Sunday, March 7, 2010 | 2 a.m.
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“What do they expect?”
That was my dear wife’s retort to the morning news that delivered — as it so often has these past two years — the bad news that more colleges and universities were cutting valuable education programs while K-12 schools across the country were increasing class sizes and cutting schoolbooks, art classes, music instruction and practically every other pursuit that makes our kids accomplished and happier adults.
Naturally, I responded, “What should we expect?”
Her answer was simple. “We should expect a first-class education and a first-class health care system, for a start. This is, after all, the United States.”
Not that I would ever do it anyway, but I found myself unable to argue with her. She is right, after all. We are one of the wealthiest and most powerful nations on Earth. We didn’t get here by having a subpar education system, a Third World health care system and other kinds of mediocrity that could not have made this country the envy of the rest of the planet. To the contrary, we have been the best at almost everything we do.
But now we are cutting. That is not inappropriate given the extreme economic exigencies that have been visited upon our country and its financial system. What is inappropriate is where we are cutting and the seemingly low expectations our citizens have for the future of America.
In short, we don’t seem to expect very much from our country anymore. The reason I say that is we are letting our leaders cut where they shouldn’t and spend where they may not need.
And, if the United States is the conservative country it is supposed to be — I am not saying it is, I am just parroting the talk show pundits who rabble rouse for a living — then it is not living up to our political expectations either.
The most conservative value I can think of is upholding the Constitution of the United States. Let me quote from the first paragraph, the preamble:
“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.”
So having read that most important part of the Constitution — because it sets out the reasons for our Founding Fathers’ meeting in the first place — there can be no question that the conservative view is to promote the general welfare, secure liberty and ensure domestic tranquility. That should also be the American view.
So where in those words do we find the bases for teaching our next generations less, failing to provide the basic ability to live a healthy life for our citizens, and cutting back on the kinds of public services that promote domestic tranquility among the entire population?
I would suggest that the most our Founding Fathers could have contemplated would have been temporary changes to reflect extremely difficult times. Instead, an entire conservative movement has grown in the past few decades that suggests that government has no role in such matters and, if anything, should be doing less for citizens, even those whose general welfare is found wanting, whose tranquility is continually disturbed and whose welfare is constantly under attack.
I am not saying that such a political philosophy does not have a place in the great debates of this democratic experiment called the United States. I am saying, though, that such a view is not a conservative one.
And now that you have the preamble in front of you, you don’t have to take my word for it, you can read it for yourself. It is kind of like, I report it and you decide!
This is not what my former Republican Party colleagues want to hear, of course, because they have always preached a lock on conservative ideas. And, I am sure, it is blasphemy to many Democrats because they hate the word conservative in the same sentence with core constitutional values.
But there you have it. The Constitution does not lie. And as challenged as our Founding Fathers were with regard to who should and shouldn’t have such blessings of liberty secured for them, their brilliance stands the test of time and their words set out clearly their expectations for us, so many generations later.
So what should we expect? We should, at a minimum, expect valuable institutions like those that teach our children and those that promote a healthy citizenry (that would come under promoting our general welfare) be supported. And we should expect those who call themselves conservatives and value the concept of conserving our Constitution to be the vanguard of those willing to put it all on the line for American ideals.
What we shouldn’t expect and what we must not condone are those who wrap themselves in the cloak of conservative values who do all they can to thwart the wishes of our Founding Fathers, who stated so clearly the basis for which this great nation must stand.
We must continually seek a more perfect union. And we must do so while conserving the values so plainly stated in the document that gave this country life.
Finally, and at a minimum, we should expect our country — all of us — to live our Constitution. It would also be nice if we could exceed that expectation from time to time.
Brian Greenspun is editor of the Las Vegas Sun.
