The usually astute Heritage Foundation commentator Nile Gardiner calls the win by the Conservative Party in Britain a defeat for socialism. Yet, Conservative Party head David Cameron ran on a platform boasting that “we have protected the National Health Service, with 9,500 more doctors and 6,900 more nurses, and ensured generous rises in the State Pension.”
Based on this precedent, we can anticipate that Republican Party politicians here in America will one day run on a platform of making Obamacare more affordable, rather than seeking to abolish it. This, then, will be defined as the “conservative” position.
The coverage of the recent British elections has demonstrated that the term “conservative” has lost much of its meaning. It’s time to take a hard look at what the term has come to mean in Britain and how it is being distorted and transformed here.
In addition to the Conservative Party’s embrace of socialist programs, the Cameron government, which has ruled Britain for five years, has embraced Islamic immigration to Britain, going so far as to pay more deference to global Islam than traditional Christianity. Demonstrating this bias, the supposedly “conservative” government in Britain banned American anti-Jihad activists Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer from the country. Geller and Spencer had intended to rally opposition to the Islamization of the West. Spencer called Cameron, who has labeled Islam “a religion of peace,” as the “dhimmi appeaser.” The term means a non-Muslim who accepts Muslim dominance.
Cameron and his Conservative Party have also embraced the legalization of homosexual marriage. The Conservatives’ 2015 manifesto says: “Our historic introduction of gay marriage has helped drive forward equality and strengthened the institution of marriage. But there is still more to do, and we will continue to champion equality for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender people.”
We can easily anticipate the Republican Party going down this road in the United States. In fact, the publication Politico notes that GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush is among those trying to “have it both ways” on homosexual marriage. “While he publicly maintains his opposition to same-sex marriage, reaffirmed over the weekend by a surrogate he sent to Iowa, Bush is sending signals that he may be more accepting of ‘marriage equality’—the strongest signal, perhaps, coming when he referred to the issue using that term favored by LGBT advocates—than he’s able to let on,” the publication reported.
It noted that Bush has hired a communications director, Tim Miller, who is openly gay, and his inner circle of staffers “have all expressed strong support for marriage equality, including Mike Murphy, hired to run his messaging shop, who wrote about the GOP’s need to evolve on policy following Romney’s defeat in 2012.”
Jeb Bush is shaping up as the David Cameron of the Republican Party.
In Britain the changes keep coming, now at an astounding rate. Andrea Williams of the British group Christian Concern says the Cameron government has not only “destroyed marriage” by redefining it to include homosexual couples, but it is also pursuing liberal policies in other areas. For example, she says the government has liberalized abortion and refused to outlaw abortions on the basis of the sex of the fetus. She says that in Britain nurses and teachers have been suspended for wearing Christian crosses, judges have been replaced for refusing to place children in homosexual relationships with two fathers or two mothers, and Christian street preachers are being jailed for “offensive” comments. “We have no leader at the helm of any of our main parties, whether it’s the Liberal Democrats, the Labor Party or the Conservative Party, who are speaking a moral vision,” she says.
Another British group, the Christian Institute, confirms these ominous trends and warns that “…here in the UK religious liberty is being increasingly challenged…Street preachers have been arrested. Christians have lost their jobs for answering questions about their faith or for taking an ethical stand. Christians in business have come into conflict with equality laws and faced fines for holding to the belief that marriage is between a man and a woman.”
Commentator Charles Moore had warned in March 2015: “Socially conservative moral views are now teetering on the edge of criminality, and are over the edge of disapproval by those who run modern Britain.”
In arguing that “Britain is at heart still a conservative country,” Gardiner of the Heritage Foundation was talking about a country that no longer exists. His only reference to Britain’s cultural collapse came in his observation that Cameron had “alienated many grassroots supporters with highly controversial ‘modernizing’ policies such as backing gay marriage and increasing spending on foreign aid, both deeply unpopular with the Conservative base.” In fact, as we have seen in the statements quoted above, the conservative base has been betrayed on a host of issues. Today, even free speech is at risk in Britain.
In the U.S., it appears that big money is driving the Republican Party to the left, along the same path taken by Britain. The Politico article quoted earlier noted the influence of hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer, who has decided that since his own son is gay, the Republican Party should embrace the homosexual lifestyle and homosexual marriage. The publication said that Bush is determined to win Singer’s personal support, and added that “other billionaire bundlers like Seth Klarman and Dan Loeb, another hedge funder known for asking any candidate who enters his office where they stand on gay rights,” are also looking for Republicans to finance and push their pet causes.
As these developments unfold, it will be up to conservatives in the media and the think tanks to shine a light on the attempted takeover of the Republican Party. That will be much harder to do if the conservative media become part of the problem and go AWOL on the need for a moral vision to save the country.
In this context, Guy Benson, the political editor of its conservative Townhall.com website, has announced that he is a practicing homosexual. Benson, a supporter of homosexual marriage, is a Fox News contributor who appeared on Megyn Kelly’s Fox News show to discuss coming out of the closet through a footnote in his new book. “I think it’s very brave,” Kelly told him.
Fox News has been a major financial backer of the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association, a group that featured a male stripper at its recent New York City fundraiser. However, Townhall.com’s parent company is a Christian firm, Salem Media Group, which has refused comment on whether Benson will retain his influential position within the company. The company describes its mission as “targeting audiences interested in Christian and family-themed content and conservative values.”
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