By my count, the DTH’s coverage of Amendment One now tilts 31-2. They ran a few more anti-amendment pieces this week, which you can find below.
Since the DTH has apparently abandoned any pretense of a fair discussion of the matter, it has fallen to more responsible parties to pick up the slack. To that end, I’ve reproduced (below) a letter to the editor from a former CR staffer that the DTH has refused to publish.
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To the Editor,
In Thursday’s Quick Hits, the Daily Tar Heel claimed that “there is nothing conservative about Amendment One” and “If you don’t want the government involved in your life, then you shouldn’t vote for an amendment that would infringe on citizens’ liberty.”
I believe the editorial staff have made the common error of confusing conservatism with libertarianism. Conservatism is not an ideological drive towards a minarchist state with maximum freedoms and minimum government. Rather, conservatism seeks to create a ‘right-ordering’ of society based on principles of truth, natural law and basic human rights to life, liberty and property. As William F. Buckley put it, “Conservatism aims to maintain in working order the loyalties of the community to perceived truths and also to those truths which in their judgment have earned universal recognition.”
This does not mean eliminating as much government as possible, but instead ordering government to best maintain society. Edmund Burke once wrote that “Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites…Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without…Men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.” Conservatives recognize that liberty requires restraint, preferably from a person’s own conscience. In some cases such as the civil law of marriage, it is necessary for the government to restrain certain passions. Therefore, many conservatives support Amendment One.
Which certain passions are you talking about exactly that need to be restrained?
If this Young Democrat’s tweet is accurate: “This just in – Ram’s Head on #UNC’s campus had the highest % of early votes against Amendment 1 in the state: 95.08% voted against! #ncpol” than it looks like the DTH came very close to echoing the views of the largest sample size we have of student opinion on Amendment One.