Gutfeld is Wrong: Right is Right Because . . it's Right!

In a recent episode of Prager University, Greg Gutfeld advised conservatives to tell liberal agitators why they are conservative:

"I'm a conservative, so that you can be a liberal."

I had a really hard time taking in what Gutfeld had to say about conservatives and conservatism.

In fact, I was outraged as well as disappointed.

I am not a conservative so that other people can ruin their lives or mine, or make me pay for their mistakes.

I am a conservative because I love life and liberty, and I reject a culture of death. I am a conservative because truth is comforting and strengthening, because the truth sets me free and allows me to be creative, expansive, prosperous, and healthy.

Throughout Gutfeld's four minute lesson on "Why the Right is Right," I was left with a bad taste in my mouth. Gutfeld gave a gut-full of wrong ideas and bad lessons about conservatism, and why more people should join the conservative movement.

Perhaps it's a semantic issue, but certainly in today's word, the agitators for liberty are hardly conservative, at least in the narrow sense of preserving the status quo. Yet let's keep the term for convenience's sake.

I am not right i .e. conservative because it allows other people to be irresponsible and uncaring. I am conservative because that is the caring, responsible, and only right way to live, to have life.

Contrasting with Gutfeld, I further do not agree that liberals have more fun than conservatives. Polls and studies have shown that conservatives on the whole are happier and better off than liberals, even the wealthy leftists who use their resources to push a regressive, elitist agenda at the expense of everyone else. Why are all those rich liberals so unhappy? In fact, many liberals embrace unhappiness, because they live with no sense of life or voluntary constraint. Their heedless il-liberalism creates emptiness, frustrations, and heart-aches. Poverty is the norm for those who live in bondage to their feelings rather than submitting to loving discipline and the grace of God.

No, Mr. Gutfeld, liberals are not really liberal. They are the one's who are truly risk-averse, choosing to use other people's time, resources, and money for their own regressive ends. They create risks for others, and then shame you for not bowing to their will.

People who live right, who live by freedom, and the opportunities and consequences which accompany it, do not embrace conservative values just because. Conservatism works and has a proven track record for doing so.

Consider another example. Climate alarmism is based on false data. No truth to it. The issue is not about whether we can or cannot do something about the warming temperatures, or the sudden El Nino weather patterns. The matter rests on whether there is a problem which has to be faced, dealt with, etc. Climate change is a natural phenomenon. There have been warm and cooling trends over hundreds of years. The technologies and innovations of today have removed many of our concerns about these problems. Why are we getting alarmed, again?

The left, illiberal hordes, godless, secular forces at work in our communities, are not interested in the truth. They are interested in power, in having control over others. Liberty is our antithesis, and the only staying force which matters. However, in every heart rests the beat to push for what is best for ourselves and our families. No matter how much the illiberal, regressive interests in our midst want to press a collective conformity of good will on us, there is the truth of what matters, and the reality that self-interest working within the confines of natural law trumps anything that government, force, or compulsion can offer.

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher could not have said it better during her first successful campaign in 1979: "Labour isn't working." The left-wing talking points, shouting matches, and political slugfests of labor unions, bureaucrats, and petty academics were simply WRONG! Wrong not just for Britain, but out of step with reality, whether in trade, human nature, or biology and natural force. The facts not just on the ground but understood and withstanding the tests of time always have been, and always will be. The Declaration of Independence declares (present tense!): "We hold these truths self-evident."

Conservatives are not risk-averse. They just calculate with what is true, not just what is rational, in our minds but absent from our concrete, daily lives. Great acts and events manifest all the time, even when they do not make sense to our small minds and curtailed understanding. The unshifting elements of political economy and human nature, of individual liberty and limited government, are lasting, eternal, right and true. Conservatives understand this, then strike out accordingly.

In short, I would say to Mr. Gutfeld and to all liberals in general:

The Right is right because. . .it's right!