What is a conservative?

Dr. Alberta Mohler hosted an interview with Yoram Hazony, on Mohler’s YouTube channel, “Thinking in Public”, June 15, 2022.  Yoram Hazony is an Israeli philosopher, Bible scholar, and political theorist. He is president of the Herzl Institute in Jerusalem and serves as the chairman of the Edmund Burke Foundation.  They discussed Hazony’s latest book Conservatism: A Rediscovery. I found the interview stimulating and provocative. From the discussion I gleaned this all-important question:

What is a conservative?

The dictionary defines a conservative as a person that tends or is disposed to maintaining existing views, conditions, or institutions.  They are marked by moderation and caution. So, it makes sense that a conservative is conserving something. Thus, in Canada, it is oxymoronic to call oneself a “progressive conservative.”  The point to be made is that there are permanent laws, traditions and values that dare not be changed because it risks losing what is good and right.

A point that Hazony makes is that one cannot properly call oneself a conservative unless you are a conservative is values and lifestyle.  To take the conversation further we could add that to call oneself a conservative and live a life that is not conservative is hypocritical. So, 2 questions emerge to the reader who claims to be conservative:

1. What are you conserving; and

2. Are you living a conservative lifestyle?

In the interview, Hazony, was very transparent and in fact courageous.  In examining that last decades of western conservatism, the executive word is “abandonment”.  Conservatives have abandoned God, Scripture, marriage, the family, man and woman, the sanctity of life, and so on. When a social or political movement places individual liberty as the end all and be all for all things, that is not conservatism.  It is liberalism.

The questions that face both Canadians and Albertans in the coming months is heavily rooted in the answer to the question, “What is a conservative?”  Secondly, for a political representative to embrace the category of being a conservative, do they live conservatively?  A cursory scan at those who are seeking the leadership of the United Conservative Party in Alberta reveals men and women who have abandoned God, the Bible, the Family and the sanctity of life.  There really are very few conservatives. Many so-called conservative politicians are clothed in liberal clothing.

Perhaps a question that begs an answer from prospective candidates is, “As a conservative what are you conserving?”