On the Future of the Conservative Movement
Parting Thoughts from the Editor Emeritus
Ilan Wurman
Last Updated: 12/30/09 Section: Opinion
As I will be graduating this month, I decided to write this column, my last in the pages of the Claremont Independent, so I can leave my fellow students with my hopes for the future of the conservative movement and the Republican Party. In part, this piece is also inspired by a recent debate I had in another campus publication with a prominent conservative student, who holds a very different vision of what the principles of the Republican Party should be.
In setting forth my hopes for how the the ongoing discourse on campus about conservative ideas will develop, I must begin by stating my own principles. I believe in limited government, individual liberty, and personal responsibility - a view I take from the Founding Fathers. They all feared the potential of government to become overreaching and tyrannical, to intrude into private life and deny natural rights to its citizens.
The Founders saw the vital relationship between a people's freedom and its industriousness and self-reliance; in their own time, they felt this could best be achieved through the ideal of an agrarian republic. According to this ideal, they did not believe in a coddling, nanny-like state that would relieve everyone of personal hardships. But at the same time, the Founders clearly believed in the necessity of government. In particular, they believed that the government had certain objects that justified its function and existence. As the preamble to the Constitution reminds us,
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
The Founders believed in national unity and promoting these ends of government, but they also believed in federalism, or states' rights, as a protection against the possibility of an all-encompassing national tyranny. Thus, they precisely enumerated the powers which the states would cede to the federal government. Beyond that, the states could legislate as they saw fit, as long as their governments were republican in form and they pursued these just ends of government.
In setting forth my hopes for how the the ongoing discourse on campus about conservative ideas will develop, I must begin by stating my own principles. I believe in limited government, individual liberty, and personal responsibility - a view I take from the Founding Fathers. They all feared the potential of government to become overreaching and tyrannical, to intrude into private life and deny natural rights to its citizens.
The Founders saw the vital relationship between a people's freedom and its industriousness and self-reliance; in their own time, they felt this could best be achieved through the ideal of an agrarian republic. According to this ideal, they did not believe in a coddling, nanny-like state that would relieve everyone of personal hardships. But at the same time, the Founders clearly believed in the necessity of government. In particular, they believed that the government had certain objects that justified its function and existence. As the preamble to the Constitution reminds us,
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
The Founders believed in national unity and promoting these ends of government, but they also believed in federalism, or states' rights, as a protection against the possibility of an all-encompassing national tyranny. Thus, they precisely enumerated the powers which the states would cede to the federal government. Beyond that, the states could legislate as they saw fit, as long as their governments were republican in form and they pursued these just ends of government.
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