Conservative Rally

I read an interesting article in the Washington Times by Mike Huckabee. Huckabee is strong in his position on the 10th amendment, and he does a great job of raising some of the issues in conservative minds today.

For the record, I don't necessarily agree with all politics that label themselves "conservative." I do, however, agree with Huckabee's analysis of the issues in this article. Government is certainly growing past any historical involvement in daily American life, and it raises serious issues of faith. The faith issue is whether or not we trust government to define and order our daily lives or trust God to order our lives. Looking at history, my trust is on God. Governments have done strange and horrific things with power. 

The problem is that Huckabee's article demonstrates the issues but doesn't demonstrate a clear solution. Most conservative organizations have married themselves to single agendas (like Bush support or abortion) at the expense of their ability to speak broadly about government's role in citizen's lives. Perhaps Huckabee can be a voice crying out for individual rights, and perhaps he can make a difference. My prayer is that he (or someone) makes this difference before the strange and horrific excesses of governments past become an American reality.

Huckabee states, "I would be so brazen to say that if conservatives would really live according to the principles of classic conservatism, all of America would be conservative today."  Maybe it is time to stop defining our politics by a few litmus test issues and begin living a conservative politic based on the 10th amendment and on the dignity and freedom of individuals. I am a Pentecostal Christian that has come to define Pentecostalism as the belief that the power of God might rise up on any individual at any time. In other words, all of us are valuable and created for a purpose. The Liberals and Conservatives of the past few years have all said this was their agenda while they increased government controls and regulation on the very individuals they claimed to believe in. Strange that Christianity, due to its mindless marriage to the Republican Party over the past few years, and Conservatives, due to their catering to narrow and sometimes intrusive agendas, are not known for fostering the rights of individuals.

I would love to see a new conservativism based on the rights of individuals and the belief that these same individuals had the ability to govern their own affairs. Isn't this the very issue our father's fought for in 1776?