Webloggin » Bookworm Article about Core Conservative Beliefs in American Thinker

I direct your attention to Bookworm’s latest article to appear in American Thinker. The article, Core Conservative Beliefs, is a the product of an effort by Bookworm to task her readers to discuss Conservative and Progressive beliefs regarding core issues that are inherent to each side.

Bookworm presents her analysis from the outcome of those discussions in American Thinker with a list of Core Conservative Beliefs and provides a glimpse into how those beliefs compare to “the relentless nihilism that characterizes today’s Progressives“.

Here is a small excerpt:

I’ve now worked their ideas and mine into this article, and hope to take it to the next step, with contributions from the larger pool of readers available here - or, at least, with a larger group of people thinking about positive, unifying ideas to counter the relentless nihilism that characterizes today’s Progressives.

So, without further explanation or ado, and in no particular order, here’s the list:

Immigration

Core Conservative Belief: Conservatives believe in immigration as an important part of American vibrancy. They also believe that America is weakening itself by allowing illegal immigrants to stream into the country unchecked, both because this influx saps America’s sovereignty over her citizens and because the illegal immigrant pathways can also serve terrorists.

Progressive Belief: It’s racist to keep illegal immigrants out of the country. For that reason, there should not be any hurdles in the illegal immigrant’s path to the full panoply of American rights and welfare services.

The Supreme Court

Core Conservative Belief: Conservatives believe that the role of the Supreme Court is to examine state and federal laws, and lower court decisions to determine whether they comport with the written Constitution. An even lowest common denominator belief is that the Supreme Court should examine only whether federal matters comport with the written Constitution, and to interfere with states only if the states enact laws that conflict or overlap with federal matters.

Progressive Belief: The Supreme Court is to decide what is right and what is wrong - and it can get help for this by looking to each justice’s own private standards of morality, to dominant cultural trends, and to foreign systems. Having examined the moral position, the Court should then direct policy consistent with its findings.

Abortion

Core Conservative Belief: Whether you’re pro-Choice or pro-Life, Conservatives who are being honest with themselves admit that Roe v. Wade was a badly decided opinion that, without any Constitutional authorization, represented a federal power grab of something that ought to be a states’ rights issue. ….