Trimming the Trees of Political Views
Conservative politics is a term that has gained a menagerie of meanings, and many of them should be detached from the term for the sake of preserving the important meanings of the term. Conservative politics nowadays refers to a set of political views that includes supporting religion, supporting gun rights, and a number of other views which similarly do not deserve to be attached to the overall idea of conservative politics. There are a number of individuals who may hold political views which might fall into the penumbra of conservative politics, but they are loathe to admit so, because they do not wish to have their own views associated with ones which they do not hold. To this end, it behooves us to attempt to define what conservative politics are, such that the term may be used more safely.
Fiscal conservatism is already used as a differing term from standard conservatism. Fiscal conservatism refers purely to conservative policies concerning money. Generally, it refers to “a fiscal policy that advocates avoiding deficit spending.” Primary goals of fiscal conservatives including decreasing debt and overall spending, and balancing the budget. These goals are completely separate from many of the other political views slapped onto the term “conservative politics,” and as such are often described separately. Those who do subscribe to conservative politics may often be fiscal conservatives, as well, but fiscal conservatism is not oriented on political views so much as economic views. The conflation of conservative politics with fiscal conservatism is one that needs to be taken care of.
Beyond this basic idea of fiscal conservatism, most conservative political views are detached from anything that can be labeled as conservative, as opposed to being labeled for what it really is. Conservative politics in America, for instance commonly refers to support of religion, specifically Judeo-Christian religion. This sort of support is not conservative at all, insofar as one takes the meaning of conservative as being reluctant to change. It is only conservative given that God, belief in Him, and religion in general have always played an important role in American politics, and therefore those who hold conservative political views are reluctant to see this changed. But as is often pointed out about the American political system, religion and government are held to be two fundamentally separate bodies, and one’s religious views would seem to be separate from one’s political views. As a result, for a political party to be so defined by a trait which seems utterly detached from politics then undermines the credibility of that political party and of conservative politics in general.
That voters are concerned with certain elements of political candidates, because those elements will influence the candidates’ voting patterns, is perfectly fair. After all, it is certainly a fair political issue to ask a candidate whether or not he or she supports a woman’s right to choose, or whether or not a candidate would support the removal of the Ten Commandments from public buildings. But these particular aspects of a candidate’s political actions can be considered separately from such aspects as simply being religious. That would appear to be a non-political issue, and therefore should be detached form political ideologies such as conservative politics. Doing so would do much to bolster the overall credibility of conservative politics.
