{"id":82689,"date":"2020-02-07T12:03:24","date_gmt":"2020-02-07T19:03:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=82689"},"modified":"2020-02-07T22:09:47","modified_gmt":"2020-02-08T05:09:47","slug":"am-i-a-conservative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2020\/02\/am-i-a-conservative.html","title":{"rendered":"Am I a conservative?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Sen.<\/a>
Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater in 1964. Reagan was giving a speech for the Goldwater campaign at the International Hotel in Los Angeles. \u00a0(Wikimedia Commons public domain photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Since I\u2019m not a fan of Mr. Donald J. Trump and since I have recently posted and will shortly post some items that have infuriated his partisans, I think it important to offer some context for my position:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been repeatedly denounced as a liberal because of my disinclination to bow the knee to Mr. Trump. \u00a0One of my personal favorites came from a poster on my Facebook page, who declared how \u201csad\u201d it is that I\u2019m \u201ca leftist liberal who hates the Constitution of the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The irony is that one important set of my reservations (I\u2019m being gentle) about Mr. Trump comes precisely from my being a conservative with strong libertarian leanings who loves<\/em> the U.S. Constitution.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Can I illustrate my conservative bona fides<\/em>? \u00a0Indeed, I can.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve done it before. \u00a0But I think it\u2019s probably time to do it again.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

My parents voted for Lyndon Johnson in 1964. \u00a0My late brother and I, however, supported the conservative candidate, Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ), and, when my brother went to cast his vote, he took me into the polling booth where, as a preteen, I literally pulled the lever for the author of The Conscience of a Conservative<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

As a resident of California, I voted for Ronald Reagan every time he ran for governor or for president.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve subscribed to National Review<\/em> since I was thirteen years old, with interruptions only when I was living overseas (e.g., for part<\/em> of my mission in Switzerland).<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I was a charter subscriber to the Weekly Standard<\/em>, and I subscribed to it until its unfortunate recent demise.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I was a charter subscriber to The American Spectator<\/em>, back when it was called The Alternative<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I watched Fox News from the first day it came on, although my enthusiasm for it has waned since large sectors of it have effectively become wholly owned divisions of Trump Minitrue<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I used to really enjoy Rush Limbaugh when my work schedule permitted me to listen. \u00a0He was, among other things, very, very funny, and I don\u2019t believe that I ever heard him say anything that was racist. \u00a0I\u2019m sorry that he now had advanced lung cancer. \u00a0But I haven\u2019t listened to him in years, since he became pretty much a full-time defender of Donald Trump. \u00a0(I never really could<\/em> abide the shrill partisanship of Sean Hannity, and I turn the channel whenever I see his face.)<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I was a charter subscriber to First Things<\/em>, and I still subscribe to it.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I even went through an intense Ayn Rand phase when I was in my late teens. \u00a0I read everything she\u2019d published, including not just her novels but her non-fiction works.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I participated in two summer programs of the conservative Intercollegiate Studies Institute, one before my mission (at Stanford\u2019s Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace) and one just after (at St. Thomas Aquinas College).<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

When William F. Buckley Jr. came to speak at BYU during my undergraduate studies here, I was one of those who picked him up at the Salt Lake Airport. \u00a0(I had corresponded with him just slightly during my mission.)<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve spoken at least four times at the huge annual libertarian FreedomFest conference<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I was a member of the Republican Party from the first moment I could vote until the night that Donald Trump, whom I don\u2019t regard as a conservative, accepted the Party\u2019s presidential nomination.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The first thing I ever published beyond student periodicals, I think, was an essay<\/a> in the Freeman<\/em>, a magazine issued\u00a0by\u00a0the conservative\/libertarian Foundation for Economic Education.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

As the winner of a national essay prize on the free market, I participated (along with such luminaries as\u00a0F. A. Hayek, Milton Friedman, George Stigler, James Buchanan, Murray Rothbard, and John Chamberlain, whom anybody familiar with conservative\/libertarian economics will immediately recognize) in the 1976 annual meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society<\/a>, which was held at the University of St. Andrews, in Scotland. \u00a0I seriously considered going into economics myself. \u00a0(My choice for graduate school would definitely have been the University of Chicago.)<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Although I liked Senator Bob Bennett very much personally and was shocked at the shoddy way in which the Utah Republican convention treated him in 2010, a friend and I had a lunch with Mike Lee at Provo\u2019s Brick Oven restaurant during which my friend endeavored to persuade him to run for the Senate.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

And, to top it all off, I\u2019ve had dinner with Rand Paul.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

And so on and so forth.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I would appreciate it if certain\u00a0Trumpists out there would stop calling me a \u201clibtard\u201d and\u00a0\u201ca leftist liberal who hates the Constitution of the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

By the way, I sometimes\u00a0carry a pocket edition of the Constitution with me, to read while I\u2019m waiting for appointments. \u00a0I\u2019m a deeply believing federalist who sometimes wonders if more than fifty of us remain in the United States.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

A leftist?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hardly.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 Since I\u2019m not a fan of Mr. Donald J. Trump and since I have recently posted and will shortly post some items that have infuriated his partisans, I think it important to offer some context for my position: \u00a0 I\u2019ve been repeatedly denounced as a liberal because of my disinclination to bow the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[8250,8064,725,8223,7248,936,8259,8247,8256,338,2532,8241,8244,8253,6963],"class_list":["post-82689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-barry","tag-buckley","tag-conservatism","tag-conservative","tag-daniel","tag-daniel-peterson","tag-freedom-fest","tag-goldwater","tag-libertarian","tag-national-review","tag-peterson","tag-reagan","tag-ronald","tag-weekly-standard","tag-william"],"yoast_head":"\nAm I a conservative?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"    Since I'm not a fan of Mr. Donald J. 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