The failure of left-liberal methods to build social justice and social peace puts conservative ideas in the vanguard of overturning failed status quo situations.
'If You're Not A Socialist At Twenty You Haven't Got A Heart - If You're Still A Socialist At Forty You Haven't Got A Brain'.
That old adage isn't as true as it might once have been. Once the liberal-left were the idealists. They championed the nationalisation of industry as the basis of prosperity. A womb-to-tomb welfare state would protect the needy from all hardships. A more understanding attitude to the criminal would create a more just society.
One by one the left-liberals got their way in economic, welfare and criminal justice policies in different parts of the world... and as they got their way it was the poorest people who suffered most.
Today the liberals are the obstructionists and it took the conservative zero tolerance policies of Rudi Giuliani to rescue New Yorkers from the crime waves spawned by defeated liberal thinking.
Today it is the conservative belief in school choice that offers poor, inner city families the hope of a better education for their children.
It is the conservative faith in human dignity that wants to free the poor from the feed-and-forget philosophy of the welfare state bureaucracy.
Much progressive conservatism is inspired by the neoconservatives. In moving rightwards the neocons may have abandoned the methods of the left but they have not ditched its idealism.
The neocons remind us that progressive conservatism is also an international creed. With the honourable exception of Tony Blair most left-wingers have abandoned the idealism that led their predecessors to champion action against autocratic and undemocratic regimes. It is now 'procons' who believe in democratisation and regime change.
George W Bush: the progressive
George W Bush’s own willingness to adopt liberal ideals and redeem them with conservative methods has been central to his philosophy of compassionate conservatism. His compassionate idealism was beautifully expressed in this section of a speech to students at Notre Dame University in 2001:
“I leave you with this challenge: Serve a neighbor in need, because a life of service is a life of significance. Because materialism ultimately is boring, and consumerism can build a prison of wants. Because a person who is not responsible for others is a person who is truly alone. Because there are few better ways to express our love for America than to care for other Americans. And because the same God who endows us with individual rights also calls us to social obligations.
So let me return to Lyndon Johnson's charge: You're the generation that must decide. Will you ratify poverty and division with your apathy? Or will you build a common good with your idealism? Will you be a spectator in the renewal of your country, or a citizen? The methods of the past may have been flawed, but the idealism of the past was not an illusion. Your calling is not easy, because you must do the acting and the caring. But there is fulfillment in that sacrifice which creates hope for the rest of us. Every life you help proves that every life might be helped. The actual proves the possible, and hope is always the beginning of change.”
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