According to many of the pundit class, Texas may be the decisive primary in the Democratic nomination insofar as it is a "must win" for Sen. Hillary Clinton. The current conventional wisdom is that, should she lose the Texas popular vote, the nomination will certainly go to Sen. Barack Obama. But a win in Texas could give Clinton new life. With Sen. John McCain's solid grip on the Republican nomination, Texas Republicans should consider voting for Clinton in next week's primary.
Measured on the spectrum of American politics, Obama's candidacy rests on the far fringes of liberalism. The nomination of Obama would validate the most radical liberal notions as legitimate political forces and introduce a virulent anti-conservative ideology into the mainstream of American politics.
Modern American conservatism can trace its routes to Edmund Burke, the British statesman famous for his support of the American Revolution and opposition to the French Revolution. Burke believed in the classical notion of political philosophy: that there is a distinction between theoretical political philosophy and political practice. Burke believed the excesses of the French Revolution could be found in the mixture of political theory with practice. Political practice itself should be prescriptive, focusing on incrementally improving the people's living conditions and allowing for pursuit of the greatest number of legitimate personal ends for people's lives. A conservative praises the daily workings of the political process - the triangulations, compromises and narrowly defined interests - instead of vilifying them. By changing slowly and empirically, the public stays routed in the history of its nation, and the gross injustices that are so often vindicated in the name of "justice" are avoided.
In the historical context we can view Burke as the opponent of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who believed that civil society must be corrected toward radical equality in accordance with the consent required of the social contract. Rousseau's political philosophy was a major inspiration for the French Revolution - and for many of its excesses.
Part of the distance that has been traveled by the political left can be seen by comparing the slogans of the French Revolution to that of Obama's "revolution." The French Revolution had many slogans, the most famous being "liberty, equality, fraternity," but most all of them expressed some real idea about the rights of man and how the future should be. On the other hand, the slogans of the Obama campaign that so many people find inspirational, such as "Yes, we can," and "Change we can believe in," demonstrate not substantive values, but value commitment. Commitment as the means to specific ends is replaced by self-affirmation as an end to itself. Nietzsche called this "the will to power."
We have discovered just how radical it is for political commitment to be based not on prescription or values but on personality through the Obama campaign's rhetoric. Although conservatives can become mightily frustrated by the political calculation that Clinton and her husband personify, one can find in their roots the very heart of conservatism and a political practice that is far more steady and freedom-loving than Obama's politics of personality.
To the degree that the politics of both parties remains within the tradition of American political activism in its prescriptive form, the better off this county and its people will be. I hope other Republicans will join me in casting a ballot for Hillary Clinton in the Texas Democratic primary.
Staha is a law student and former chairman of the Senate of College Councils.
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