Redefining Conservatism

I'm not pro-Life, but I am for Ron Paul. Apparently a few Huckabee supporters in the media are saying the Ron Paul is pro-abortion because, get this, he supports a policy that would make it legal for states to legalize abortion. It is called overturning ''Roe v. Wade'', but I guess the hope is that Huckabee supporters are dumb enough not to understand the implications of overturning ''Roe v. Wade'', which has been part of the conservative agenda for 35 years. This includes both social conservatives and even pro-choice conservatives who believe in the plain meaning of the constitution. Lynn Swann and Fred Thompson never appeared to understand this, so it wouldn't surprise me if most people who consider themselves conservatives fall for this line.

Despite the spin and what essentially amounts to telling a big lie against Ron Paul, there is, I think, a fundamental question at stake here that may split the conservative vote even more than it already has been. For most of the nation's history, issues of health, safety, welfare, and morals were reserved to the states under the plain language of the federal constitution and the 10th Amendment. However, following WWII, a series of cases, of which ''Roe'' was a part, vaulted these issues into the realm of the federal government. This meant that these issues now became federal issues whether or not people were willing to accept this power grab by the Supreme Court and Congress.

And while the issues of safety regulation and others related to commerce have been just as integral to the destruction of the federal Constitution, it is really on moral issues that conservatives may reach a total split. The question is this: (a) do conservatives fight to put these issues back at the state level where they belong in accordance with the plain language of the Constitution; or (b) do conservatives deal with the fact that these are now federal issues by using Congress, the federal courts, and amendments to the federal Constitution to legislate what are primarily moral issues?

I fully believe that now that the GOP has become populist rather than conservative, we will continue to see morality issues such as abortion, gay rights, marriage, divorce, school prayer, church-state separation, and whole host of other issues handled at the federal level rather than by the states. Liberals and activist liberal judges went out of there way to destroy the plain meaning of the constitution when it suited their needs. They may be about to reap the reward of the destruction they have sown by seeing the federal government used to enforce one particular segment of society's morality upon the rest of us. Traditionally this has happened at the state level, but theoretically at the state level, people would have a greater say in what they wanted for their morality-based legislation. This also would theoretically allow for greater diversity among opinions. Diversity is supposed to be unquestionably good, right?

More importantly, however, is that the constitution says these should not be federal issues. We should be very reluctant to change that document without some overwhelming reason besides satisfying the latest controversial issue ''du jour''. Unfortunately, that has already happened without changing a single word in the document.