Spanking is an act of violence against children. It is ridiculous to dispute that: the whole point of spanking is to inflict an injury, no matter how small, upon a child to express one's anger with an action they committed. A child is being hit and this is the objective truth. Proponents of spanking will say, however, that this act of violence is permissible because it is done as an expression of love for the purposes of discipline. The violence is excused.

The Quran is condemned as a religious text that incites violence (eg: 9:5: But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them, an seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem). However, the Bible is often used to justify acts of violence (eg: Joshua 6:20-21: So the people shouted when the priests blew with the trumpets: and it came to pass, when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, and the people shouted with a great shout, that the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city. And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword.). People point to the terrorists of 9-11 and say the Quran made them do it, but they point to the American soldiers in Iraq and say that God sent people to war in the Bible.

The events of 9-11 claimed over 3000 innocent lives, and are rightly condemned as crimes against humanity. Yet the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki claimed 210,000 (+ or - 10,000) innocent lives, not counting those who died from the after effects, and are excused as necessary for America's wartime goals.

Thousands of dollars were spent to bring legal action against former United States President Bill Clinton, to determine if he had indeed lied under oath about receiving oral sex from an intern. Impeachment actions were even brought against him. Meanwhile, current President George Bush Jr. has been seriously implicated in corporate corruption scandals which have cost thousands of people millions of dollars combined. No legal actions, no impeachment proceedings, have been levelled against Bush.

Habitually, the "pro-life" movement is dominated by people who, while condeming abortion, are also usually strong supporters of war and capital punishment while at the same time usually apathetic (at best) to social and environmental justice.

I provide these examples to demonstrate my contention that conservativism is fundamentally immoral, or perhaps more accurately, is amoral. Rather than basing itself on a system of objective principles which are meant for all people and by all people, conservativism supplies itself with a system that is wholely partisan, contextual, and personal. That is to say, conservativism is completely arbitrary.

As evidenced by the few examples above, there is very little which conservativism considers to be truely, objectively, right or wrong. In fact, the only things which conservatives to tend to think are objectively wrong are those which "other people do", such as homosexual relationships. But for the rest, the standard is placed not upon the rightness or wrongness of an act, but upon who's interests the act is done in. What we have is a situation where violence is not in itself considered wrong, but is only wrong depending on who does it and why.

While the proponent of spanking may condemn child abuse, they refuse to see their own actions as abuse. Rather, they are disciplining in love. Its not considered violence because its not done "to be mean", as though most acts of family abuse are done for purposely sadistic reasons.

The Quran is denounced for inciting violence, but when the same person denouncing it looks to the Bible for justification for war, the problem is obviously not that the Quran justifies violence. The situation here is purely one of arbitrary religious fervor: "they think that they go to war because it's God's will, but we know we go to war because it's God's will."

Comparing Hiroshima/Nagasaki and 9-11, the death toll of the former is orders of magnitude higher than that of the latter. Yet the former is excused and the latter is mourned. There is no principle present here that the loss of innocent lives is wrong. Rather, the losses of 9-11 are only mourned because they were American innocents. Pundits constantly claim that we cannot "blame the victim" of 9-11 by critiquing U.S. foreign policy which exacerbated the desperation of insane men. Yet Hiroshima/Nagasaki is often justified by Pearl Harbor... "The Japs had it coming!"

During the Clinton debacle, Republicans and their supporters were opining about how the White House must be a place of honour where no person who lies should set up office. But for Bush, they maintain the tightest of lips, accusing anyone of questioning Bush's innocence in the corporate corruption scandals of being anti-American and raising tension in a time when the President should be unquestioningly supported. A Democrat lies and they spend thousands of dollars and make the country a mess. A Republican, illegitimately installed as President, is implicated in much deeper scandals, and they seek silence. If this is not partisan politics, I don't know what is.

Being anti-abortion does not necessarily make one pro-life, and the conservative pro-life movement proves this by it's general support for war and capital punishment, and it's antipathy for social and environmental justice. They cry that life is sacred... Apparently until it leaves the womb. Then if it had the misfortune of, say, being born in Hiroshima in 1945, it was fair game. Here, being anti-abortion is not based on a consistent ethic that views the sacredness of all life, but rather, it is a completely arbitrary political stance. They are anti-abortion because thats what conservatives are "supposed" to be.

Recognzing its own lack of solid, principled foundation, conservativism will often try to impose the moral high ground after the fact. For example, conservatives will often justify Allied actions in WW2 (such as the unnecessary bombing of Dresden, which claimed somewhere between 30,000 and 130,000 innocent lives... the exact figure is unknown because of the number of refugees in the area at the time) on the grounds that the Holocaust had to be stopped. Also, justification for the war on Afghanistan is often found by citing the need to liberate Muslim women from the oppression they suffered under the Taliban. However, careful examination of the facts shows that this is little but convenient dishonesty. Allied nations turned away countless Jewish refugees before WW2. In fact, the then Prime Minister of Canada was quoted as saying, in response to the question of accepting refugees, that "one Jew is too many". In the case of the Taliban, it was known for at least a half-decade before 9-11 that women were being terribly oppressed, yet no finger was lifted until after 9-11.

These examples demonstrate that conservatives have no interest in seeking objective standards and principles intended to be lived by all people and extended to all people. This is often the charge levied at liberalism, but it is a complete reversal from the truth. The false ideology of "whatever works for you" is actually a trait of apathy, and not of conservativism or liberalism. But liberalism does hold to objective principles by and for all people... The liberal may believe that all violence is, without exception, wrong, while the conservative may believe that only violence done against America is wrong while violence done by America is justified. The liberal may believe that all life is sacred at every stage of development, while the conservative may only believe that some life is sacred at certain stages of development depending on the politicial climate.

On the subject of personal morality, conservativism again expresses its arbitrary values while liberalism, contrary to popular opinion, bases it's moral views on it's principles. Rather than a wishy-washy "anything goes" view of personal morality, liberalism believes that a person's personal morality is their own responsibility insofar as it does not work contrary to the objective principles of human, social, and environmental justice. This is why liberals don't generally consider homosexuality wrong: it's not because liberals believe that anything goes, but because liberals are not convinced that homosexuality works contrary to human, social, and environmental justice. Meanwhile, conservatives routinely cite one of two reasons why homosexuality is supposedly immoral, being that they find it personally disgusting or because their religious beliefs condemn it. This is completely arbitrary.

This arbitrary nature eliminates conservativism from claiming any moral high ground. The moral arguements of conservativism are based almost entirely upon the preferential option for oneself: it is wrong when you do it to me, but it is good when I do it to you. So based on this, it is my contention that conservativism provides humanity with no foundation for a common moral course. Conservativism is fundamentally immoral.