I think it was the always insightful James Carville who made famous the phrase, "It's the economy, stupid," during the 1992 presidential election.
It shouldn't surprise that a liberal Democrat, with no discernible spiritual or moral bearings whatsoever, would make such a well-remembered plea to sheer materialism and political pragmatism.
What is shocking is the way so many Republicans and "conservatives" – and even some tea-party activists – are today embracing that Carville-ism in their approach to a political agenda to set America back on a course to liberty and self-governance.
After all, Democrats, "liberals," "progressives" and socialists of all stripes believe, for the most part, that the universe is solely comprised of matter. Everything is just stuff. This was the basis for the Communist Manifesto. Karl Marx believed economics was everything. There was no Creator above. There was no design in the universe – just matter and billions of years of random events that led to what we see all around us.
Surely that's not what Republicans and "conservatives" believe – or, at least, it shouldn't be.
Yet, some of the most prominent Republican and "conservative" leaders and organizations in America today are buying into that moronic lie: "It's the economy, stupid!"
Let me first remind the reader that I take a backseat to no one in my commitment to free enterprise, budget cutting, tax limits, debt reduction and all of the other very important economic reforms vitally necessary to our country. If I had the chance to set economic policy for America, I would make the heads of libertarians spin with my radical agenda. I am not "soft" on these economic issues and neither are those I know who are equally concerned with other important issues that require making moral choices and discerning right from wrong.
But there is a simple truth we need to consider: America's problems go much deeper than economics. And you can't solve those problems with a purely economic agenda.
We simply can't remain a free, independent, sovereign, self-governing nation under the rule of law and the will of the people without a consensus on basic moral principles.
Russell Kirk is considered one of the great intellects of the modern American conservative movement. In an essay in 1957 called "The Essence of Conservatism," he defined conservative like this: "The conservative is a person who endeavors to conserve the best in our traditions and our institutions, reconciling that best with necessary reform from time to time. 'To conserve' means 'to save.' ..."
I think it's safe to say that if Russell Kirk were alive today, he would agree with me that the cultural institution most critical to a self-governing and self-replicating society is the institution of marriage, for it is a 6,000-year-old institution and the very building block of civilization.
I take the position that this institution was ordained by God in the Garden of Eden as found in Genesis 2.
In all of human history since, there has never been a society that sanctioned same-sex marriages. In fact, there has never even been major discussion or serious debate about it until about seven years ago – just as Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia predicted in the Lawrence v Texas case in which all sodomy laws in the U.S. were effectively repealed by that most ill-advised ruling of the high court. A year later, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ordered same-sex marriage over the objections of the people and the state legislature – the first time any state, any government body, any ruling authority in the history of the world had ever done so.
Since then, voters in 31 states have supported initiatives proclaiming marriage as an institution between one man and one woman.
True "conservatives," then, should be people who stand in defense of God's law, the preservation of the institution of marriage as a union between one man and one woman, Western civilization, common sense and Judeo-Christian morality.
Wouldn't you agree?
But the conservative movement has been infiltrated by homosexual activists and materialistic libertarians who don't agree. In effect, they are redefining what it means to be "conservative." They run major "conservative" media enterprises. They sponsor the largest annual gathering of conservatives in the world. And they speak with voices much louder and influence with bank accounts much larger than is representative of their numbers. They have successfully co-opted some of the biggest celebrities and most powerful organizations of the conservative movement or at least muted their opposition.
Abraham Lincoln once asked, "What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried?"
The United States of America is not a place to try radical experiments in social engineering. It is not a place where high priests in black robes should be permitted to impose their own morals on the rest of us.
Yet that is exactly what is happening – and too many Republicans and "conservatives" are not standing in firm opposition.
Here's another quote from Russell Kirk, one of the godfathers of the modern conservative movement, to remind us of what it means to be a conservative: "Men and nations are governed by moral laws; and those laws have their origin in a wisdom that is more than human – in divine justice. At heart, political problems are moral and religious problems. The wise statesman tries to apprehend the moral law and govern his conduct accordingly. We have a moral debt to our ancestors, who bestowed upon us our civilization, and a moral obligation to the generations who will come after us. This debt is ordained of God. We have no right, therefore, to tamper impudently with human nature or with the delicate fabric of our civil social order."
This is the real divide in American society today. It's a divide between those who believe in God and His moral laws and those who only believe in what we can see, hear, touch, taste and smell. It's a divide between those who know God defines right and wrong and those who believe in doing what is right in his own eyes.
Conservatives and Republicans and tea-party activists would be well-advised to get on God's side rather than the other.