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.
There are less than sane in every group, I couldn’t drag out a few for Republicans/Conservatives also if you like...
So? I'm not one of them.
No, a naturally conservative person is socially conservative, like America used to be, before the leftists/libertarians made their extraordinary push of the last 60 years.
If you aren’t socially conservative, then don’t pretend to not be a liberal.
That isn't true, the party is the same as it has always been, and the party is the true expression of libertarians, it is where the phony, childish fantasies meet the road, and are put on paper as an actual party platform.
The original definition of "liberal", before the socialists took it over, was somebody who believed in "a political philosophy that supports individual rights as pre-existing the state, a government that exists to protect those moral rights, ensured by a constitution that protects individual autonomy from other individuals and governmental power, private property, and a laissez-faire economic policy".
One can be a social conservative and also a socialist. See, for example, the Puritan colony of Massachusetts, whose experiment with Christian Socialism turned into such a disaster.
I disagree, and I speak as somebody who was a dues-paying member, and participant in the internal debates of the Libertarian Party during the late 80's and early 90's, saw the slow takeover, and finally walked away.
What desperate nonsense, pushing your homosexual/porn agenda in 1790 would have gotten you lynched, not praised.
As far as the libertarian party being the same, it is, they haven’t changed their positions on the issues.
The 1990 platform is the same as it is today, homosexuality, open borders, porn, drugs, prostitution, abortion, weak military.
It is the same party, same platform.
I'd disagree with that - it was the social conservatives in the late 1800s that were a driving force behind the Progressive movement.
Its pointless to argue with progressives, they just change the parameters of the argument to claim a win where there is none.
LOL, some argument you have there.
Social conservatives are hated by liberals and rinos, because they are so tough and conservative, they ARE the right wing.
JerseyanExile has a point. The Social Gospel Movement constituted an alliance between socialists and Protestants a century ago. The ministers provided cover to the socialists' aims.
And just like how a century ago you could find social conservatives arguing in favor of welfare on the grounds that otherwise destitute women would turn to prostitution, you can find social conservatives who will argue in favor of continuing welfare, because otherwise more single women will abort their babies.
Frankly I don’t care if you want to buy into the same crap that progressive “Christians” are selling today.
I have no respect for that garbage and anyone who wants to sell it is a progressive scumbag.
You can try to rewrite 100 year old history, but trying to get away from your present day progressiveness is harder.
Social conservatives are the most right wing vote in America, to the tune of 70 and 80%.
Social liberals like you are found primarily on the left, they are the liberal base of the democrat party.
You cannot BS your way out of the voting data, social liberalism is leftwing, social conservatism, is rightwing.
I'm talking about stuff like the temperance movement, the drive towards centralized, state-run schools (fears of schools run by the foreign parents of immigrant children, or even worse, Catholics, played a major role in the government takeover of schools), anti-miscegenation legislation, Blue Laws, and so on. That's hardly even touching economic views - radical labor and agrarian populist groups like the Farmers-Alliance were arm-and-arm with social-conservatives. There was very much an alliance in that era between many social-conservatives who sought to use government power to create a virtuous society and populist economic groups. Being a social-conservative doesn't automatically bring about other conservative views on the nature of government, or economics.
Try to stay focused, for one thing Catholics are not social conservative voters, Evangelicals are.
People that are social liberals like you, are almost all democrats, people who are social conservatives are almost all conservative voters.
You don’t know that do you?
Uh, what does that have to do with what I said? The only mention I made of Catholics was of how in the mid to late 1800s, the push for government run schooling came in part out of attempts to undermine Catholics, and that American social-conservatives often supported these efforts. I doubt many modern conservatives would be in favor of government schooling in order to prevent parents from having control over their children's education.
People that are social liberals like you, are almost all democrats, people who are social conservatives are almost all conservative voters. You don’t know that do you?
I'm not a social-liberal, and I don't know what I might have said to give you that impression.
You disagreed with post 6.
“”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.””
But not really, instead you avoided the post by going off into the 1800s.
Post 6 was accurate, and it seems to be something that you want to avoid discussing.
If you are a social conservative, then you hide it well, even your short posting history doesn’t reveal it.
You do give the impression of being a social liberal though.
Uh, how is that avoiding the issue? That was my whole point - I was trying to demonstrate that, no, that certainly hasn't always been the case in the past, and to assume that it will continue to be into the future is a pretty big assumption. From how you've described about yourself, you aren't a one issue social-conservative. By one issue, I mean people who are ideologically focused purely on social issue and whose positions on government and economics are pretty much random at best, anything but conservative at worst. And having met with people like that, and talked with them, I worry about the coalition with them - because they seem to have a strong "there oughta to be a law" mentality that could very easily seep into other spheres. To put it in other terms, quite a few of them don't care so much about the power of government itself, they just feel that the power is being used in an inappropriate manner right now and that everything would be fine if the right people were in charge.
If you are a social conservative, then you hide it well, even your short posting history doesn't reveal it. You do give the impression of being a social liberal though.
And again, I'm not sure what I might have posted to give you that impression, assuming I have actually given you any sort of impression - this forum isn't exactly laid out in a manner that makes it easy to recognize people. You've been here far longer then I have and I don't recognize you. But alright, I'll play. I believe that life begins at conception, and that the only circumstance in which abortion could be justified is if there is significant physical risk to the life of the mother, as that would be a case of medical triage. I'm opposed to homosexual marriage, and I'm a pretty skeptical about civil-unions - marriage is something that exists only between one man and one woman. I do feel that many people are having their religious beliefs infringed upon by the government - be it little things like schools refusing to allow the Boy Scouts to use their buildings, or bigger things like the contraceptive mandates by the feds. In regards to drugs, I feel that the issue should be handled by the states, as the federal government lacks the power to handle such matters without a constitutional amendment(excluding such areas where they do have jurisdiction, such as the Federal District and non-self governing territories). I feel that no-fault divorce has harmed marriage, and shouldn't have been passed into law in the various states. Do you want me to go on?
Cool. My point is, one should be considered really conservative to the degree that he is socially conservative AND fiscally conservative AND desirous of minimizing governmental power over individuals.
It's a three-legged stool.
People who are ONLY socially conservative, and allow government to grow in both power and budget, will reap the whirlwind when control of that government falls into the hands of a Lefty.
I read your posting history, and you are not a social conservative, as can be seen on this thread. I don’t recall describing myself, and I am a social conservative, so all this wandering around, and staying off topic seems to be some sort of wordy game that you play.
You use the language, and express the sentiments of the left and the lefties called libertarians, when you describe true conservatives as “one issue social-conservative”
Post 6 was spot on and a fact of voting in America. “”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.””
The number one measure of people’s politics is social conservatism.
Social conservatives are solidly right, and vote right.
Anti-social conservatives are mostly left, and vote left, even those in the republican party are squishy moderates, and the first to join with the left, against the right.
If you want to know how someone is going to vote, then check their church attendance, not their income.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.