Rebuilding The Conservative Story Part Iii Elevator Story - Road to the Middle Class

WE’VE spent the last couple of days talking about the conservative story. What is our Vision? What is our Mission? Now it’s time to define our elevator story.

Every enterprise needs an Elevator Story. It’s the spiel you give to someone in 30 seconds or less when they say: What do you do? Now that conservatives in their political instantiation in the Republican Party have been roundly defeated, we have to ask ourselves: What is our story? What’s the point of being a conservative?

If you’re going to tell a story then you should tell a story. You should start by setting the stage, define the essential conflict, point towards a resolution, and describe the happy outcome. So here goes.

Setting the Stage:
In America today, government is cruel, corrupt, unjust; and it just costs too much.

Isn’t this just about how conservatives feel? The current welfare state, in which the American people cough up for $900 billion of government pensions, $950 billion in government health care, $875 billion in government education, and $470 billion in government welfare, every year, is an abomination. Never mind the corrupt patronage system. There is the cruelty of a system that has destroyed the family in the underclass, the injustice of a system that screws the working poor and rewards the non-working poor. It. Is. Wrong.

The Conflict:
Liberals created this monster. Liberals believe that compulsory government programs are the way to help the poor and comfort the afflicted.
But they are wrong. Government is not compassion. Government is force. You cannot solve social problems by force.

This is the basic touch point between liberals and conservatives. Liberals believe you can solve social problems with government programs. Conservatives believe that you must solve them person-to-person, face-to-face. That issues out of the meaning of the word compassion, literally, “suffering with.” Running a government program with tax dollars to help the poor isn�t “suffering with.”

The Resolution:
Society is not social force; it is social cooperation. That’s why we must reform the welfare state into the welfare society.
In the welfare society the American people, not liberal experts, will be in charge of their own health care, their children’s education, the comfort of the afflicted, and the decent provision of pensions.

Liberals believe in the welfare state; conservatives believe in the welfare society. That issues out of the basic conservative belief, initially voiced by Edmund Burke, that “To love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ as it were) of publick affections.”

When you are thinking about politics it is best to take advantage of our better angels than to work against them. And we humans are, first of all, social animals that must live together rather than apart. So conservatives believe that “social problems” must be solved by people in their little platoons--family, neighbors, friends, associations, and charities--and not by bureaucrats. That's not easy, of course. It means that we can't just pay our taxes and complain about the government. We have to get involved and help people.

The Outcome:
With conservative reforms America will truly become that shining city on a hill, “still a beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom.”

So there is our Elevator Story. The current situation is intolerable. Liberals are to blame. The solution is to get government out of the way and put people back in. And the future is glorious, just as Ronald Reagan promised.

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

TAGS

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

Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Hugo on Genius

“Tear down theory, poetic systems� No more rules, no more models� Genius conjures up rather than learns� ” —Victor Hugo
C�sar Gra�a, Bohemian versus Bourgeois

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

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

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

Postmodernism

A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ’merely relative’, is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.
Roger Scruton, Modern Philosophy

Faith and Politics

As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the principal focus of her interventions in the public arena is the protection and promotion of the dignity of the person, and she is thereby consciously drawing particular attention to principles which are not negotiable... [1.] protection of life in all its stages, from the first moment of conception until natural death; [2.] recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family... [3.] the protection of the right of parents to educate their children.
Pope Benedict XVI, Speech to European Peoples Party, 2006

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Religion, Property, and Family

But the only religions that have survived are those which support property and the family. Thus the outlook for communism, which is both anti-property and anti-family, (and also anti-religion), is not promising.
F.A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

US Life in 1842

Families helped each other putting up homes and barns. Together, they built churches, schools, and common civic buildings. They collaborated to build roads and bridges. They took pride in being free persons, independent, and self-reliant; but the texture of their lives was cooperative and fraternal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

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