Lets Steal The Ideas Of The Left - Road to the Middle Class

I HOLD THE following truth to be self evident. When solving some intractable political problem, chances are that someone has already solved it. The main thing is to keep your eyes open because sooner than you think, you will run into the solution.

Here in the United States we conservatives are worrying like Scarlett O’Hara about the problem of post-Reagan conservatism. What shall we do? Where shall we go?

Suppose someone has already invented the New Conservatism?

Last week Britain’s Conservative Party leader David Cameron went to Manchester, England, to make a speech about co-operatives. The co-operative idea is a very good thing, he told his audience. In fact it is so good that the Conservative Party was setting up a Conservative Co-operative Movement. Said Cameron:

[I]t will be a resource for Conservative activists and local community groups of all kinds wanting to set up their own co-ops to take over the management of local public services. It will campaign for innovation using co-ops in public and other community services.

The last time that a British Conservative went to Manchester was probably when Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli gave a speech at the Free Trade Hall in 1872.

In the 1840s the Conservative Party was against free trade when Manchester radicals Cobden and Bright campaigned for it. In the 1880s it was against social legislation when Manchester was solidly Liberal. In the 20th century it was against Fabian socialism when Manchester was solidly Labour.

Now Cameron is telling Mancunians he thinks the Rochdale Pioneers, a group of 28 hand-loom weavers, were really cool when they started the co-operative movement in a suburb of Manchester back in 1844.

It’s either a stupid flip-flop or a bold master-stroke; the pundits can’t be sure. From 1844 till last week the Conservative Party has had no interest in co-operatives.

But last week Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s hand shook—either with fear or with rage, the pundits can’t be sure—when Cameron challenged him in Parliament.

It had nothing to do with co-operatives, but the scent of blood was enough to make Conservative eyes twinkle with hope. Finally, a Conservative leader had laid a glove on the Labour leader. Maybe Brown lacked the political teflon of Tony Blair.

In the Anglo-Saxon politics of the last generation we have seen remarkable combinations of political talent. We have seen Reagan and Thatcher, strong on substance and strong on charisma. We have seen Clinton and Blair, extremely strong on charisma and, in retrospect, weak on substance. We have seen President Bush, strong on substance but weak on communication skills.

Now it is starting to look as if the next generation of center-left leaders could be weak on substance and on charisma. In Britain Gordon Brown is a reactionary centralizer and apparently lacking in charisma. In the United States there is Hillary Clinton. One thing is certain: in the charisma department a Bill Clinton she ain’t. And as for substance, Hillary Clinton’s record is one of mindless centralizing, in education and in health care.

This may be the luckiest break for conservatives in years. Back in the last century Democrats had leaders like FDR. He had the effrontery to dress up brain-dead bureaucratic government programs as “bold, persistent experimentation,” and people believed him.

David Cameron is a conservative leader that’s bold enough to try a little bold, persistent experimentation of his own. Why stop at stealing the clothes of the left on co-operatives? He is also trying to redefine “social justice.”

Social justice is all about the left taking money from the rich to give to the poor through compassionate social programs, right? Not according to Cameron.

Social justice really means neighbourhoods acting collectively and voluntarily. It means people fulfilling their duties to each other through the natural networks, the institutions and associations of a community.

If I were a neighborhood lefty here in Seattle my hands would be shaking with rage.

How dare, how dare those evil neo-con theocrats speak about social justice like that!

Don’t tell anyone, but it gets worse. The Conservative Party’s Centre for Social Justice is run by Iain Duncan Smith, who once served as an army officer. To heal the social pathologies in “Breakdown Britain” he proposes to help the poor with US-style welfare reform and re-jigging the tax system to favor marriage.

Back in the 1990s American conservatives were mightily upset when Bill Clinton posed as a welfare reformer, triangulating the center ground—and the Soccer Moms—away from conservatives.

Imagine a conservative leader with the charisma and the substance to do a Clinton in reverse!

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

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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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