Dear Editor,

In yesteryears, when academicians would debate, one of first things they would do is to define the meanings of the words or terms (the original meanings for historical documents). After reading numerous articles in the “Letters to the Editor” and various social media outlets, it has become evident to me that the statement “define your terms” need be revived!

So, I’m going to define some additional but necessary terms before I explain why I am a “conservative” (in respect to our “constitutional republic”):

∫ Society — there is no definite entity as known as a “society”. A society is simply a number of individuals in a common group.

∫ Free society — a society that places the rights of its individual members above the altruistic-collectivist doctrine of some higher authority (a country’s government).

∫ Individual rights ­– a moral concept or principles guiding an individual’s actions to the principles guiding their relationship to others. In the Christian perspective, the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule or the Sermon on the Mount/Plain would define the compass to codifies those rights.

∫ Moral Law — an absolute principle defining the criteria of right actions (i.e., “good or evil”).

For you non-Christians the commandments five through ten define what were known as the “natural laws or rights”.

∫ Rulers of a society — Rulers are individual in a society that are exempt from the moral laws, subject only to traditional rituals, they hold total power and exact blind obedience to the principles. What is “good” is that which is good for society and the ‘rulers” edits are the voice on earth (i.e., “Devine right of kings).

∫ The Statist system of government — a statist system –whether communism, fascism, Nazi, socialist or “welfare” type is based on the idea of governments unlimited power, which means the rule by brute force. The difference of the statist systems are a matter of time and degree; the principle is the same.

∫ Conservative — averse to change or innovation and holding traditional values. In a political context, it means favoring free enterprise, private ownership, and socially traditional ideas.

∫ Constitution — a body of fundamental principles or established precedents according to which a state or other organization is acknowledged to be governed.

∫ Republic ­– a state in which supreme power is held by the “people and their elected representatives,” and which has an elected or nominated “president” rather than a monarch.

First, I’m a Conservative and would be a conservative regardless of what political party I would choose to be affiliated. Why? Because the founders of this nation — in writing the U.S. Constitution — changed the course of history in a positive way.

They elevated the individual rights that represented the extension of morality into the social system. It put a limitation on the power of the state, and thus the citizen’s protection against the brute force of the government. All though there were earlier attempts (i.e., the Athenian Democracy and the Roman Republic), the United States was the first moral society!

To quote James Madison (considered to be the father of the Constitution) in the Federalist Paper Number 51:

“In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and next oblige it to control itself.”

How did the Framers of the Constitution change the relationship between man and society?

∫ Earlier forms of government had regarded man as a sacrificial means to the ends of others and society as an end in itself (statism).

∫ The new United States regarded its citizens as an end in itself, a peaceful, orderly, voluntary coexistence (free society).

∫ All previous systems had held that the individual’s life belongs to society, that society can dispose of him in any way it pleases, and that any freedom he enjoys is only by favor, by permission of society, which it may revoke at any time (by the rulers).

∫ The Founders held that an individual’s life is theirs by right (which means by moral principle and by nature), and that right is the property of an individual, that society had no rights, and that the only moral purpose of government is the protection of individual rights (moral laws).

One of the most quoted philosophers the Framers of the Constitution was John Locke. To quote John Locke:

“All men by nature are equal in that every man hath to his natural freedom, without being subjected to the will of authority if any other man; being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.”

If this sounds familiar, think of Thomas Jefferson’s preamble to the “Declaration of Independence.

In closing, the government function was change from the role of ruler to the role of servant. The government was set to protect its citizens from criminals — the Constitution was written to protect us from the government and the Bill of Rights was not directed against private citizens, but against government — as an explicit declaration that individual rights supersede any public or social power.

That’s why I am a conservative!

Lucien Murzyn

St. Clairsville