If I were to make a short-list of the names of people who had the largest influence on the conservative movement after 1980, Newt Gingrich would have to be near the top. Yesterday, the former Speaker of the House gave a speech at Drew University, and during the Q+A period, Gingrich said something that illustrates quite profoundly just how far conservatism has fallen in the last 15 years:
"If there's a threat, you have a right to defend society," Gingrich said. "People will give up all their liberties to avoid that level of threat."
Conservatives once styled themselves as the defenders of freedom. In their telling of US history, there was nothing the people couldn't do on their own, and nothing the government could ever do right. As Reagan once so famously said, "Government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem." And, "the nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'"
No longer. Security, according to Gingrich, must be purchased at the price of individual liberty. What good is freedom is we aren't alive to use it?
Benjamin Franklin and the other men and women who risked their lives to establish this country would beg to differ:
Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
I realize this is nothing new, but it still amazes me. It was all talk, and it always has been. They never meant any of it. So long as the threat was far away they talked a big game, but the minute it came home to them they went running scared. Freedom and liberty were nothing more to them than political props, words that could be used to win elections and gain power and nothing more. It was all hollow, all a lie.
No wonder they are a generation obsessed with flag pins and yellow ribbon magnets. Their patriotism is nothing more than the mobilization of hollow symbols and clever sounding phrases. They meant none of it.
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