Conservative Difference

This morning while seated in front of my morning paper taking a sip of green tea, I decided that I should put my finger on why I have chosen a whole raft of ideas that can be labeled as conservative, or at least libertarian.  It did not take me long to come up with the answer.  It is because after a life of writing, study and general living I have adopted ideas that work!

It is pretty obvious that conservatism works every time that it is tried.  This happens to be because no idea becomes conservative until it has been tried and tested over time.  The whole concept of conservatism entails a kind of scientific method where experiments are made, the results determined and then a statement is declared true or false based on the objective results.  If an idea worked in the past, it is likely to continue working into the future.

The fact is that liberalism works only a fraction of the time.  This is because it is based on utopian ideals that have not been tested and have only been concocted to fit some person's vision of what a perfect society would be.  Because it is not thoroughly tested in practice, it generally is found wanting and very often has effects completely backward from those intended.  A good example of this is the implementation of the welfare state which caused a perpetuation of poverty among the lower classes and an excruciating drain on the economy.

So if anyone asks me why I am a conservative I will tell them, "because it works."