I find it interesting that here, perhaps especially here, those who hold the highest standards are encouraged to divest themselves of those standards and derided for maintaining them.
After all, that is, and has been the problem with the GOP. Raise the bar and be accused of being a 'perfectionist', standing in the way of the good, an evil unto yourself for wanting the very best, most Constitutional America possible: one in compliance with its own Supreme Law of the Land.
Oh, my. How unrealistic, how unpragmatic such aspirations are considered by those who would deride them. Yet, if not for an ideal, if not for goals to strive for, what is there to guide people in their lives but the rumbling in their belly, the irrational desire of shiny objects, and the occasional biological urges?
It seems to matter not whether those goals are those laid in scriptures for thousands of years, or the well thought out writings of political philosophers and statesmen of only a couple hundred years ago--among them our Founders. Whether those are laws set forth by deity or men, they are all ripe for the breaking if the perfect would just not stand in the way of the good.
Yet we daily want purity, if not in governance, in the water we drink, the food we eat, the air we breathe, even the rocks we wear for adornment, all as pure as possible, and even though we differ on the standard of what is 'pure', we want it, and often are perfectly happy to accommodate the concepts of purity others have, if not incorporate those concepts along with our own, so long as we see that end result as more pure. We place enough value on purity that we are willing to pay a premium for it, be that for what we consume, wear, or own.
Yet with governance it is not so. Even now those who claim to have the same goals, are willing to accept adulteration, and attack those with the highest standards as 'standing in the way of the good', for not being infused with a willingness, if not zeal, for abandoning principle in favor of pragmatism.
The old "Do something, even if it is wrong!' philosophy fails to take in that sometimes the best thing to do is nothing, that choosing to deliberate further is a choice, that the maid waiting for Mr Right may end up a spinster, or married to one heck of a guy.
If we are to have laws, especially codified overwhelming principles (for laws are only the attempt to set principles in practice), then we have decided those laws should bind all equally, should protect the least of us as well as those with great means, and should be immune to the trappings of power; they should apply equally to all.
What it takes is a set of standards and the cultural will to aspire to meeting those standards, on the ground on a day to day basis. In this instance, the 'excess' is in favor of what we had accepted as the best way to ensure Liberty, Life, and the secure accumulation of wealth. I would far rather deal with excesses of Liberty than the excesses of the absence thereof.
I have noticed those on the Left whose philosophies are juxtaposed to and incompatible with ours have no such problem. They are content to accept any level of evil in the pursuit of their 'perfection', even though that 'perfection' includes everything in its philosophies from 'perfect' subjugation to 'perfect' monitoring of the subjects to "genetic purity" to 'perfect' control in their pursuit of their concept of perfection--right down to killing the 'imperfect' to remove them from the picture. All their forms of slavery are fine, except the past historical ones which are used to pursue those who resemble those who practiced it. Indeed their philosophies are anathema to the concepts of life, liberty, and property they decry for the very people they claim they liberate.
They have found their 'better way', their path to what they think will be Utopia, not by liberating others, but by liberating themselves from the very rules they would impose, but then if it were not for double standards they would have none.
The grave danger for those who consider themselves Conservative is to let those standards, that quest for the sort of purity become the enemy. "Doctrinaire fanatacism"another fine phrase for adhering to principle, and one who adheres to our principles should be our friend. Failure to adhere to our own principles, namely the Constitution and the Bill of Rights is what has created this mess. Our own government has not abided by the letter nor spirit of the law it is founded on.
What religion, what government, what entity can survive long if it will not go by its own rules nor hold true to its own law? What corporation routinely violates its own bylaws? Not even a local social club would long survive such egregious anarchy.
If you are a Conservative, you allegedly want to retain those founding principles of this nation, as laid forth in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Where you see deviation from those founding principles, either you accept the deviation and wish to change the Constitution and Bill of Rights (the Democrat approach, through mainly judicial fiat), or you seek to return, in practice, to those codified principles that founded this nation.
You follow those principles or you seek to change, 'reinterpret', or get around them. 'In or out', in this instance, is not demagoguery, it is a question of following the law. There is no kinda sorta purt'near killed someone, stole something, committed arson, you did or you didn't, all motivation aside.
One of the insidious evils of the human ability to rationalize things is that virtually anything, with the right 'logic' and repetition can be eventually justified through the process, and has been, from the retention of ill gotten gains to the genocidal slaughter of millions, to the physical destruction of babies in the womb and sale of their parts, to the institutionalized theft of property (or the use thereof) from its owners. Someone always has a logical sounding reason why such should be permitted, even though its fundamentally wrong.
The bar was set over 200 years ago by those who founded this country, and long before that by lawgivers acting in the name of their deities, who laid down the principles by which this Republic is to operate. Calls for compromise are the advocation (for the convenience or profit of those advocating that compromise) of breaking those rules, abandoning those principles, at least in part, of ignoring the law, of accepting the "good" over the perfect.
For those who advocate falling short of the mark, even as a 'pragmatic' gesture, an 'incremental step' to returning to those principles, if returning to the level of purity in concept and practice of those concepts that is demanded if the Supreme Law of the Land (The US Constitution) is to be accomplished, then we need to keep our eyes on that prize and not equivocate when it comes to the principles we would restore to practice.
Nor should we deride those who hold those principles sacrosanct, for they are not the enemy, but the standard bearers of our movement.
