are needed to combat the evil Capitalists in America.
In an embarrassing moment of teleprompter-less sincerity during his campaign, our progressive president willingly espoused the need to ensure “wealth is evenly distributed” to “Joe the Plumber”. Make no mistake; this professed need to “redistribute the wealth” has the same deep philosophical and Marxist ancestry as the Communist government policy that has millions of North Koreans shivering in the darkness with no hope to ever partake in an activity as simple as reading at night, if not by candlelight.
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