Love: Properly Understood

This past weekend I traveled to the ISI Colorado Leadership Summit in Colorado Springs. The topic was liberty and equality, and of course, with talk of equality comes talk of progress and change. I think the topics of progress and change are often difficult for conservatives to tackle. For one reason, our very name, conservatives, means those who conserve.  We look to the past to address the future, and we prefer to conserve values and principles rather than invent new ones. The second reason is that this culture of death and liberalism has painted us as a bunch of old fuddy duddies who are unwilling to change.

But progress and change are two different things. All progress is change, but not all change is progress.

Ok, great, so what is progress? The Oxford English Dictionary says it is the onward movement towards a destination.  But that does not capture the word’s full meaning; progress is the human experience. Every generation longs for progress so those who come after them can live better than they did. Maybe I am idealistic, but a lot of people want to leave the world a better place than they found it.

Still, as conservatives we are faced with an even bigger question. What does this mean? How do we conduct ourselves in this hostile world? Well there is only one answer, and it is love.

Now hold on, I am not talking about that mushy feeling you get, or even a strong emotional attachment. I am talking about real love, and love is self-giving. It requires sacrifice and is difficult. It requires that we get out of our luxury SUV’s and help the people in our community. Love means we advocate for a cause, even when it makes us unpopular. It means that we give our time, our talent, and our treasure.
If we do this, quickly the country will see that we care. They will see the true love, charity and care we show others, and that is the strongest argument for conservatism. We truly care, but our culture wrongly labels us as a radical, selfish group.

“What is the object of human life? The enlightened conservative does not believe that the end or aim of life is competition; or success; or enjoyment; or longevity; or power; or possessions. He believes instead, that the object of life is Love. He knows that the just and ordered society is that in which Love governs us, so far as Love ever can reign in this world of sorrows; and he knows that the anarchical or the tyrannical society is that in which Love lies corrupt.”- Russell Kirk