THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

THERE IS NOTHING CONSERVATIVE ABOUT MY CONSERVATISM | 2002-07-20

I am conservative only about things that have proven that they work. If something is working, you have to meet a hellacious burden of proof before I will change society to fix it.

Our society calls that conservative. A sane society would call that common sense.

It is no accident that lefties and the nut right always end up pointing to Oriental Wisdom as the way to go. Like Napoleon, today's leftist loves the Orient's willingness to follow its "intellectuals" blindly.

In the West, we follow Davy Crockett's very conservative advice, "Be sure you're right, then go ahead." The Orient wants man to remain an animal, tied to the earth and Nature. The Western mind will settle for nothing less than the stars.

To go to the stars, you have to have a solid basis on earth, and that basis has to WORK. That is as conservative as I get.