Conservatism has always gotten a bad rap, and it has been misunderstood on one of its strongest and most defining characteristics, which is its inherent open-mindedness. This has always been evident in its reverence for life itself, for free speech, for representative government, for self-governance and fair electoral processes, for its trust in the marketplace of ideas and of goods and services, and for its faith in the very practice of faith, each according to his or her own conscience.
You can’t preserve and conserve each of these pillars of American democracy without a deep appreciation for an open mind.
Former slave and lifelong Republican Frederick Douglass captured this in 1860 when he spoke about free thought expressed through free speech, “Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one’s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist; that, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down.”
In the 184-plus years that preceded the 1960s, it was well understood that America’s climb to greatness rested upon its traditional values as embodied by the U.S. Constitution, its form of government, and the independent and resilient nature of its people. Republican or Democrat, the country was conservative in nature, certainly by today’s standards.
The growth and prosperity of the nation, from one generation to the next, required each to preserve and conserve the prior generation’s accomplishments and the country’s existing strengths while pursuing new growth and evolution.
This changed in the 1960s. The liberalism movement, dominated by young baby boomers in their late teens and 20s, regarded anything from the past as bad, and just about anything new and experimental as good. The political landscape and the culture shifted and have never reversed course.
From entertainment and advertising to fashion and politics, new was good and old was bad. Change was good, resistance to change was bad. Now, the very notion of bringing greatness back has become polarizing everywhere, from college campuses and in Silicon Valley to high school classrooms across the country.
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To want to return to our nation’s past greatness is taboo in at least half the country’s eyes, including those with the power and the money to help fulfill that greatness if they were so inclined.
This helps explain how you can have a Democrat party that actually defends the killing of babies in the womb, putting criminals back on the street, not punishing crime, treating non-citizens better than citizens, and ignoring the science that says only men can be men and only women can be women. New is always better, even when the new is a lie.
The whole notion of preserving and conserving anything has been painted as regressive, as though all of the things that had to be in place for America to gain its leadership position in the world should never have happened in the first place.
The Myths of Conservatism
The very word “conservative” conjures images of someone who clings to the past impulsively resists change, fears risk or avoids the truly innovative and groundbreaking.
But there are things worth conserving. What if you actually want to preserve an atmosphere of free thought as manifested by an environment of free speech? What if you want to conserve a societal willingness to take open-minded risks with less government regulation? Is this not conservatism?
For decades, it’s just been assumed that conservatism and open-mindedness stand in opposition. Candidate Barack Obama summed it up in 2008 when he said that conservatives “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them, or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
Obama couldn’t have been more wrong. Conservatives stand for gun rights because they don’t want an oppressive government taking control over every facet of their lives, including telling them what to think and how to think. They want the right to have an open mind. They embrace their faith because it expands the mind while recognizing there are some things mankind will never comprehend. Conservatives actually embrace people who aren’t like them, but they have antipathy for those who clearly want to drive a wedge between them and their fellow man for political agendas. Conservatives recognize that they come from immigrants, but they know that immigrants who are allowed to break the law can break America. They know institutionalized lawlessness kills nations.
The Errors of Leftism
Leftists like to think that they are the ones who imagine, experiment, and question, and that when they do, this is progress. They call it “progressivism.”
So, what do they imagine? That men can get pregnant and compete with women in women’s sports? That a baby is only human if the mother wants it? That speech is only free if the government agrees with it? That speech itself can be violence?
These are not open-minded thoughts. If they aren’t completely ludicrous, they are as tyrannically close-minded as it gets. To agree with any of this requires a very narrow view.
Today, conservatives are the ones who most vocally defend the right to dissent, the need for competing opinions and perspectives, and the belief that speech and ideas must be tested through open debate rather than labeled “hate speech” or “misinformation” as a means to silence whole swaths of society.
Leftists dominate nearly every major institution in society – universities, news media, Hollywood, the technology industries, and the schools – and so they lean toward protecting the controlling power structure rather than questioning it.
The left no longer fights against censorship. Instead, it promotes it as a mechanism for control through speech codes, de-platforming, algorithmic moderation, and social shaming rituals such as “cancel culture” that punish dissent. While conservatives continue to stand for fostering an open mind, leftism has devolved into an ongoing campaign for conformity.
Why do you think they want to force you to use a gender-confused person’s preferred pronouns in public? Conformity. Why did you have to wear a mask in public during the COVID-19 pandemic, even though the actual science said it didn’t help? Conformity. Why did the left ditch a merit-based system for a grievance-based one that rewards mediocre performance, all in the name of “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion?” Conformity.
The Left’s Lust for Power
Power originates from the ability to make the masses conform. Conformity is neat. Conformity is the preference of a closed mind. Leftists want power, so they seek conformity. The major barrier between the left and power is a populace that safeguards independent thinking.
This is the dividing line between conservatives and leftists. The free speech issue has been the cultural bellwether on this. Protections for free speech under the First Amendment not only protect speech you agree with, and which the government may sanction, but it also protects speech that both you and the government may hate. To advocate for this requires an open mind.
But that’s not how leftists see it. They have concocted terms – “triggered,” “disinformation,” “harmful speech” – all of which are used as a cudgel to punish free expression, and ultimately to subjugate the open mind.
This has had a chilling effect that in itself has become a barrier to open dialogue and a healthy democracy.
The broader philosophical trend is unmistakable. The tectonic center for intellectual openness has shifted to the right. Moderate liberals and disillusioned Democrats increasingly migrate to the comfort of conservative communities, organizations, and ideologies, primarily because we still allow for disagreement and rigorous debate.
Open-mindedness, in the truest sense, is not about any particular ideology, left or right. It’s about having a solid democratic foundation on which to debate thoughts, opinions, ideas, and solutions. It’s a faith that the dialogue itself has the best chance to produce the truth, and the process created by that dialogue that leads to a better outcome for all.
Conservatives who fight to preserve this ethos are fulfilling its promise: to conserve the best of this nation.
Open-mindedness has become a virtue for us precisely because it must be conserved. The job of defending free speech, maintaining diversity of thought, and the right to be wrong has fallen on those willing to guard the conversation itself. And you know who that is. It’s us.
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