Take your King James Version and turn to Genesis 11 and consider verses 1-9. As you can see, way back then it was like a Garden of Eden when conservatism was created. Why? Because the whole earth had one language; everybody had the same speech. That was huge because, as every conservative knows, if everybody is speaking the same language there aren’t as many foreigners and thus “devils” that you have to protect yourself against.

Naturally, these Old Testament conservatives wanted to “conserve” the status quo and protect this perfect moment. So they decided to build a city and a big, big tower at that spot. Now, while we’re not told they built walls too it’s pretty safe to assume they did. Conservatives like walls since walls keep certain things in and certain things out. This city and tower would identify them ... give them a name or oneness, be it “conservatives,” “people of walls,” “people of The Tower” or “people who fear what’s on the other side of walls.”

Whatever, by deciding to close themselves in and stay put right where they were, they protected themselves from being “scattered abroad” all over the earth. By staying put they had the assurance and comfort that the future would always be just like the present; that they would be eternally happy and content since they wouldn’t have to be confronted with thorny, difficult world views on the outside that might clash with their own or hear wicked ideas and dangerous thoughts such as, “The earth is round.” That’s the kind of thing that makes for sleepless nights and these people were all for sound sleep.

Nope, with that tower reaching skyward like it was — like a bright beacon signaling one language, one ideology, one people, one way to Jehovah (our way), one way to govern — the tower-building people weren’t about to budge period.

But, strangely enough, we’re told that Jehovah came down and looked at all this from the ground up, disapproved of what he saw, and figured that letting the tower-building people continue on as they were wasn’t a good thing. So he took away their one language — made them “babblers” — and scattered them.

That said, here’s the discussion question for the next class: “Why did Jehovah disapprove of ancient conservatism based on the Tower of Babel story?”

Multiple choice answers:

(1) Jehovah was a liberal.

(2) Jehovah was a conservative but even He could take only so much.

(3) This is a story about something else altogether and using the Bible in this fashion is wrong and damnable unless it relates to sex, pro-life issues, war, evolution and the end of the world.

(4) I’m more curious about how Noah got all those animals in the ark.

Bob Morgan is a retired, award-winning journalist and and author.