40 Compelling Reasons to Support Conservatism

These are the reasons I am a conservative:

• All men are created equal.  They are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights including Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
  
• Once liberty is lost, it is rarely recovered.
  
• Private property and liberty are inseparable.
  
• The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. 
  
• The principal responsibility of the government is to the citizen. Otherwise, the government ceases to be legitimate.
  
• One-size-fits-all government fits no one well.
  
• A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have.
  
• An all-powerful government is the greatest threat to liberty.
  
• Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.
  
• The powers not delegated to the Federal Government by the Constitution are reserved to the States or to the people.
  

• The Federal Government should make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
  
• No person should be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.
  
• Equality is the natural right of every individual to live freely under self-government, to acquire and retain the property he creates through his own labor and to be treated impartially before a just law.
  
• Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.  
  
• The right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
  
• The conservative despises tyranny.
  
• Redistribution of wealth for the "greater good" is tyranny in disguise.
  
• You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
  
• The only thing that can cure poverty is wealth.
  
• That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise.
  

• The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.
  
• The law has placed the collective force at the disposal of the unscrupulous who wish (without risk) to exploit the person, liberty, and property of others. It has converted plunder into a right, in order to protect plunder.
  
• You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
  
• To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.
  
• If the Constitution’s meaning can be erased or rewritten, and the Framers’ intentions ignored, it ceases to be a constitution but is instead a concoction of political expedients that serve the contemporary policy agendas of the few who are entrusted with public authority to preserve it.
  
• To say that the constitution is a living and breathing document is to give license to arbitrary and lawless activism.
  
• The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.
  
• A people cannot remain free and civilized without moral purposes, constraints, and duties.
  
• The individual is more than an abstract statistic or faceless member of some group.
  
• Taxation of private property or the regulation of such property so as to reduce its value can become in effect a form of servitude, particularly if the dispossession results from illegitimate and arbitrary state action.
  

• The individual knows better how to spend that which he has earned than do large bureaucracies populated by strangers who see classes of people rather than individual human beings.
  
• Private property rights serve the common good: "What belongs to no one is wasted by everyone. What belongs to one man in particular is the object of his economy and care." 
  
• The conservative opposes crony capitalism where the Statist uses the power of government to subsidize one favored enterprise at the expense of another.
  
• The government is obligated to qualify immigration to those most likely to contribute to the well-being of the civil society.
  
• If a nation does not show and teach respect for its own identity, principles, and institutions, that corrosive attitude  is conveyed to the rest of the world, including newly arriving aliens.  And if this is unchecked, the nation will ultimately cease to exist.
  
• The moral imperative of all public policy must be the preservation and improvement of  American society.
  
• If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known, that we are at all times ready for war.
  
• Great nations have responsibilities to lead and we should always be cautious of those who would lower our profile because they might just wind up lowering our flag.
  
• Civil society is a harmony of interest, not a zero sum game in which the politically powerful exploit the politically weak.
  
• Free people working in self-interested cooperation, and a government operating within the limits of its authority promote more prosperity, opportunity and happiness for more people than any alternative.

There are two options: liberty and tyranny.  Which will you choose?

Sources: The Constitution of the United States of America, Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto, the Declaration of Independence, and many others.  We stand on the shoulders of giants.

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