{"id":30,"date":"2009-05-14T14:58:53","date_gmt":"2009-05-14T18:58:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/cbracy\/?p=30"},"modified":"2009-05-14T14:58:53","modified_gmt":"2009-05-14T18:58:53","slug":"the-other-side-of-that-conservatism-coin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cbracy\/2009\/05\/14\/the-other-side-of-that-conservatism-coin\/","title":{"rendered":"The Other Side of that Conservatism Coin"},"content":{"rendered":"

A couple days ago, I tried to make the case<\/a> for conservatism (in the traditional sense of the word) as an important element to a responsible political sphere. <\/span>Specifically, I admire the instinct to question authority, not take things at face value, recognize our humility, maintain a healthy level of doubt about the world around us, look for pragmatic (non-ideological) solutions to problems, etc. <\/span>I especially admire this quality as it\u2019s embodied in President Obama.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s a reason I don\u2019t think I could ever label myself a conservative. <\/span>Leave aside the social issues for a moment. The ideology of pragmatism and doubt that I think plays such an important role in keeping us honest can also prevent us from standing up for absolutes. If everything is up for debate, it’s easy to lose sight of the fundamental things that we aren’t willing to compromise and that we’re always willing to fight for. That absolutist (for lack of a better word?) streak and our commitment to core values–basically the bill of rights–are probably the only reason we haven’t broken into factions headed by warlords in this country (yet).<\/p>\n

So when Obama went back on his word<\/a> yesterday to release the torture pictures requested by the ACLU, I was more than a little disappointed. I’ve had this nagging feeling about him that when push comes to shove I’m not sure he’ll do the hard thing and stand up for what’s right, even though it might cost him political points. I breathed a sigh of relief when the torture memos were released in (almost) full, so it’s hard for me to understand why he’s compromising on the pictures. <\/span>His given reason is \u201cit\u2019ll endanger the troops\u201d which is frighteningly close to what Bush and Cheney hid behind for eight years. <\/span><\/p>\n

Then there’s Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. In the Obama administration, the military is still discharging gay service people for being open about their sexual orientation. And to top it off, in case these soldiers want to be patronized on top of being fired, he sends them notes<\/a> promising that he’ll get to overturning that pesky DADT just as soon as he can.<\/p>\n

I understand the political expedience argument. I know that dealing with DADT right now is not a priority, that bringing up stupid cultural issues risks derailing larger priorities. And maybe releasing the torture pictures does piss some generals off and lowers morale. But there are consequences to always taking the pragmatic approach and leaving everything up for debate. As Ta-Nehisi says<\/a>, this stuff is never going to be easy. And as Andrew says<\/a>, people are suffering while Obama waits for the right political moment. It takes moral courage to do what’s right, because it’s the right thing to do. What ever happened to the fierce urgency of now?<\/p>\n

DISCLAIMER: Obama has proved me wrong every single time I’ve doubted him, so, if he does this time, I reserve the right to take back everything I just wrote.<\/p>\n

UPDATE: Looks like Andrew and I are on the same page<\/a> WRT my disclaimer….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A couple days ago, I tried to make the case for conservatism (in the traditional sense of the word) as an important element to a responsible political sphere. Specifically, I admire the instinct to question authority, not take things at face value, recognize our humility, maintain a healthy level of doubt about the world around […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2061,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cbracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cbracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cbracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cbracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2061"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cbracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cbracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cbracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30\/revisions\/40"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cbracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cbracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cbracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}