Book review: A San Francisco Conservative, David Parker Essays Volume Two

If you are like me, a conservative trapped in a very blue part of a blue state, then you can relate to what David Parker endures. The author the partially eponymous A San Francisco Conservative David Parker Essays Volume Two, Parker lives in a place that is probably the most liberal city in America.

Parker is a retired public school teacher

About himself, Parker says:

A classical liberal, not socially conservative. Politically conservative, I believe the U.S. Constitution should be interpreted literally--that a nation that can't abide by simple set of rules written on ONE page doesn't deserve to exist. Economically conservative: I believe the market, not government, should solve a nation's economic problems. A classical liberal, I understand that social, political, and economic freedom are so inherently interconnected that society cannot restrict one without restricting the other two. Why restrict any of them?

Those are great points. Parker says he is "a card-carrying member of the ACLU," but he bemoans that this group, far from being one of my favorites by the way, should also fight for economic freedom. 

Parker in his book champions the heroes of Western civilization, men such as F.A. Hayek, John Locke, Alexis de Tocqueville, and Fredrick Douglass. Oh, and of course, the Founding Fathers of the United States. 

Naturally, Parker is an opponent of multiculturism, one of the prominent cards--in my words--in the woke deck. How did our society move away from Western civilization to multiculturism? 

Parker writes:

The shift came about because multiculturalists value individual security more than they value individual freedom--why they abandon principle of individual liberty to achieve (in their minds) a greater collective good: economic and social equality, as if beyond political equality, social and economic equality are possible, as if the U.S. Constitution wasn't designed to prevent such an attempt. Outside socialist totalitarianism, social and economic equality are not possible. 

The first part of that passage reminds me of the story Dan Bongino relates from The Walking Dead television series, when the main characters voluntarily retreat into an old prison. They give up freedom of movement to protect themselves from murderous zombies. The second part of the passage takes me to my wife, who was born in that worker's paradise, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. "We were all equal in the Soviet Union," she always says, "we were all poor."

That is why the left now speaks of "equity" instead of "equality."

Earlier I mentioned de Tocqueville. Parker relates that the author of Democracy in America "praised associational life in America," adding how he "recognized the dark side and how members of a majority with a dominant point of view can exercise great power to intimidate, to curtail liberties, to curtail free speech." Nationally, the left is not the majority, but it is in San Francisco, in the Chicago area, where I live, and of course on college campuses. But nationally, liberalism is the loudest voice--often a shrieking one. 

As the holiday season is upon us, Christmas gifts come to mind. A San Francisco Conservative David Parker Essays Volume Two is an ideal gift for those on-the-fence liberals or moderates on your shopping list who have swallowed the MSNBC lines that modern conservatism is only about social issues, or that reliable canard, white supremacy.

And you can always gift this book to yourself, and yes, to your conservative friends and relatives too. 

You can find A San Francisco Conservative David Parker Essays Volume Two on Amazon in the paperback or Kindle format by clicking here.