Conservatives Must Hang Together

AT THE END of the Bush administration and after 12 years of Republican Congresses the members of the Republican coalition are getting a little testy. Some people in the coalition are even talking about splitting up.

That would be a mistake, writes Jennifer Roback Morse. The three parts of the Republican coalition, social conservatives, fiscal conservatives, and libertarians, need each other.

She’s reviewing Ryan Sager’s Elephants in the Room, which argues that “the future of the Republican party’s coalition of social conservatives and libertarians” depends on abandoning the agenda of the Christian Right.

He seems to say that the only way to win is for social conservatives to abandon the issues that matter to them, and become plain vanilla fiscal conservatives.

But back in 2001 Roback wrote Love and Economics.

I hoped to convince my libertarian and fiscal conservative friends that they needed to pay more attention to the family.

Even though the work of mothers and fathers is private, it has public consequences, not least in the cost of single parenthood and family breakdown.

Family breakdown has been extremely expensive, not just to the individuals who suffer from it, but to the public sector as well.
...
Health care, mental health care, and educational remediation are all services taxpayers provide disproportionately to over-extended unmarried parents.

And so on.

Morse was surprised by the response to her book. Her libertarian friends paid almost no attention to it. Instead she found herself being invited to address social conservative groups.

When I wrote Love and Economics, it had never entered my mind to appeal to this audience. I literally didn’t know who they were. But they appreciated the fact that I was making their case in a way they had never heard before. I appreciated the fact that they’d talk to me.

Libertarians and fiscal conservatives had better understand that they and the social conservatives are joined at the hip, whether they like it or not. We high-class conservatives may be embarrassed by the simpleness of our social conservative allies, but we should be careful.

It might be prudent to think of social conservatives and the Religious Right as the conscience of the conservative movement.

Like it or not, a political movement must have at its core some moral purpose. The rational creed of fiscal conservatism and libertarianism doesn’t penetrate to that level. It does not address the ultimate purpose of life on this earth. It only deals with process.

Let us not learn that the hard way.

Sphere: Related Content |

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

TAGS

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

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

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

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

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

Class War

In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class. In the nineteenth century, the academic middle class won the battle for power and status... Then came the triumph of Margaret Thatcher... The academics lost their power and prestige and... have been gloomy ever since.
Freeman Dyson, “The Scientist as Rebel”

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

Conservatism's Holy Grail

What distinguishes true Conservatism from the rest, and from the Blair project, is the belief in more personal freedom and more market freedom, along with less state intervention... The true Third Way is the Holy Grail of Tory politics today - compassion and community without compulsion.
Minette Marrin, The Daily Telegraph

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

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

Drang nach Osten

There was nothing new about the Frankish drive to the east... [let] us recall that the continuance of their rule depended upon regular, successful, predatory warfare.
Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion

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

mysql close 0