I wonder how many people hold politically conservative values but shy away from labeling themselves conservative due to the baggage they associate with the term. I wonder how many people hold these values while voting for political leaders who oppose them. I know voters are individuals, voting and abstaining for good and bad reasons, but I think part of the blame for this disparity falls on those of us who call ourselves conservative. We have not communicated well enough, or as Bertie Wooster might say, we’ve flubbed it before giving it a good go. Ok, he wouldn’t say that, but you get the idea. Don’t you? Nevermind.

On Monday, we honor Martin Luther King, Jr., and columnist Jackie Gingrich Cushman writes about the typical ideas associated with the day, but I have another idea. I think King’s words are apt for today’s conservatives.

“For many years we have shown an amazing patience,” King said, and I think conservatives have shown a good bit of patience as well. We have, as King went on, sometimes given our American brothers in government and elsewhere “the feeling that we liked the way we were being treated.” But today I say we need to be “saved from that patience that makes us patient with anything less than freedom and justice.”

Freedom and justice are what conservatives promote. We want nothing less for our American brothers than life, liberty, and opportunities to pursue happiness. I tend to think we have been too patient in our attempts to be understood—-patient and a bit wrong-headed.

Conservatives don’t want to cut government spending. We want to keep bureaucracy from hamstringing your freedom.

Conservatives don’t want to cut taxes. We want you to keep as much of your hard-earned paycheck as possible. We also don’t want to punish you for succeeding in business or saving over the years by taxing you unfairly.

We don’t want to throw out immigrants who are trying to make a new life for themselves in our country. We want a stable process for welcoming immigrants into our country.

And we don’t want to deny women healthcare choices. We defend the lives and freedoms of every man and woman from conception to old age.

Conservatives champion loving our neighbor as we would ourselves, which includes defending the helpless and helping the poor and orphaned, but here’s the rub between us and liberals; we want the American volunteer to do the work. We want American families within healthy communities to support each other, networking for jobs, welfare, and even healthcare. We don’t trust the hand of a national government, because it is often too heavy, unfeeling, and unwise. You are a number to them; you are an individual to us.

More than this, conservatives believe you can do more than you probably think you can. You are capable of dreaming like Dr. King and accomplishing those dreams in various ways. You are not a helpless victim of faceless enemies who are keeping you down because of your color, age, gender, or religion. You are an overcomer, and together we will work for real freedom and justice in your life and in all American lives.

It’s hard for me as a Christian not to write at this point of submission to the Lord God of all creation, because salvation through Jesus Christ is the only way anyone can truly overcome the hardships of the world. Perhaps that’s what’s wrong with our political vision-casters today. They try to invoke the old American images without appealing to the God in whom we trust, according to our motto. America, God shed His grace on thee and crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea.

We have been too patient. If we will be courageous in speaking up for freedom and justice, as Dr. King said, “yet with dignity and Christian love, when the history books are written [in future generations], the historians will [have to pause and] say: ‘There lived a great people – [a people of every color and background] who injected new meaning and dignity into the veins of civilization.’ This is our challenge and our overwhelming responsibility.”