Supporting the Conservative Cause

In The Lost 7 Core Principles of Conservatism, written and published in November 2023, I described the absurdity of Mike Johnson’s House of Representatives website posting of The 7 Core Principles of Conservatism. I’ve since come to the realization that these lost principles, which are actually not all that unreasonable, are up for grabs, and it might be worthwhile for Vice President Harris and Governor Walz embrace them.

As a refresher, these are the principles as outlined on Johnson’s website:

1.    INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM requires individual responsibility, which is rooted in individual choice or the right to choose. Government should not presume to know what is best for any competent individual, and should respect their dignity. It’s ironic (more aptly, moronic) that the Party that opposes contraception and wants to force women to give birth to children they cannot support is the same Party that refuses to support those women and children after birth.

2.    LIMITED GOVERNMENT is sensible to a point. If it’s limited to being efficient and effective, that’s fine; if it’s limited to reduce its effectiveness, that’s not. There’s nothing efficient about a bloated bureaucracy that is built to sustain its own existence or service itself, and there’s nothing effective about a government with no accountability.

3.    THE RULE OF LAW is a no-brainer, and it is therefore mind-boggling that the Republican Party is fully embracing a twice impeached, four times indicted, ninety-one times charged convicted felon as its standard-bearer, and our severely compromised Supreme Court has seen fit to place him (personally) above the law despite his involvement in an insurrection, his willful destruction of election integrity in numerous states, and his obstruction of justice in his documents case, among other criminal acts.

4.    PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH is a noble pursuit, but our true strength is demonstrated by cohesiveness, not disunity. Strength is measured by the way we stand with our allies against common adversaries, and manage our alliances to keep quests for security from becoming pointless retaliations or landgrabs. Strength is also measured by the way we secure our borders and show compassion and openness to those who seek to contribute to our greatness, and how we strive to help people survive and thrive in their native lands.

5.    FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY is perhaps that biggest no-brainer among the Conservative tenets. Our economy is complicated, and it’s intricately entwined with the complicated economies of other countries. But as everyone whose personal necessities make up the greatest part of their budget knows, if you are to survive, you must live within your means. Republicans have historically increased the national debt by much more than Democrats, and have reaped political hay from the sugar high that such borrowing causes. When the interest on the national debt is one of the largest expense items in the national budget, and rapidly increasing, it’s not sustainable. In 2024, interest on the national debt now exceeds spending on defense. True fiscal responsibility requires honest cost/benefit analyses of expenditures, and equitable sharing of the tax burden to support them.

6.    FREE MARKETS, unconstrained, are inherently unfair. Reasonable regulations, those necessary to ensure equal opportunity, environmental and climatological protection, and personal well-being, are double-sided guardrails around free markets.

7.    HUMAN DIGNITY is closely related to individual freedom, responsibility, and choice. No one should be forced to be something they’re not, or do something that is not in their own best interests.

The last two closing sentences of Johnson’s document, toward the end of the Human Dignity paragraph, appear to be misplaced, as they seem to apply to the whole document: “In America, everyone who plays by the rules should get a fair shot. By preserving these ideals, we will maintain the goodness of America that has been the secret to our greatness.” I certainly agree with the former sentence, and I reservedly agree with the latter.

Arguably, under today’s Republican leadership, these 7 core principles have become mere platitudes, and are therefore available to responsible Democrats for the taking. Vice President Harris and Governor Walz might do well to embrace them. In so doing, they might truly become President and Vice President of all Americans.

Here’s something I’d like to see on a tee shirt and/or a lawn sign: