Traditional Values Down But Not Out - Road to the Middle Class

SOME POLITICAL actors believe that the Democratic capture of Congress in 2006 represents the end of the traditional values movement in America, reports Cheryl Welzstein.

"Huge numbers of religiously observant Americans voted for Democrats, reversing a 14-year trend," according to the liberal People for the American Way (PFAW). "There are hugely hopeful signs that the pendulum in American public life is swinging back from the far-right extremes."

Well, sorta. According to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life:

Most white evangelicals and white mainline Protestants voted Republican, although by slightly smaller numbers. White Catholics, who in the past have strongly supported Republicans, voted for Democrats in 2006 by a bare majority.
"Nonwhite" voters of any faith, who tend to vote Democratic, backed their party in higher numbers. The biggest Democratic surge came from three small religious groups that skew Democratic — white "unaffiliated," white "other faiths" and white Jews.

But there is definitely a big Democratic tilt developing in the youth vote.

Some observers criticize the traditional values movement for identifying too much with the Republican Party

Says Mark J. Rozell, a public-policy professor at George Mason University who studies religion in politics: "There are many, and I will include myself, that think that the religious conservative movement may have made a mistake some years ago by adopting a one-party strategy, that they should have done more to play the parties off each other.

That�s easy to say, of course. But the reality is that the Republican Party is friendly to religious believers and the Democratic Party is friendly to secularists. And that orientation is not likely to change much in the future. What�s a believer to do?

Last November the voters threw the Republicans out for a number of reasons, and rightly so. Throwing the rascals out is always the right thing to do. In fact, the voters don�t do it enough.

Now it�s time for Democrats to demonstrate that they deserve the support the voters gave them.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

German Philosophy

The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

Knowledge

Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches� they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Living Law

The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

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