As Americans, we are all liberals. As incredible as those words might be, they are the truth.

Our political lineage is a liberal one, at least in the classical sense.

Look to the Declaration of Independence, the document that founded us as a country.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

This premise of natural rights, though Thomas Jefferson did not use the phrase in the document, is fundamental to classical liberal thinkers.

The notion of innate human freedom – hence the term liberal from the Latin libertas, meaning liberty – features as most important to their discussion.

The basis of their political discussion was that we enter into society and government constitutions via some form of popular consent.

We create governments using social contracts in which we surrender absolute freedom for the freedom of safety, rule of law and the pursuit of our own welfare.

This social contract for the United States is indeed a contract, as in a piece of paper.

This contract is the Constitution, which spells out the roles and divisions of government vis-à-vis the other branches of government and the states and citizens thereof.

Therefore, all Americans are liberals from the standpoint of buying into the experiment of government where freedom and individual rights form the cornerstones of our country.

The political left in this country often prefers the term ‘progressive’ as opposed to ‘liberal’ since the United States is, strictly speaking, a ‘liberal’ country in its DNA.

The difference between those who identify as conservatives and progressives in this country often comes from disagreement over the form, nature and focus of policy; however, all are interested in furthering the capacity for each American to flourish.

I identify – believe it or not – as a conservative within the sphere of American political thought.

I do not subscribe to the ideas of the Alternative Right as the political lexicon has labeled the movement that forms a substantial portion of the Republican base this election.

My conservatism comes from the tradition of Edmund Burke distilled into the American socio-political context by writer and thinker Russell Kirk.

Kirk expounded upon 10 different principles of the conservative mind that normally links most conservative thinkers.

“There exists no Model Conservative, and conservatism is the negation of ideology: it is a state of mind, a type of character, a way of looking at the civil social order,” Kirk wrote in his book “The Politics of Prudence.”

His first three principles establish the traditionalism of the conservative mind: conservatives subscribe to an enduring moral order; conservatives adhere to custom and continuity; and conservatives believe in standing on prescription, rights sanctioned since antiquity by their continued importance to the social order.

Take marriage, for example. Former British Prime Minister David Cameron once famously stated that he supported gay marriage because he was a Conservative, not despite this identity.

Based on Kirk’s first three principles, we can understand why: marriage sanctions the bedrock notion of the human family, which is important to the conservative.

Thus, the right of marriage is a timeless and continuous institution in an ordered society, though the specific form has changed across time and culture.

Nonetheless, this institution sanctions a family, and thus expanding its definition from beyond the Victorian fiction of one man and one woman expands the purview of this time-honored tradition.

The next three principles embrace conservative pragmatism: the conservative subscribes to prudence, the principle of variety and the principle of imperfectability.

This separates us from progressives, both Republican and Democrat.

We do not grandstand on often self-contradictory ideologies, but rather support policies and solutions because they are fundamentally good and wise ideas.

Hence, the conservative supports universal healthcare because it makes economic sense.

Moreover, we embrace a more open world in terms of the free and organic interaction of peoples.

The interaction of cultures and customs only serves to enrich our own traditions.

However, we do not believe like the socialist or Hegelian progressive that we will ever reach a grand utopia. The conservative would also reject any claim of “making America great again.”

America is already great; we simply have major problems to overcome, not some ethereal golden age to reclaim.

The seventh through ninth principles concern economic and political power: the conservative believes freedom and property inseparable; conservatives embrace voluntary community over involuntary collectivism; and the conservative recognizes the need for rule of law.

This is the conservative rejection against Marxism and social planning: when people do not have the majority of economic control on their lives, they cannot be free.

This is not to reject good social programs or reasonable taxation, since concern for the good of one’s neighbors echoes in the conservative value of community.

Finally, and most importantly, the perceptive conservative recognizes the need to harmonize permanence and change.

Tradition assuredly educates us, but some traditions need to change.

This does not make the conservative a revolutionary, but rather a reformer.

We accept what has been, what is and what reasonably can be.

However, we dream in context, not out of grandiose visions of manipulating and moving people or drastically reordering society.

We are not socialists or fascists, progressives or radicals.

Conservative’s good name this election cycle has been usurped by radicalism.

We must reestablish a political dialogue based on fundamental principles, not mere rhetoric, name-calling or invective.

We must devote ourselves to the politics of prudence, for future generations of conservatives.

Tyler Laferriere is a graduate student pursuing his master’s in economics from Phoenix, Arizona. He can be contacted at 335-2290 or by [email protected]. The opinions expressed in this column are not necessarily those of the staff of The Daily Evergreen or those of The Office of Student Media.