LETTER: Conservatives must remember what conservatism means

Originally published in the Rome News-Tribune

There are moments in a nation’s life when words matter more than usual. When any president suggests, as President Trump did last week, that the only limit on his power is his own morality and his own mind, Americans should listen carefully. But for conservatives — those who claim allegiance to the tradition of Edmund Burke and the constitutional wisdom of the Founders — such words should trigger serious concern.

Conservatism was never meant to be a celebration of personalities. It is a commitment to institutions, to restraint, to the slow-earned lessons of history. Burke warned that “power is of an encroaching nature and ought to be effectually restrained.” He understood that liberty does not survive on good intentions alone. It survives when authority is bound by law, custom and constitutional form.

Our own system reflects that wisdom. James Madison reminded us that “if men were angels, no government would be necessary.” Barry Goldwater carried the same warning into the modern era: “The problem with government is not that it is evil, but that it is powerful — and power tends to corrupt even the best of men.” The American Constitution was not built for perfect leaders. It was built for ones who are human.

When personal judgment is offered as the only check on power, something essential is lost. The conservative tradition insists that no individual, however confident, however popular, is ever a safe substitute for the rule of law. We govern ourselves through institutions precisely because we know the weaknesses of human nature.

Burke put it plainly: “We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason.” When power rests only on personal conviction, it ceases to be ordered liberty and becomes something far more fragile.

True conservatism fears two things: chaos and Caesar. It resists disorder, but it also resists the seductive promise of unconstrained authority. History shows that free societies do not usually collapse in one dramatic moment. They weaken gradually as citizens become accustomed to shortcuts around the law and limits.

For conservatives, this is a test of seriousness. The movement was not built to follow men. It was built to defend a system — a constitutional inheritance that restrains ambition so that liberty may endure. That inheritance deserves loyalty, even when doing so is uncomfortable, and especially when the one violating it is the purported leader.

The response to such claims should be firm and principled: no person stands above the system, and no conscience substitutes for the law.

Robert K. Finnell

Rome