By LEE HOWELL
Contributing Writer

Perhaps I am a little weird — and I am sure that those who know me best would probably agree with that statement — but I have always believed that consistency is a virtue.

And, most commentators I have read — in the religious, political, social, or education realms, either contemporary or historical — agree with that position.

The most forceful leaders, they all seem to be saying, are those who have thought through the issues of life and have developed a consistent philosophical approach to them.

Oh, sure, there are exceptions to every guiding principle — and the best leaders are those who are flexible enough to bend with the exigencies of the time.

(Thomas Jefferson is a good example: He was the founder of the anti-big government school of thought who, as President, eagerly overstepped the strict constructionist bounds of constitutional government in jumping at the chance to purchase the Louisiana Territory from Napoleon Bonaparte and lay the groundwork for this nation's development “from sea to shining sea.”)

But, consistency is no virtue, apparently, if you are a contemporary religious or social conservative Republican politician.

Indeed, to many of these pompous, abrasive, right-wing nuts (and there is no better word to describe the single-minded intensity of some of them that that!) it seems that they are making a virtue out of being inconsistent.

Take Georgia's Seventh District Congressman Bob Barr, R-Rome as an example.

Barr is an outspoken opponent of big government which invades the private lives of individual citizens, as are many of his staunchest supporters in Cobb County and Northwest Georgia.

Yet, this week, Barr was instrumental in another of those mean-spirited, Big-Brother power grabs which keeps the citizens of the District of Columbia in bondage to the whim of whichever party controls Congress.

(Our nation's capital, as you may know, is a not a part of any state but is under the direct “oversight” of Congress, according to the U. S. Constitution.)

It seems that the residents of the District voted in a referendum last year to legalize the use of marijuana for medical purposes with a doctor's prescription.

Barr's amendment to a budget bill overrides that vote — and ignores the fact that six other states have recently passed such initatives.

The astute congressman also ignores the fact that his own constituents, as well as all their fellow Georgians, have had the right to use marijuana for medicinal purposes for 19 years, since the General Assembly in 1980 passed a law that is still on the books to allow doctors to provide marijuana “to seriously ill persons suffering from the severe side effects of chemotherapy or radiation treatment and to persons suffering from glaucoma who are not responding to conventional treatment.”

Now, this is not the only time Barr has tripped over his ideology when it comes to imposing his conservative principles (“That government is best which governs the least”) through the heavy-handed, arm-twisting tactics of Big Brother.

Nor is he along among his GOP brethren in allowing his personal commitment to limited government to be sidetracked by his desire to use big government as a way to impose his credo on others.

Consider the campaign of U. S. Rep. Gerald Solomon, R-New York, to prevent localities from allowing needle exchange programs as a way to halt the spread of diseases passed through the use of dirty needles.

Or, consider the campaign of U. S. Rep. Steve Largent, R-Oklahoma, who has battled to prevent unmarried couples from adopting children — a position he wants Washington to impose on local governments regardless of their feelings about the issue.

And, then there is the Republican intiative — supported by so many of these “little government” conservatives that it would be impossible to single out one or two sponsors — which prevents local physicians from discussing abortion as an alternative to pregnancy in Federally-funded clinics.

Is inconsistency the real virtue?

Or, are all these Republicans just being a wee bit hypocritical when it comes to using the powers of big government to impose their narrow-minded agenda on those who cannot fight back?

[Lee N. Howell is an award-winning writer who has been observing politics and society in the Southern Crescent, the state, and nation for more than a quarter of a century. He has served on the Spalding County Democratic Party Executive Committee.]

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