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Can a conservative be happy in the humanist movement? This question
has been raised in many local groups. Humanist themes seem to lean
to the left, but clearly humanist values and polictical conservativism
are not uncompatible. Here are some thoughts from those who find
conservative politics fits humanism like a glove!

An “Ayn Rand Conservative’s” Apology
by Neil De Rosa

There are many good teachers of morality without religion. Ayn Rand just happened to be the one around during my impressionable years. Two hundred years ago it might have been Tom Paine; or one hundred years ago, Robert Ingersol—two great icons for generations of humanist freethinkers. This year it could be Oriana Fallaci, or Thomas Sowell or someone else. For me it was Rand. I won’t tell you what she or the others said in this short article. I’ll tell you what I think, but I wanted to recognize their influence on my thinking first.

“Heaven” help those who were in their impressionable years when Marx-Lenin-and Papa Joe Stalin were still respectable among liberals. Their brand of “progressivism” has nothing to do with humanism, but I won’t try to prove that either. It’s self-evident.

I was asked to explain how I, as a conservative, cope with the religious right, and I will. But first, I want to say why I consider myself a conservative. It’s a matter of attitude—it’s a matter of the lesser of many evils.

Why am I a conservative? What is a conservative? Before I answer that I have to say that the only kind of conservative I’m interested in is the contemporary American kind, and perhaps also the British kind. Just to conserve for the sake of conserving is ridiculous. You have to have something good to conserve. We do.

   - We still have freedom and democracy. That’s worth conserving.

   - We can still hold private property, and most (well, maybe half) of what we earn. Let’s conserve that.

   - We still have freedom of speech (except on college campuses), freedom of and from religion, and the rest of the Bill of Rights. I certainly want to conserve that.

   - Our economic system—free enterprise—has provided the highest standard of living, the wonders of modern science, and the best chance to live to a ripe old age and in some comfort. Let’s conserve all that.

   - It has also given us great movies, sports, music, theater, and even decent art and literature. Ditto. I could go on but you get the idea.

I think it is poor logic (and in poor taste) to say that hard-line communists, or fascists or medieval monarchists, are conservative in the way we mean it in American politics, unless one is trying to create guilt by association; this is called argument by non-essentials. Actually the aforementioned cast of characters more closely resembles those so-called liberals or progressives who want to grow government so large as to make everyone dependent on its largess, and who never met a tax they didn't like. But I wanted to keep this upbeat.

For the sake of brevity, I’ll stop here. I’ll end with just a few book recommendations for those interested in learning more about what I mean by conservatism: Conflict of Visions, by Thomas Sowell; Radical Son, by David Horowitz; Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged (fiction), and Capitalism the Unknown Ideal, (non-fiction)—and any of Rush Limbaugh’s books. You can also go back to the roots of the freethinking humanist movement and read Voltaire, Tom Paine, and Ingersol. You’d be surprised to see how they resemble today’s conservatives in more ways than one.

Okay then, why doesn't the "religious right" bother me? I'm assuming that when most liberals use that label they are referring fundamentalist Christians, although the epithet increasingly refers to orthodox Jewish sects as well. The reason is that the burning of heretics was banned centuries ago. The serious reason is that on the issues that matter I pretty much agree with them. On the issues where I do disagree with them, I'm prepared to let the Democratic process settle the issue. Can those on the left say the same? Besides…the Christian / Jewish religious right isn't really the religion we should be worrying about these days. Is it?