Frustration in the land of conservatives

How is it possible that the basic tenets of conservative thought can be so sensible, yet the party that purports to represent us is guided by such non-sensible gibberish? Republican leaders have ceded the true intellectual and moral high ground for convenience. The Republican Party now advocates government activism for the imposition of a theocratic moral code. We have chosen to enforce our values on others through legislation and regulation. This is most clearly evident in the Party’s positions on gay marriage.

Government’s only role in marriage should be that of a clerk or record keeper. Obtaining a marriage license was never intended to be a regulatory process in which the applicants were required to demonstrate their adherence to a set of vague societal values. Since the institution of the banns on marriage, the process was intended to make the pending union publicly known. This was done to permit the discovery of any information that one or the other parties to the union may not have been aware, such as the fact that one of them was already married. The unfortunate instances when government has tried to impose restrictions to marriage, such as prohibitions against interracial marriage, are almost always later recognized for the repugnance they are.

That the “code” happens to reflect the personal beliefs of many conservatives does nothing to diminish the fact that we have forsaken our fundamental belief on the role of government: “ That government is best which governs least”. When we abandon the restraint inherent in the conservative philosophy we sacrifice individual liberty for the false comfort of our imposed values. We accept the premise that the collective is better than the individual. We simply become Democrats with conservative values.