Being a conservative is supposed to be bad news if you listen to the liberal left. As a teacher, I used to ask for definitions of both being a liberal, and being a conservative. Then, there wasn't a good definition of either. I tagged "change for change sake" on liberalism, and referred to the phrase of being a "reactionary" for conservatism. Neither is a very good definition.
Liberals want the government to do ever so much for the people, which is very much the same as socialism. Socialism is when the government controls the major means of production, transportation, and communications. Historically, a socialist government has to have high taxes, and central planning has almost always been very wasteful. We were witness to the worst kinds of socialism back then; fascism and communism. The world had pretty well vanquished fascism in World War II, but the Communists were presenting their new threat to world peace. There was an American Communist Party, but even before the war, communists were not very popular. To disguise themselves to others, they called themselves socialists, and when socialists were not much more popular, they called themselves progressives. But that was not a popular term either, so they began calling themselves liberals. That's not to say all liberals are communists, but sometimes it's hard to tell them apart.
When Roosevelt was elected in 1932, he instituted a great many government programs which were supposed to put the nation back to work. His opponents in Congress objected to many of them, labeling them "creeping socialism". The Supreme Court rejected several of his programs, calling them unconstitutional. Roosevelt finally asked the 75th Congress (in 1937) to increase the size of the Supreme Court to 15 justices. He explained that he would use the decisions of the Court to streamline the government and make it more progressive. He wanted to avoid using the amendment process because it took too much time. The Congress rejected his request. [ That came to be known as his effort to "pack" the Court with activist judges who would allow his programs to be implemented.]
Roosevelt was being given credit for getting the nation out of the Great Depression, but consider this: In 1939, after nearly 2 full terms, unemployment was still 17%, in 1940, it was still 14%, and in 1941, even after he had gotten the nation on a quasi-wartime economy, unemployment was still 9.9% - still depression numbers. Americans didn't want to get involved in another of Europe's wars, and Roosevelt himself was telling American mothers their sons would not have to fight in any more foreign wars. There were even some in this country who favored Hitler, and didn't want to fight against him. Charles Lindbergh was a leader of peace activists here, and the anti-war sentiment was substantial. Even as Roosevelt was making his promises, he and Winston Churchill were making plans to get the U.S. involved. And, using unemployment as a measuring stick, we didn't some out of the Depression until 1942, when we were in full-scale war.
Conservatives of that period wanted to return to our Constitution, and shut off the socialistic machinations Roosevelt was installing. Roosevelt backers called them reactionaries who wanted to go back to the "good old days" of the Roaring Twenties which led up to the Crash, and the Great Depression. The Republicans were the conservatives - the party of the wealthy corporation executives; the Democrats were called the Party of the Working Man.
Conservatives were thought to be plodders who didn't really want to advance into the future. Even people who were hardest hit by the Depression didn't want to go on the government dole. They needed help, but government help always had strings tied to it which restricted the freedoms folks were used to. Grudgingly, they accepted the help, but in all honesty, those early programs didn't work all that well. Liberalism was begun.
I was also a football coach when I was a teacher, and we coaches often had a chance to go to coaching clinics to learn better methods of playing the game. It was at such a clinic when I got the best explanation of what conservatism means. When Charlie Bradshaw was the head coach at the University of Kentucky, he had Bart Starr come as a guest speaker. Bart had played for Charlie in high school, down in Montgomery, Alabama, and had played at the University of Alabama. He gained his reputation as the quarterback for the Green Bay Packers when Vince Lombardi was the head coach.
Bart commented that many in the media would ask him how Lombardi had developed such a wide-open offense, and he always replied that the Packers didn't have a wide-open offense; they were a very conservative team. He explained that Coach Lombardi was a stickler for the fundamentals. He insisted on perfection of execution of the fundamentals - blocking, tackling, running, passing, catching, etc. Every play was designed to score if everyone performed their assignments to perfection. They had two great running backs in Paul Hornung and Jim Taylor, and some excellent offensive linemen, particularly the guards. When they ran the "Green Bay sweep", they would gain yardage if everyone performed well.
Bart continued by saying that because of the devastating running attack they had, teams would load their defenses to stop the run on first down, and that made them vulnerable to short passes. The Packers had several very good receivers, and Bart could throw short passes very well, so frequently they passed on first down to take advantage of the defenses rigged to stop the run, and they completed 85% of their first down passes! Those passes were designed to gain 5 or 6 yards, but the receivers were so good, they often turned short passes into long gainers, often for long touchdowns.
The defenses were also designed to work well if everyone did their assigned tasks with perfection. That insistence on perfection of the fundamental execution of all parts of the game was very much a conservative philosophy, but the results were very dynamic. So Bart explained that it was a dynamic conservatism which enabled them to become one of the better teams in the history of professional football.
That not only made a lot of sense to me as a coach, but if you think about it, every task we do in life has fundamentals we need to learn. By learning those fundamentals, and working hard to perform the fundamentals to perfection all the time, we can perform them more rapidly, and more surely, enabling us to look for ways to use our efficiency to open new avenues of productive approach.
The "fundamentals" of our unique form of government are contained in our Constitution. Not only does it describe our national government, but it allows each state to have its own sovereignty within the framework of the Constitution, and it also provides the means by which it may be changed to stay abreast of modern developments. It is the most perfect form of government ever devised by man, and the most succinctly written. It allows our citizens to develop their own initiatives to make their way in life ... or so it is designed.
As it was described in the Declaration of Independence, we all have certain inalienable rights given to us by our Creator. Along with those rights we have the responsibility to honor the rights of others, so long as they do not endanger the rest of society. Those rights are not given by the government, nor can the government take them away from us. It is our jobs to take the responsibility of voting to select representatives who will best work within our Constitution to provide protection to our citizens. If you look at Article I, Section 1, you will see that all legislative powers are given to the Congress. That means the courts may not make law by issuing edicts. It means that the president may not issue executive orders which are to be accepted as the law, nor may any agency/department issue regulations that have the force of law. Article I, Section 8, enumerates the powers given the congress by the Constitution, and if you read that closely you will see that there is no power granted the federal government to have any role in local education, or local health care. The Constitution is the supreme law of the land. There are no asterisks included to allow interpretations that change the meaning of the words in the Constitution.
It remains for us to learn the fundamentals within the Constitution and see that they are executed properly at all times so that we may realize the dynamic power of governing ourselves. That would be the essence of conservatism.
In the course of history, there has never been a socialist government which lasted for any length of time. Socialism always has a form of central planning by the government, and central planners are never as good at making plans as those for whom the plans are intended. Wasteful central planning requires much taxation which deprives citizens of finding a more comfortable way of life for themselves. Spending money you don't have causes indebtedness that can't be reduced until the over-spending is stopped. And the borrower becomes the slave of the lender.
Most of the countries in Europe have socialist governments, and taxes are high there, and unemployment is worse of a problem there than here. It has been said that Sweden has the highest taxes of all, and, curiously, the highest incidence of suicide of all the nations in the world! Just how dynamic can you consider a country which can't produce clean drinking water, or suitable sewage disposal, or highways fit for heavy traffic? Germany's autobahn is one of the most noted highway systems in Europe, and it was developed by Hitler to facilitate military traffic from east to west. Health care is a large problem for all of them because people have to wait their turn, and then don't always get the best treatment.