R: Never Upend, Always Amend

The genius of Augustus was making a seismic political change appear to be a minor amendment. Augustus was responsible for abolishing the Roman Republic and replacing it with an imperial system that survived in some form for 1,500 years. The Romans, lovers of tradition down to their bones, would never have supported Julius Caesar’s heir if he had abolished the Senate and proclaimed himself king. But when Augustus took the lowly title of princeps, called himself “first among equals,” and restored to the Senate much of their lost pomp and circumstance, the elite of Rome fell in step behind the young man in his civil wars against Mark Anthony and Sextus Pompey. The illusion of gradual change allowed an upheaval to take place.

Conservatives often portray themselves as lovers of gradual change and cautious amendment. We decry attempts to pack the Supreme Court, rewrite the Constitution, or launch an armed rebellion as dangerous and reactionary. But, as the negative may point out, Americans are the heirs of a revolutionary tradition. There comes a time when “a long train of abuses” compels even conservatives to “alter or abolish” their government and its laws. Indeed, many injustices in our world cry out for dramatic action. The genocide of abortion has taken the lives of 63 million children since Roe v. Wade, and every day more than 2,300 preborn children are killed in the United States. What could plead more strongly for an upending of the political order than the murder of so many innocents?

The affirmative may rest its argument in classical conservative thought that soberly considers the dangers of treating laws and established institutions like they may lose their legitimacy at the slightest misstep. Part of conservatism is having a realistic view of human nature, thereby understanding that we must hold our government and institutions to a high standard but not an impossibly high one. Abraham Lincoln is perhaps the most famous defender of this perspective. He says in his 1838 Lyceum Address, “although bad laws, if they exist, should be repealed as soon as possible, still, while they continue in force, for the sake of example they should be religiously observed.” Just because some laws are unjust doesn’t mean that all the laws are illegitimate. In fact, the conservative should have such a reverence for the law that he will follow even a law he despises while working with all his might to change it.