Friday, January 1, 2010

A Word for Conservatives

As a warrior in training, the Christian Martialist must purpose in his heart to always think & act on that set of ethical principles derived from the written Word of God. When you begin to think and act on selfish motives or the principle of expediency, you destroy the very foundations of your calling as a Christian Martialist.

RPC reminded me of this recently, when he sent me this quote, attributed to Presbyterian theologian R.L. Dabney (1820 –  1898):

[Secular conservatism] is a party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is today one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will tomorrow be forced upon its timidity and will be succeeded by some third revolution; to be denounced and then adopted in its turn. American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader. This pretended salt bath utterly lost its savor: wherewith shall it be salted? Its impotency is not hard, indeed, to explain. It is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It intends to risk nothing serious for the sake of the truth.

1 comment:

The Warrior said...

Excellent, and true. Look at them now. While I often agree with them on many issues...they are more and more conceding.

I guess Dabney saw it all, too.