Carl Mumpower/The Candid Conservative: Good government? It beats big government

Conservatives do not automatically reject the importance of government. Per the lessons of history, we do fear the harmful potentials of an improperly empowered government.

Government is a manmade system for organizing, managing and protecting a united social order. Left to natural forces, that mission is easily subverted into one whereby the goals become self-service, micromanagement and self-protection.

For this reason, conservatives prioritize good government over big government. The former can best be defined as a constrained effort to do a few things well rather than a whole lot of things poorly. In America today we do not have that kind of government.

Deciding what government can and should do is a bit tricky. Fortunately, we have the U.S. Constitution, embraced by many as an inspired document, to guide our way. Unfortunately, we also have a host of unscrupulous politicians and citizens who love the liberties of the Constitution, but side-step the equally important constraints.

Instead of a government that is doing a number of constitutionally directed things well, we have an unrestrained government justifying its existence by pretending the capacity to address everything.

Conservatives recognize the necessity of reasoned opposition to this power grab. In our country, and most of the rest of the world, the voices devoted to political and centralized power are clearly in control. For this reason and others conservatives of the 21st century are dedicated voices for governmental restraint. Like our Founding Fathers, and in contrast to liberal socialists, we prefer our people big and our government small.

One of the better means to containing our government is to persistently audit performance toward fulfilling its constitutionally validated missions. Those would include protecting our borders, securing a reliable currency, regulating international commerce, and sheltering our liberties.

Those missions were long ago expanded to robbing the labors of some to fund the interests of others. Under this license there is no end to the ways government can extort its citizens. Thus the never ending fight to restrain Uncle Sam’s gluttonous appetites…

The successful rule of law requires a foundation of governing principles. Without this grounding a culture will be ruled by something else and that something will almost always be rigged to the benefit of a chosen few.

The U.S. Constitution provides parameters for our system of governance, social order, protection, and taxation. Although some of these priorities are more apparent than others, the central Constitutional mission was to restrain government so we could uplift ourselves.

Knowing the corruptibility that exists in a fallen world, the Constitution was designed to be comprehensive and transparent, but not particularly convenient. Its structure points to an intended capacity for adaptation, but only through challenging and established procedures.

The corrupt, self-serving, and power-driven rarely uphold that which impedes their agendas. Thus we find our Constitution under persistent assault from all corners. Those who would discard or distort the elements of our social compass almost always come with a smile, a message of something for nothing, and a compelling argument for practical redress of the limits and liberties enumerated in our Constitution.

Some constitutional predators sit on a bench and ignore their proscribed responsibility to interpret law versus make it. Others sidestep constraints and control through legislated fiat. Still others speak of the Constitution as a “living document” – code words for a self-granted license to manipulate its content. In each case the attempt is to sidestep constraints, ignore states’ rights, or assume centralized power for personal agendas – hidden or otherwise.

Conservatives are strict in their attachment to the opportunities and restraints of the U.S. Constitution. We recognize the ample evidence that human beings require this partnership of opposing forces and that those who cherry pick or sidestep this symmetry do so generally for personal advantage over the best interests of our society.

Conservatives recognize the unduplicated inspiration in the Constitution. We embrace the responsibility of protecting its gifts. We attempt the same enthusiasm, resourcefulness, and courage demonstrated by our Founding Fathers through their creation…

Have you noticed how so many politicians, both elephants and donkeys, love grandeur? Every policy action coming out of Washington is presented with the gravity of the Titanic’s maiden launch. The overuse of high powered adjectives is epidemic. Words like crisis”, “disaster and “catastrophe” are used so routinely to cry “wolf” that the arrival of a real one would find most of asleep in our recliners. It reminds me of a self-deprecating comment made by a friend when complimented on a new suit – “The smaller the present, the more important it is to dress up the box.” Politicians use lofty language to stimulate emotional reactions in their mascots. It’s easier to fool someone reacting out of their heart than thinking out of their head. Real conservatives use both head and heart, as nature intended, to respond versus react to information. Real politicians recognize its small actions based in reason and responsibility, not the grand fantasy that produces results. A fancy political wrapper is a sure sign of a gift you can do without…

One of liberal media’s favorite decoy ploys is to accuse conservatives of being divisive. Tea Party patriots fighting to preserve the American Dream are divisive. Republican congressmen refusing to go along with the latest Obaminism are divisive. Christians being sincere to the values advocated in the Bible are divisive. In truth the left’s finger pointing is designed to get the attention off their misbehavior. Liberals routinely confuse a dedication to deviance with a pretend interest in diversity. Try adding your conservative voice to a liberal group’s discussion and you’ll get a quick reality check on how shallow modern liberalism’s range of interests run. Probably the clearest indictment of divisiveness is what’s happened to America as we’ve leaned toward the left. Decades of ever bigger government, entitlement, and cultural permissiveness have served to pit us against one another with a fierceness not duplicated since the civil war. It’s going to get worse before it gets better. Conservative thinkers are advised to remember our dedication to reality, reason, responsibility, and right offers a message of unification the left can’t remotely duplicate…

Former President Bill Clinton continues to dance around America shoring up depressed Democrats. His skills at weasel language serve as a reminder of a revealing biography written during his presidency. “The Secret Life of Bill Clinton,” by Englishman Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, showed courage and an interest in truth rarely found in American reporters. Our press has a long-standing history of superficial investigation, playing to the power elite and filtering the truth with a liberal bias. Ambrose avoided government spokesman as he met with real people victimized by the Clinton machine. His work illuminated Clinton as an accomplished political manipulator with a ruthless dedication to power and self-interests. It’s been 13 years since this Englishman tried to wake up America. He’s turned out to be right on almost everything but one thing. It was his contention that the left’s “incipient authoritarianism” would never take hold here due to our unique spirit. Though he knew Clinton well, Ambrose seriously overestimated our resolve and underestimated the power of the people of the lie…

With all the calls for campaign finance reform coming from the left, one would expect the big spenders would be big business. Those days have passed. Today’s dominant campaign financers are special interest groups seeking to secure their selfish interests. The AARP, Chamber of Commerce, and others are spending money like crazy to put their puppets in office. Yet standing tall above all those who participate in this “Buy America Plan” is the biggest spender of all – the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees. This union for government workers has one mission and it is not to uphold America. Their effort is to secure the jobs, paychecks, benefits, and pension plans of public employees. Not everyone in America is a greedy self-serving cheat, but more and more we are swapping the American Dream for the American Deal. We all need to take a close look at the organizations we join. We need to make sure that we too are not participating in this destructive Buy America plan. At some point we will run out of things to steal…

If wisdom can be judged by the refusal to repeat error, America’s leaders have not been very bright. They persist in political adventurism – wars – that do not merit conservative or liberal support. The fantasy of fixing things with war is one of history’s great deceptions. Defense is absolutely a necessity in a world full of social predators. War, under most circumstances, is an entrepreneurial exercise is a frivolity. WWI, the war to end all wars, brought us WWII. That “good” war left half of Europe under communist control and set the stage for Korea and Vietnam. The Korean War is still going on. The lessons of 57,000 men lost in Vietnam didn’t last a generation before both political parties took us to Iraq and Afghanistan. Thanks to those murky adventures, we now have over 100,000 troops dealing with traumatic brain injury. Add the dead, the wounded, and the strained and drained and the message is clear. We should do a much smarter job of containing our vanities and assumptions before we send our children to war…

Though the name Fort Sumter readily conjures imagery of war and heroism, just across the harbor, on the grounds of another fort bearing his name, rests the remains of a man worth remembering. General William Moultrie was the commander of the patriot forces resisting the British invasion of Charleston during the Revolutionary War. When approached with inducements by Lord Montagu to desert the America cause, Moultrie’s reply, carved upon his gravestone, still echoes today. “You have forgot to tell me how I am to get rid of the feelings of an injured honest heart and where to hide myself from myself. This would be a fatal exchange from my present situation with an easy and approved conscience of having done my duty and conducted myself as a man of honor.” In a modern world of manipulative politicians, deviants, social predators, crony capitalists, culture vultures, and other people of the lie, Moultrie offers an alternative model. Going forward we are going to need such men and women as much as ever. Moultrie is just one of many to point the way.

Carl Mumpower, a former member of Asheville City Council, may be contacted at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it