What a Conservative Wants

Jonah Goldberg writing today tackles the issue of why Conservatives, who are supposed to abhor change, are willing to embrace it in the Middle East. I wasn't wondering this myself, but I suppose other may have been. Near the end of his paper, he states, " . . . I would dearly love if we could go back to the way this country was 50 or 100 years ago. Some changes have been for the better, of course. Ending Jim Crow, color TV, rising crust frozen pizzas, etc. But on the whole, I'd prefer this country to look a lot more like it used to. Indeed, I'd like to shrink the size of the federal government by, I dunno, half? Two-thirds?"

Yep, back to the good old days. 100 years ago, unions were illegal. Worker safety and environmentalism were not issues that concerned anybody with power. Corporations could largely do anything they wanted, and largely did. Some corporations had their own private police forces to keep order in the communities they lived in. Truly a Gilded Age for America's wealthy. But, if you are one of the millions of Americans who aren't already wealthy, maybe that's not the most idyllic time to be alive.

However, Mr. Goldberg's last two paragraphs are a bit more positive, particularly in his hops for the world.

"And I'd like to spend a small fraction of those savings on tearing down the crack houses of the world, which breed crime and misery, and replace them with sights worth seeing. I'd like to see democracy and prosperity in the Middle East, and a peaceful settlement between Palestinians and Israelis. I'd like to see a unified Korea, run from Seoul not Pyongyang. I would like to see Africa moving forward rather than slipping ever further behind. I'd like to see South America so prosperous that illegally immigrating into America would seem like a pointless and silly endeavor.

I'd like to see these things for two reasons, one conservative and one "liberal." The liberal side of me says that we are our brothers' keepers and we have some minimal obligation to liberate people from tyranny and needless misery. But, just as important, I am a conservative who believes the problems of the world will find their way here and mess up the home I dearly love if we don't do something about them."