Over the past few months a topic has been plaguing my mind.
One had hadn’t given much thought to until the debate on abortion came up recently. Abortion is one of the greatest evils this world has ever seen. Which is why it saddens me when I see conservatives hold their ideals above their principles.
“What do you mean by that?” you might ask, that is what I hope to explain in this article.
High Ideals – Higher Principles
If you meet anybody that knows me they will tell you that I am a person of high ideals, but they will also tell you that my principles are far higher. My ideals are how I wish the world would work. My principles are how I apply those ideals to the world in which we live.
Sadly enough I see a lot of conservatives, especially young conservatives holding their ideals so high that if they don’t get exactly what they want they won’t support you unless you support the extreme.
For instance. I am extremely pro-life, but if I proposed a bill banning abortion after 20 weeks there are some who would say that I am pro-choice, because I did not propose a bill that banned abortion completely.
They say if its not the “perfect” bill they won’t support it.
Now don’t get me wrong having high ideals is a great thing, I have many myself. But when you hold those ideals to a place where you won’t support something that would help the cause that you’re fighting for, because its not the “perfect” bill you’re actually hurting that very cause.
Now I do believe we should fight and fight hard for our ideals, but not to the point to where we toss our principles out the window. Because when we toss our principles out the window we may very well be tossing the ideals out as well.
The author Samuel Smiles once said that,
“A man without principles and will is like a ship without compass; it changes direction with every change of wind”.
This is why we must hold our principles high to light the path of our ideals. You see some times our ideals take us to the edge of a cliff and we don’t even know it, because we can’t see where we’re going.
Look Back At History
Did Wilberforce call quits because he had to slowly end the slave trade in England?
Did the American abolitionists give up because it took them over 80 years to eradicate slavery from this nation?
Or did Martin Luther King Jr. and the other civil rights activists give in to the hate and violence?
No of course not!
Just because you are making baby steps to the end goal, does not mean that you do not have high ideals. In fact it proves quite the opposite, because when continuously fight for the principles that should shape your ideals you will never lose.
Sure you may lose some legislative battles and some legal battles, but when you fight for the biblical principles that this nation was founded on you will always win something, whether it be respect, knowledge, experience, or the actual battle itself.
So will you stand for your principles?
