Child's Play

By: Mr. Curmudgeon
mrcurmudgeon@inthepublicsquare.com

If the sketchy accounts are to be believed, in the year 1212 a young French or German boy had a vision that beckoned him to lead a movement to peacefully convert Muslims to the Christian faith. In time, an army of 30,000 children, together with many elderly followers, marched to the Mediterranean Sea sure in their faith that God would part the waters in order to ease their trip to Jerusalem. Many died on the trip to the sea, while those that managed to secure transport on merchant vessels, died in shipwrecks or were sold into slavery. And so ended what is called the Children’s Crusade.

Though Rush Limbaugh stole the limelight at the recent Conservative Political Action Committee conference, 14-year-old Jonathan Krohn came in a strong second. Though he only spoke for two minutes — in which time he managed to plug his book Define Conservatism — he also managed to cogently express what Limbaugh couldn’t in an address spanning an hour-and-a-half.

… I decided that there were too many people who threw the term conservative around who didn’t understand what they were talking about. They didn’t understand what conservatism was. They didn’t understand conservatism as a base of principle. But they understood it as a base for policy…I always have to tell them no. Conservatism is not about the party, because the party is merely the shell. It’s the inside, it’s the filling that really means something.

But in the book, I’ve defined conservatism, as I believe it is fit, upon four categories of principle: respect for the Constitution, respect for life, less government and personal responsibility. I believe that it is the key, that principle itself is the key to conservatism, because, in many ways, if you do not have a principled base, you do not have policy. And if you do have policy, in many ways, you do not have an Ideology.

…In the conservative viewpoint, we believe it is principle based. It is the people first, the people’s rights — based upon principled views — I believe that this is the key to the conservative viewpoint and its effectiveness in America.

As I close… I want you to understand — I want the American people to understand — that conservatism is not an ideology of feelings or romanticism, as some people like to say. It is an ideology of protecting the people and the people’s rights.

What will it take for conservatives to realize that, like a pre-pubescent boy outgrowing his adolescent wardrobe, they’ve outgrown the Republican Party? When will they finally form a third party? To borrow a well-worn Liberal phrase, if you won't do it for yourselves, “do it for the children” — children like Jonathan Krohn. If not, this child’s political crusade will end as disastrously as that of the Middle Ages.