I’ll be the first to admit that I have a lot of liberal views when it comes to politics. However, I’m a firm believer in dialectical reasoning, which is why I read more than a few political blogs that carry a conservative view (they’re filed under the “Right Wing Crap” category in SharpReader, but I do read them J ). One of my favorites is Joe Carter’s blog. He’s obviously very smart, he backs up his points, and he’s a good writer – which is why I enjoy reading him even though I generally disagree with what he has to say.

He recently posted a blog titled “Trading Freedom for Stability: Kerry’s Paleoconservative Foreign Policy”. The impetus for Joe’s post was an LA Times article that quoted Kerry as saying that a stable Iraq was more important than a fully democratized Iraq. What struck me about Joe’s post is that it implies that conservatives think trading freedom for security is a bad thing. Looking at Joe’s post and the things he links to, it’s possible to make a reasonable inference that conservatives tend to think that freedom and democracy is more important than political stability and (consequently) security.

It’s clear that Bush supports the “democracy at any cost” idea, as evidenced by his determination to turn the Iraqi government over to a to-be-determined third party on June 30^th, even though the political infrastructure in the country is still in post-war chaos and it’s unclear who from the Iraqi side is going to be receiving the power that the United States is relinquishing. Even though turning over Iraq to the Iraqis might introduce political instability and possibly sow the seeds of a civil war thereby endangering the lives of Iraqi citizens, such a move is complete acceptable in the conservative view because it furthers the cause of Iraqi freedom.

I find it ironic that many of the same conservatives who are so willing to trade security for freedom in Iraq are also the same people who are adamantly against making a similar tradeoff domestically. Since 9/11, the government of the United States has passed laws like the PATRIOT act that sacrifice civil liberties in order to provide security. We have things like CAPPS-II and secret (and inaccurate) no-fly lists maintained by the TSA. All of these things intrude (and in some cases, eliminate) the fundamental freedoms that we enjoy as Americans. The conservatives have justified these laws by claiming that, in the times in which we now live, it is necessary to trade freedom for security.

I wonder how many conservatives will be arguing that we should be willing to put freedom ahead of security when it comes time to vote on the renewal of the PATRIOT act later this year.