Posted on 09/28/2012 7:02:57 AM PDT by Kaslin
It’s not uncommon for there to be debate and discussion about the degree to which libertarians and social conservatives are allies and enemies.
I think they’re mostly allies, in part because there is wide and deep agreement on the principle of individual responsibility. They may focus on different ill effects, but both camps understand that big government is a threat to a virtuous and productive citizenry.
That being said, I also realize that a libertarian who thinks drug legalization is the most important issue in the world is probably not going to feel much kinship with a social conservative who focuses on spiritual treatment of drug addiction (even though I would argue they should share policy views).
I’m contemplating this topic because of a recent New York Times column by David Brooks. He is concerned that traditional conservatives (which I think would overlap with, but not be identical to, social conservatives) have lost influence in the conservative movement and Republican Party. Let’s start with this excerpt.
…the conservative movement…was a fusion of two different mentalities. On the one side, there were the economic conservatives. …there was another sort of conservative, who would be less familiar now. This was the traditional conservative, intellectual heir to Edmund Burke, Russell Kirk, Clinton Rossiter and Catholic social teaching. This sort of conservative didn’t see society as a battleground between government and the private sector. Instead, the traditionalist wanted to preserve a society that functioned as a harmonious ecosystem, in which the different layers were nestled upon each other: individual, family, company, neighborhood, religion, city government and national government. …they were intensely interested in creating the sort of social, economic and political order that would encourage people to work hard, finish school and postpone childbearing until marriage.
So far, so good. As a self-described libertarian, I like these concepts. Indeed, I support liberty in part because I think it will both enable and encourage people to experience good lives in the kind of ecosystem David describes.
But then he has a sentence that rubs me the wrong way.
Ronald Reagan embodied both sides of this fusion, and George W. Bush tried to recreate it with his compassionate conservatism.
Let me first stipulate that it’s unfair to equate “compassionate conservatism” with “big government conservatism.” That may have been the end result, but the goal – as was explained to me on several occasions – was to reform the way government did things, not to make it bigger.
But even if we accept that goal, I think Reagan and Bush represented different strains of conservatism. Reagan wanted to shrink the federal government because he viewed Washington as a threat to David’s “harmonious ecosystem.” In other words, Reagan-style conservatism is (was?) based on the notion that Washington could only make things worse, not better.
The Bush people, by contrast, had a more optimistic view of the federal government’s capabilities.
Indeed, Brooks is explicitly willing to make government bigger in hopes of achieving certain goals.
There are few people on the conservative side who’d be willing to raise taxes on the affluent to fund mobility programs for the working class. There are very few willing to use government to actively intervene in chaotic neighborhoods, even when 40 percent of American kids are born out of wedlock. There are very few Republicans who protest against a House Republican budget proposal that cuts domestic discretionary spending to absurdly low levels. The results have been unfortunate. Since they no longer speak in the language of social order, Republicans have very little to offer the less educated half of this country. …The Republican Party has abandoned half of its intellectual ammunition. It appeals to people as potential business owners, but not as parents, neighbors and citizens.
Here’s where I think he lets hope triumph over experience. What makes him think that the federal government is capable of successfully creating and operating “mobility programs”? It’s been operating dozens of such programs and they’ve all failed.
Or why does he think the federal government can reduce out-of-wedlock births when the evidence suggests that the welfare state has played a non-trivial role in enabling such misguided behavior?
Brooks also makes a ridiculous claim about what’s happened to domestic discretionary outlays. Here’s the data, adjusted for inflation, from the Historical Tables of the Budget.
Granted, David is talking about the plans in the Republican budget, not what’s actually happened. But the most the GOP wants to achieve is to put domestic discretionary spending back at 2008 levels. That’s not exactly an “absurdly low level,” particularly compared to existing post-stimulus outlays.
The more relevant question is why he thinks federal spending is associated with good results. There’s certainly no positive evidence from Obama’s stimulus. We also know the War on Poverty backfired. And entitlements are a ticking time bomb in the absence of reform.
By the way, this doesn’t negate what Brooks says about the GOP’s inability to articulate a message that resonates with (as he calls them) the “less educated half of this country.”
All I’m arguing is that results should matter. If we care about making life better for these people and we want the “harmonious ecosystem” David mentions, then we should be making government smaller rather than larger.
Good article ... thanx for posting
I am an economic and social conservative
Liberaltarians are insane.
:p
I’ve heard so much about ‘right wing extremists’! But I figure they’re the only ones that would try to stop the railcars full of ‘undesirables’, so I’ll keep them.
We’re far from insane, you can’t use a small sample as a representative as a whole.
Libertarians, put simply, always err on the side of personal freedom.
As an example, the reason we believe in making drugs legal (I’m of the mind set of not all drugs, but that’s a personal belief) is that you as an adult should decide what you put into your body, the government shouldn’t decide for you, though we also believe that you should have to deal with the results of your choices, government should not have to pay to clean you up, there are charities for that.
We’re seeing the results now of what happens when you let the government make a decision with regards to what you can and can’t use with the recent food bans, the government knows you allowed them to outlaw one product due to health concerns, so it isn’t a stretch for them to decide that they can now do it with regards to food since they also see that as a health concern.
Plus, we’ve lost the war on drugs by all accounts, just tax it like any other product, and please don’t tell me about the addiction issues, alcohol and tobacco are far more addictive and dangerous than marijuana, yet those are legal and fine.
Libertarians at their core believe in personal freedom to perform any peaceful action that doesn’t infringe on the rights of another or place a burden on society.
Libertarians and Conservatives share many beliefs with regards to size of government, taxes, government regulations and economics, though we do part way ideologically with regards to social issues at times.
The main reason for this divergence is that Libertarians don’t believe that anyone should use the force of government to enforce their own personal beliefs on others, to us we don’t believe liberals should do it to push their agenda and conservatives should not also, you can’t be for less government intrusion on one hand and then demand it on the other because you personally agree with it and use that as a justification.
For us it’s all the same, people using the force of government to decide what a person can or can’t do is wrong, and we can’t say using government force is ok as long as you agree with it, again, you’re opening the door to the government using that same force with issues you don’t agree with now, no matter what, once you condone it they’ll always use it.
Yes, you may disagree with us in some areas, and that’s fine, everyone is free to disagree with another in one area or another, but you can’t discount us because we don’t walk lockstep on every issue.
It just seems that with too many in the Conservative movement it’s all or nothing, either we agree with everything you want or we’re written off.
Insulting and alienating the people who could very well be a major ally in, well that righ there is truly insane.
Economic conservatives who consider themselves to be moderate ALWAYS defer to their leftist instincts. SoCons have a solid base that doesn’t drift with the wind and supports a strong economically conservative anchor.
Sorry, you seemed to have missed the whole point and chosen one sentence out of context.
I’m not a moderate by any stretch of the imagination, I’m a Libertarian.
My point in that sentence was that too many in the conservative movement are quick to dismiss Libertarians because we don’t walk in lockstep with every issue they believe in, even more so with social conservatives (not all, the type where social issues trump all others and nothing else matters) instead of realizing that we may have fundamental differences with regards to social issues, but with the vast majority of issues we agree.
So you can grab a picture of a newspaper clipping 48 years ago and use that as a defense of something that I never even mentioned, but it’s rather flimsy.
I rank libertarians right up there with democrats where they belong. I myself was one till I grew up.
I did grow up, that’s why i became a Libertarian.
I can’t sit and say I want less government intrusion in my life, yet sit and demand government intrusion in other people’s lives just because I don’t agree with their actions.
That’s being a hypocrite.
You can justify using the force of government to make others act as how you want them to, but it doesn’t change the simple fact that you’re not against big intrusive government at all, you’re all for it as long as it’s using it’s force to push your own personal beliefs.
I just don’t think it should push any beliefs, let people decide on their own, they are “personal” after all.
bump
Libertarians are the ones who would call kiddie porn and organ trafficking “victimless crimes”.
“Economic conservative” means liberal, and gives the impression that three legged, real conservatives are not economic conservatives, which is a trick that liberals use when naming themselves.
We need to call them social liberal republicans, because their defining trait is eliminating at least one leg of conservatism, that means they are not real conservatives.
We all know that social liberal republican means that he still likes conservative positions on his money issues, he just isn’t a naturally conservative person.
My last RINO social moderate congressman was pro abortion who claimed fiscal conservatism but he always opposed anything that would cut taxpayer funding of a woman’s “right to choose”.
Since being tossed out of office he’s run as an independent, endorsed democrats and any republican to the left of my conservative congressman. He even joined hands with the democrats to oppose redistricting that strengthened conservative control of this district.
There's a reason why so many libertarians refer to themselves as "small-l libertarians". The reason being that the Libertarian Party appears to have been taken over by people whose entire focus is drug legalization to the exclusion of other issues.
I consider myself a "small-l libertarian". As such, I am against increases in government spending, AND ALSO against increases in government regulation of behaviors that do not involve violence or fraud against others, and am in favor of shrinking government.
libertarians would happily accept Caesar if it came with drugs (bread) and free sex (circuses)
If somebody was murdered for their organs, then organ trafficking is hardly a victimless crime. On the other hand, I would be in favor of organ donors (or their estates) being able to be compensated for their organs.
Similarly, somebody below the age where they can consent to sex cannot consent to being in a porn video.
And similarly, a person who advocates increased government regulation and/or spending in order to advance their social goals is not a naturally-conservative person.
That’s usually their only defense, throw up a straw man argument and hope no calls them on it.
I agree though, if I person wants to sell an organ (kidney,portion of liver) and they’re adults they should be free to, it’s their body, they should decide what to do with it.
As for kiddie porn, that’s illegal and immoral, children can not make informed decisions and are under the age of consent, so no Libertarians back that or would support it.
Too often many want to believe that Libertarians beliefs are no holds barred, they’re not, we just don’t believe people should be restricted from doing as they choose as long as those actions don’t infringe on the rights of another, are peaceful and place no burden on another member of society other than the burden of non-interference (meaning the only burden on you is ignoring it).
I have seen liberaltarians calling for an end to the age of consent
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