Give the conservatives some

I don't give enough space to good conservative print, mainly because there are like a bizillion conservative blogs out there to post it. Oh, and I'm not a consservative, at least not by the conventional standards for conservatism. But I thought that this essay from The Washington Post went much further than the 1650 words the author used. I would recommend reading it, especially if you consider yourself an outsider on this topic, as I do.

There's a huge leap between maintaining one's personal ideals and putting stock in a leader or governmental entity to project those ideals and put them into practice. That should be a standard disclaimer whenever somebody is going to call out bureaucrats, lobbyists, and generals for not doing what they were supposedly elected to do. One guy's (or lady's) reason for voting the President into office is, in a situation where the President gets 50 million-plus votes, going to differ from another guy's. In any case, some conservatives think that the current administration has betrayed core conservative ideals, those most personified by Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan and the like. I guess the challenge of politics is to stay true to your principles and figure out the number of people needed to influence or change the state of affairs without watering down your ideals.

Anybody who thinks that the current party system in this country will preserve their moral and civic ideals will likely be disappointed when they see opportunists and hangers-on clamoring for the very things that distract and even contradict these ideals.

At the same time, however, elected officials have to serve more than the people who voted for them; most of them take an oath that implies serving the entire "nation" (or jurisdiction under their reprsentation). That could be a hell of an "out" for politicans that fall out of favor with their core supporters.