leaning
No longer such, but when I was a young conservative, a conservative was one who liked things as they were and wanted government to mind its own damn business and leave people alone. This memory of a familiar song on word-a-day this morning surfaces that to my consciousness:
Live and let live, be and let be, / Hear and let hear, see and let see, / Sing and let sing, dance and let dance. ... Live and let live and remember this line: / "Your bus'ness is your bus'ness and my bus'ness is mine." - Cole Porter, composer and songwriter (9 Jun 1893-1964)
Anymore, a conservative seems to be one who is so certain of his/her own righteous correctness that he/she wants government to force everybody else to adhere to his/her world view, no matter how personal the issue; indeed the more personal, the more fiery pious vehemently rectitudinous.
Like my algebraic formula factors Faith and Doubt. Quite common to mistake certainty for faith, faith for knowledge. When one goes to mind other people's business, the principal factors are certainty and arrogance; power. Comes to mind hearing a dear friend define a Christian as someone rising from their knees to go forth and enforce the will of God.
Yea, the world is full of.
My inclination leans toward anarchy, if it could be peaceful, lovingkindness its mark. But leaning surfaces a mental image of the tower of Pisa, which shifts my pattern of thought to my favorite pizza place, a little restaurant in a shopping center in Tallahassee. I order a large thin pizza with double anchovies, eat two slices and take the rest back to the hotel for breakfast the next morning. Of course, favorite involves the people who eat there with me.
Sin is on my mind. Not sinning, but sin. Sin is not your list of things you're supposed to force other people to refrain from, nor is sin necessarily a package of what society agrees is wrong; sin is thought, word, deed, attitude or viewpoint that avoidably hurts others, and in most cases it's not up to you to prevent sin, it's up to them to refrain from, and their view of sin may differ from yours. Conscience may be a factor, or its absence, and even in its absence it may not be your business to step in.
I don't believe in a god who keeps track of my sins and holds me accountable after death; nor a god who deputizes me to stop others from sinning. I believe in a God who came as Jesus to show and tell us how to live; the boundaries not being a list of sins, but simply Love God Love Neighbor. God saving people from their sins so they can go to heaven is not part of my religion.
As several times when I was a boy, I heard my father respond when someone asked him if he was "Saved", I'm an Episcopalian: I don't have a religion to die by, I have a religion to live by.
Don't like that Cole Porter song? Try this one, "The Tale of the Oyster"
https://genius.com/Cole-porter-the-tale-of-the-oyster-lyrics
Or, more to my taste, this old favorite by the Kendalls, "Heaven's just a sin away"