People use the term "conservative" quite a lot, but in ways that I find confusing, so I am interested in how you yourself define it. Or if you would call yourself a conservative, how that fits into your political identify.
Some conservatives believe in small government, but then there are big government conservatives like Reagan and George W. Bush. Some believe in individual liberties, but others talk like they'd take liberties away (if they could), like the Pat Robertsons. Some are fiscal conservatives, but we have had huge budget deficits under conservative presidents. And so on....
to conserve the Constitution and defend the idea of a representative republic. I don't think that a true democracy is a durable government. California functions as a democracy due to their proposition process and that has led to making the state close to ungovernable. when people vote themselves goodies things get dangerous. I believe in balanced budgets and leaving things like education to the states as long as the states exercise power that meets constitutional requirement. federal intervention was needed in education because segregation denied all citizens equal protection under the law. then you have the "social conservatives" who, it seems to me, want to turn the clock back to the 50's when Christian doctrine could be taught in schools and gays could be denied basic human rights.
Hmmm. Most people would call me liberal, but in many ways, I am conservative. I believe the Constitution is correct and there should be complete separation of church and state. That means, I can't support anti-abortion groups, because they base their beliefs on the religious belief that the soul enters the body at the moment of conception. However, this imposes a religious belief on those who believe the soul enters the body after the 3d month of pregnancy, or those who believe it doesn't enter the body until the moment the baby is born and makes its first cry. Some even say there is no soul.
I also believe that for there to be equal rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, the government can't be run only for multi-billion dollar corporations, and that American businesses can't fire all their workers to get cheap labor overseas and also not have to uphold safety and health rules they'd have to abide by in America. If a corporation is U.S. based, they should have a tariff imposed on them for products manufactured overseas, so that American workers won't so easily be losing their jobs. This, too, is implied in The Declaration of Independence -- and Teddy Roosevelt made anti-trust laws to ensure that a few rich people couldn't monopolize business. I think that makes me a conservative.
Nowadays, being a Conservative means running the country for the benefit of the super-wealthy, taking jobs away from Americans in the name of getting higher profits, and allowing Fundamentalist religious believers to impose their beliefs on education and health care on a national level.
With all respect, that was rather vague. Would you care to elaborate on what you feel were the ideals of the conservative movement of the 60's that todays conservatives have abandoned? I am neither agreeing nor disagreeing with you. It is just that I failed mind reading in college! LOL!
A conservative is one who favors small government with equitable division of responsibilities between Federal and state governments, fiscal responsibility, individual liberties, adherence to the Constitution, and separation of church and state. This is what I call a "secular conservative". I use that term because "conservative" has come to be equated with the religious right (which is often neither). These folks would impose their narrow Taliban-like views on everyone at gunpoint, thereby depriving people of liberties, not extending them. If they want to go back to the caves they should just go and leave the rest of us alone.
I have dealt with the terms "Conservative" and "liberal" in the contexts of politics, church, and social issues on multiple occasions in the past..... My take is that typically a "Conservative" thinks you cannot do something you think you can....... A liberal thinks they can do something you think they can't.
The term conservative libels have pretty much lost any real meaning to me they seem to be eitat too be thrown at each other. There does seem to be a number of themes in the groups that identify themselves s “conservative 1, the group that looks at market forces as a way of guiding both the country an economy. This group looks at the benefits of globalization from a profit perspective. 2. theme is the group that focuses on values, “family issues, abortion for years this was the loudest group as well as the engine but Now there is a third theme the tea movement to early to tell what will happen t them There is also the foreign affairs conflict one group saying Americas for Americans first they tend to be more isolationist. getting involved only to protect americium interest The other group is one that says America needs to project power on t global together with the belief is to assit countries to become democratic.
unfortunately these days more and more it seems to be these people...not the thoughtful idealists that were conservatives in the past
Texas Conservatives Win Curriculum Change By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr. Published: March 12, 2010
AUSTIN, Tex. — After three days of turbulent meetings, the Texas Board of Education on Friday approved a social studies curriculum that will put a conservative stamp on history and economics textbooks, stressing the superiority of American capitalism, questioning the Founding Fathers’ commitment to a purely secular government and presenting Republican political philosophies in a more positive light.
Mary Helen Berlanga accused fellow members of the Board of Education of “rewriting history.” Related
* The Lede Blog: Textbooks a Texas Dentist Could Love (March 12, 2010)
The vote was 10 to 5 along party lines, with all the Republicans on the board voting for it.
The board, whose members are elected, has influence beyond Texas because the state is one of the largest buyers of textbooks. In the digital age, however, that influence has diminished as technological advances have made it possible for publishers to tailor books to individual states.
In recent years, board members have been locked in an ideological battle between a bloc of conservatives who question Darwin’s theory of evolution and believe the Founding Fathers were guided by Christian principles, and a handful of Democrats and moderate Republicans who have fought to preserve the teaching of Darwinism and the separation of church and state.
Since January, Republicans on the board have passed more than 100 amendments to the 120-page curriculum standards affecting history, sociology and economics courses from elementary to high school. The standards were proposed by a panel of teachers.
“We are adding balance,” said Dr. Don McLeroy, the leader of the conservative faction on the board, after the vote. “History has already been skewed. Academia is skewed too far to the left.”
Battles over what to put in science and history books have taken place for years in the 20 states where state boards must adopt textbooks, most notably in California and Texas. But rarely in recent history has a group of conservative board members left such a mark on a social studies curriculum.
Efforts by Hispanic board members to include more Latino figures as role models for the state’s large Hispanic population were consistently defeated, prompting one member, Mary Helen Berlanga, to storm out of a meeting late Thursday night, saying, “They can just pretend this is a white America and Hispanics don’t exist.”
“They are going overboard, they are not experts, they are not historians,” she said. “They are rewriting history, not only of Texas but of the United States and the world.”
The curriculum standards will now be published in a state register, opening them up for 30 days of public comment. A final vote will be taken in May, but given the Republican dominance of the board, it is unlikely that many changes will be made.
The standards, reviewed every decade, serve as a template for textbook publishers, who must come before the board next year with drafts of their books. The board’s makeup will have changed by then because Dr. McLeroy lost in a primary this month to a more moderate Republican, and two others — one Democrat and one conservative Republican — announced they were not seeking re-election.
There are seven members of the conservative bloc on the board, but they are often joined by one of the other three Republicans on crucial votes. There were no historians, sociologists or economists consulted at the meetings, though some members of the conservative bloc held themselves out as experts on certain topics.
The conservative members maintain that they are trying to correct what they see as a liberal bias among the teachers who proposed the curriculum. To that end, they made dozens of minor changes aimed at calling into question, among other things, concepts like the separation of church and state and the secular nature of the American Revolution.
“I reject the notion by the left of a constitutional separation of church and state,” said David Bradley, a conservative from Beaumont who works in real estate. “I have $1,000 for the charity of your choice if you can find it in the Constitution.”
They also included a plank to ensure that students learn about “the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schlafly, the Contract With America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association.”
Dr. McLeroy, a dentist by training, pushed through a change to the teaching of the civil rights movement to ensure that students study the violent philosophy of the Black Panthers in addition to the nonviolent approach of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He also made sure that textbooks would mention the votes in Congress on civil rights legislation, which Republicans supported.
“Republicans need a little credit for that,” he said. “I think it’s going to surprise some students.”
Mr. Bradley won approval for an amendment saying students should study “the unintended consequences” of the Great Society legislation, affirmative action and Title IX legislation. He also won approval for an amendment stressing that Germans and Italians as well as Japanese were interned in the United States during World War II, to counter the idea that the internment of Japanese was motivated by racism.
Other changes seem aimed at tamping down criticism of the right. Conservatives passed one amendment, for instance, requiring that the history of McCarthyism include “how the later release of the Venona papers confirmed suspicions of communist infiltration in U.S. government.” The Venona papers were transcripts of some 3,000 communications between the Soviet Union and its agents in the United States.
Mavis B. Knight, a Democrat from Dallas, introduced an amendment requiring that students study the reasons “the founding fathers protected religious freedom in America by barring the government from promoting or disfavoring any particular religion above all others.”
It was defeated on a party-line vote.
After the vote, Ms. Knight said, “The social conservatives have perverted accurate history to fulfill their own agenda.”
In economics, the revisions add Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek, two champions of free-market economic theory, among the usual list of economists to be studied, like Adam Smith, Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes. They also replaced the word “capitalism” throughout their texts with the “free-enterprise system.”
“Let’s face it, capitalism does have a negative connotation,” said one conservative member, Terri Leo. “You know, ‘capitalist pig!’ ”
In the field of sociology, another conservative member, Barbara Cargill, won passage of an amendment requiring the teaching of “the importance of personal responsibility for life choices” in a section on teenage suicide, dating violence, sexuality, drug use and eating disorders.
“The topic of sociology tends to blame society for everything,” Ms. Cargill said.
Even the course on world history did not escape the board’s scalpel.
Cynthia Dunbar, a lawyer from Richmond who is a strict constitutionalist and thinks the nation was founded on Christian beliefs, managed to cut Thomas Jefferson from a list of figures whose writings inspired revolutions in the late 18th century and 19th century, replacing him with St. Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and William Blackstone. (Jefferson is not well liked among conservatives on the board because he coined the term “separation between church and state.”)
“The Enlightenment was not the only philosophy on which these revolutions were based,” Ms. Dunbar said.
A version of this article appeared in print on March 13, 2010, on page A10 of the New York edition.
* Texas Conservatives Seek Deeper Stamp on Texts (March 10, 2010) * Founding Father? (February 14, 2010) * Texas Shuts Door on Millions in Education Grants (January 14, 2010) * William Wayne Justice, Judge Who Remade Texas, Dies at 89 (October 16, 2009)
Somehow conservatism now is mixed up with the religious right. Goldwater conservatism was NOT. He was against the fanaticism of people like Jerry Falwell, for example.
In the 60s conservatism meant that the federal government should not intrude itself in state government. It should collect taxes for things that affect the whole country, such as defense, interstate highways, etc. It was more like the libertarian view, I think, which guarantees the rights of the individual as opposed to the good of the community, and not tied to wealth Republicans. It puts all the power on the individual, as well, to make his own life good.
It's changed now. It's Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney and Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck now. William F Buckley and Barry Goldwater must be turning over in their graves.
Billy James Hargis, who died on Saturday aged 79, founded an interdenominational movement called the Christian Crusade and built up a huge broadcasting empire with outspoken attacks on Communism; but he distinguished himself by becoming the first American television evangelist to be brought down by allegations of sexual misconduct.
A burly Oklahoman "bawl and jump" preacher with puffy, porcine eyes, Hargis built his reputation with belligerent attacks on all the usual targets - homosexuals, permissiveness, drugs, Communists, journalists, women's libbers - to which he added some of his own. The Beatles were a butt of his wrath: "When the Beatles thrust their hips forwards while holding their guitars and shout, "Oh Yeah!!!" who cannot know what they really mean!" he thundered.
During the 1950s and 1960s, Hargis achieved top billing on 250 television and 500 radio stations, founded a Christian college and a newspaper, published more than 100 books, issued record albums and went on barnstorming tours in America and around the world. He was credited, along with the Rev Carl McIntyre, with giving birth to the "Christian Right" and reviving Christian fundamentalism in post-war America.
In 1953 he received international coverage when he visited West Germany and launched a "Bible balloon barrage" in which a million hydrogen ballons bearing biblical passages were floated towards Russia, Czechoslovakia, Poland and East Germany, "to succour the spiritually starved captives of Communism."
In 1968 his organisation published the bestselling Is the School House the Proper Place to Teach Raw Sex? But in 1976 Hargis found himself the subject of an article in Time magazine in which it was alleged that he was in the habit of giving impromptu sex lessons to students at his American Christian College in Tulsa.
In 1974 Hargis had conducted a wedding for two of his students. On their wedding night, in an episode reminiscent of the scene in Cabaret when Sally Bowles and Brian Roberts admit to having had affairs with the bisexual Max, the bride and groom confessed to each other that neither was a virgin and discovered that Hargis had deflowered them both.
Not long afterwards, three male members of the college choir, the All- American Kids, approached the college authorities alleging that they too had been sexually abused by Hargis over a period of three years.
Hargis had allegedly justified his acts by citing the Old Testament friendship between David and Jonathan and, just in case his victims were minded to consult biblical texts that were sympathetic, threatened to "blacklist" them for life if they talked. When he was confronted by his colleagues, he allegedly admitted his guilt, blaming his behaviour on "genes and chromosomes."
But he later denied the charges, complaining of "liberal subversion" and "the forces of Satan out to silence anti-Communism." Nevertheless, he was forced to resign as college president. Without the income Hargis generated, the college closed in 1977.
An adopted child, Billy James Hargis was born on August 3 1925 at Texarkana, Texas. After Texarkana High School, he attended the Ozark Bible College at Bentonville, Arkansas, but dropped out before he finished the course.
Despite his lack of formal qualifications, Hargis was ordained, aged 17, a minister in the evangelical Disciples of Christ denomination, and became a pastor at various churches in Oklahoma and Missouri.
By his own account, it was while he was working as pastor of the First Christian Church, Sapulpa, Oklahoma, that he "became aware of the threat of Communism internally". In 1950 he founded Christian Crusade, an interdenominational movement designed as a "Christian weapon against Communism and its godless allies."
From the early 1950s, he gave up his pastoral ministry and became a full-time radio and television preacher, presenting such programmes as Billy James Hargis Down on the Farm. Gradually his definition of the "godless allies" widened in range, taking in people working in government, business, unions, entertainment, cultural and charitable institutions and other religious organisations. He accused mainline Protestant churches of being infested with Communist sympathisers, and announced that the nation was in the hands of a group of Harvard radicals hooked on "the insidious dope of Socialism."
In the mid-1960s, the Disciples of Christ became concerned that Hargis was concentrating more on Communism than on Christ, and dropped him as an accredited minister. But by then his crusade had become big business.
In 1966 he established the David Livingston Missionary Foundation, which ran medical clinics and orphanages in Asia and Africa, and in 1970 he became founder-president of the American Christian Crusade College at Tulsa. In his heyday, Hargis was almost as famous as such evangelists as Oral Roberts and even Billy Graham. His organisation was described by one congressman as "the best-heeled right-wing organisation in the United States."
But in 1964 came the first of a series of reverses when, after a long battle with the tax authorities, his Christian Crusade lost its tax-exempt status on the ground that it was engaged in "political activities."
After his enforced resignation from the American Christian College, Hargis's following diminished. He continued to serve as director of the Christian Crusade Ministries until last summer, when his son, Billy James Hargis II, took over.
Hargis was the author of several books, such as Communist America...Must It Be? In 1985 he published his autobiography, My Great Mistake, in which he proclaimed: "I was guilty of sin, but not the sin I was accused of."
Billy James Hargis is survived by his wife, Betty Jane, whom he married in 1951 and by his son and three daughters. *
