I recently read an article about an address made in Washington, D.C., in the name of conservatism. This march on Washington was led by Glenn Beck on the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s gave his famous “I Have a Dream” address.
Beck said his purpose was to honor the heroes of the past, including King. In his address to the public, Beck made a statement about America having the need “to come out of the darkness” and return to a more religious, conservative way.
In other words, we should go back to some of the ideals Americans have had before. At first, I found the idea to be rather pointless, but at another glance, the idea of returning to an older way of thinking caused me to think of how this idea could affect our country.
My first thought was how the idea of being conservative is a never-ending process.
If we want to revert to the ideals of the past leaders before us, we may have some issues with regard to how “conservative” we could be.
As a rather small example, my mother raised her daughters to always wear skirts to church. In an earlier generation, the ladies were raised to wear dresses all of the time. If we want to go back further, the dresses had to be of a certain length in the skirt as well as the sleeves. Each generation had a way of doing things.
Also, each generation would see the next generation as being more liberal with their style of dress. My point is that if we were to return to a more conservative way of attire, how far would we have to go back?
This question I present to other issues as well. Our views of other people have changed as well. One could say our acceptance of other races is a liberal concept.
If we were to go back to a conservative viewpoint, we may have to go back to segregation and the Jim Crow laws. If we want to go back even further, we may have to go all the way back to before the Civil War when certain human beings were considered as property.
How far back do we have to go in order to be conservative? I know the march was for us to go back to the way things were in America, but America has gone through a lot of different changes. What stage do we want to go back to?
Would we like to go back to before women could vote, during Reconstruction, when former slaves were trying to live in a world of people that at one time didn’t even consider them as human beings?
Should we consider the times of the Revolutionary War, when everyone was trying to gain rights to live in a country of their own?
Where does the idea of conservatism end? How anti-liberal are some people willing to be? Are we willing to give up the freedoms we have today for the attitudes of yesterday?
Will we sacrifice the livelihood of the present for the ideals of the past? Is there a way we can take some of the lessons from the past and incorporate them into the present, thereby improving our future?
In response to my original example, can we take the modesty of the dresses women wore in the past and incorporate them into the style of clothes we wear today to make a new line of clothing?
Can we make decisions for our future by taking what was best about the past, like governmental assistance for economic distress, and incorporate them into our more liberal ideas and create a new future?
Basically, what I am trying to say is we have not advanced this far socially, economically and culturally without the lessons learned from our past. Make no mistake, some people still have opinions that could be seen as conservative as well as outdated, but that comes with free thinking.
What we cannot forget is we have not come this far to have the need to go back to what we were.
If this happens, we would have to take the good along with the bad in this concept.
I think we should take more lessons from the past to improve the things that are wrong in the present; you learn from the mistakes you have already made.
We cannot see what lies ahead if we are steadily looking back.
Terrisha Buckley is a senior majoring in animal and dairy sciences. She can be contacted at [email protected].