My personal beliefs were shaped by the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights. The genius expressed in these documents led me to become a proud conservative woman, and since I have a pocket Constitution for every purse I own, I never leave my dorm room without being able to read those brilliant words between my classes. For a Constitutionalist such as myself, being liberal is impossible. None of the principles of the Constitution are respected by the political Left. The right to life is denied by pro-abortion activists, the right to liberty is opposed by socialists, and even the right to pursue happiness can only be considered a principle supported by the progressive agenda if one thinks of happiness as a type of shallow emotional comfort, not as the deeper happiness the Founders wished us to pursue by creating lives of meaning for ourselves.
I would argue that the Constitution is not only a civic document, but a spiritual one. It recognizes the spirit of each American and acknowledges their humanity, not merely their material needs. The modern political Left is the antithesis to this. They view the citizenry as masses consisting of mouths to feed, not as capable individuals. Since the essence of religion and spiritualism is mocked by the Left as simple-minded superstition, their materialistic view seems natural. To them, man has no spiritual needs because he has no spirit, and woman is an equally spiritless creature who ought to only crave sameness with man wherever possible. She should not crave liberty, nor intellectual and emotional fulfillment, nor love: only material equity.
I study history at a time when my Democratic Socialist classmates seek to abolish the First and Second Amendments. I am a young, Persian-American woman living in a time when liberals insist that women and ethnic minorities must support an agenda that is ultimately destructive to liberty. They insist that America is only interested in protecting the rights of a few. Yet the idea of America is not limited to one demographic. This nation has grappled with many great mistakes, but these mistakes were due to our inability to live up to our ideas, not due to flaws in the ideas themselves.
The First Amendment, based partially on the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, has allowed for the beauty of American diversity. The Founders, especially Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, intended for their new nation to become an example of religious liberty to the whole world. They acknowledged that the heart of man is spiritual and, knowing that no institution made by humans should have the power to dictate the hearts or minds of others, believed that basic natural rights were granted to all people by their Divine Creator. Thus, however one chooses to visualize and venerate the Creator is a purely individual choice.
The Second Amendment, which is also under attack from the political Left, not only protects citizens from a tyrannical government, but also from other individuals. It was crucial for African Americans to learn how to properly use firearms during the Civil Rights Era so that they could defend themselves against the intimidation and violence of the KKK. Evil will always attempt to harm others, whether through the use of legally or illegally obtained weapons. Thus, an oppressive government is one which denies innocent people the legal right to defend themselves, making its citizens dependent on the State for protection in a time of crisis.
Expanding the protections of the Constitution to truly include the American people has made our nation greater. The shaping of a desirable future does not involve destroying Constitutional ideas, but rather continuing to live by them, always striving to follow them more faithfully. Unfortunately, when modern liberalism conflicts with the Constitution, its supporters assume that the fault lies within the political framework of this country, thus threatening Constitutional liberties.
Being a conservative woman is about upholding the tradition of liberty for future generations. It’s about being civically engaged and spiritually vibrant. Being a dissenting voice is a daunting task, but our Republic needs that sort of dauntlessness right now. Our country is not meant to be like the nations of Europe. Americans aren’t defined by ethnicity, but by a shared belief in the beauty of the American Experiment. We have no state-controlled religious structure like the Church of England, nor are we forced to essentially worship the State itself as the citizens of certain communist regimes must do. We aren’t forced into subjugation by a government which denies us the right to defend ourselves. We the people, the whole people, have been given an opportunity by our Creator to begin searching for our truest and most liberated selves, and The Constitution and its Amendments exist to prevent the government from denying us of these natural rights.
