Conservatives and Universalized Experience

This weekend, while speaking to a Values Voters convention, Sen. Fred Thompson noted that he changed his position on abortion from pro choice to pro life when he saw the sonnagram of his first daughter.

I fully respect the Senator's conversionary experience. We have all witnessed or experienced things that have caused us to reconsider our assumptions or positions; that have cast issues personal and political in a new light. That is what makes us human, it is what animates our reason and allows for the possibility of progress.

However, what separates conservatives like Senator Thompson from the rest of us, is that the rest of us realize these personal epiphanies are just that - personal. They belong to us and help make sense of the world for us and us alone. They cannot be universalized and applied to everyone else. While they can be shared and discussed, they cannot be imposed.

Just because someone realizes alcohol is ruining his life, we need no enforce prohibition. Similarly, just because a sonogram moved Fred Thompson's soul, does not mean that abortion should be illegal for everyone. What is it about the (modern) conservative mind that transforms every personal insight into a new and enforceable moral law for the rest of us?