So-Cons and Libertarians: Can this Marriage be Saved?
The Acton Institute asked me for an essay for their publication Religion and Liberty a few months back. Here is an excerpt from the piece I gave them:
As the standard bearer for American conservatism for two decades, Ronald Reagan effortlessly embodied fusionism by uniting Mont Pelerin style libertarians, populist Christians, Burkean conservatives, and national security voters into a devastatingly successful electoral bloc. Today, it is nearly impossible to imagine a candidate winning both New York and Texas, but Reagan and that group of fellow travelers did.
In the meantime, the coalition has begun to show strain as the forces pushing outward exceed those holding it together. The Soviet Union, once so great a threat that Whittaker Chambers felt certain he was switching to the losing side when he began to inform on fellow Communist agents working within the United States, evaporated in what seemed like a period of days in the early 1990s. Suddenly, the ultimate threat of despotic big government eased and companions in arms had the occasion to re-assess their relationship. The review of competing priorities has left former friends moving apart. Perhaps nowhere is the tension greater and more consequential than between the socially conservative elements of the group and devotees of libertarianism.
The two groups have little natural tendency to trust each other when not confronted by a common enemy as in the case of the Cold War. Libertarians simply want to minimize the role of government as much as possible. For them, questions of maintaining strong traditional family units and preserving sexual and/or bioethical mores fall into an unessential realm as far as government is concerned. The government, echoing the thought of John Locke, should primarily occupy itself with providing for physical safety of the person while allowing for the maximum freedom possible for pursuit of self-interest.
Social conservatives similarly view the government as having a primary mission of providing safety, but they also look to the law as a source of moral authority. Man-made law, for them, should seek to be in accord to some degree with divine and natural law. Rifts open wide when social conservatives pursue a public policy agenda designed to prevent divorce, encourage marriage over cohabitation, prevent new understandings of marriage from emerging (e.g. gay marriage or polygamous marriage), prevent avant garde developments in biological experimentation, and a variety of other issues outside (from the libertarian perspective) the true mandate of government that cannot seek to define the good, the right, and the beautiful for a community of individuals. To the degree social conservatives seek to achieve some kind of collective excellence along the lines suggested by Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, libertarians see a mirror image of the threat posed by big-government leftists.
There is a common thread, a respect for individual rights. Right to life really comes to an honest balancing on ones right to privacy (which I think we all recognize to a degree even if it is not expresly stated in the Constitution) with ones overriding right to life itself. Libertarianism can be reconciled.
The subject article states, “. . . suspicion of power continues to unite social conservatives and libertarians.”
That statement is baffling. Since when are social conservatives (except perhaps Larry Craig) suspicious of governmental power?
Social conservatives are immensely suspicious of governmental power when the government is sympathetic to abortion rights, gay “marriage”, embryonic stem cell research, and euthanasia, and unsympathetic to religious devotion. You know, like next January.
Like the farmers and the cowmen, libertarians and social conservatives should be friends. Smaller government is good, but not so small as that it fails to recognize who makes up the population being governed, nor fails to protect the citizenry from summarily snuffing each other.
John in Nashville, there’s an entire literature on how social conservatives resist a combination of government and international capitalism seeking to assimilate people into a common dependent and consumeristic mold. They’re plenty suspicious of government power. You have to remember that they are typically resisting an enforcement of new social standards by the government, not fighting for new ones like the left.
When a government is sympatheic to liberty (that’s l-i-b-e-r-t-y) in the listed areas, that government typically declines to exercise authority to restrict or regulate the behavior of its citizens. That is the nonuse of governmental power.
For examples of the exercise of governmental power in such areas, one may look to the People’s Republic of China’s one-child policy (sometimes including compulsory abortions), the rule of the Taliban mullahs (a de facto government) in parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the influence of the Wahabbi strain of Islam in Saudi Arabia.
I surmise that the social conservatives in those countries applaud their governments’ oppression.
John I am always impressed by how liberals have the historical memories of May flies. Abortion was illegal in almost all states prior to Roe. This was a traditional area for the state to regulate. There is never a liberty to kill the innocent.
Hunter,
I have always considered my self simply a conservative because I believe that my personal philosophy encompasses all the categories of conservatives you listed above. Furthermore, I think the same can be said of the vast majority of conservatives I have known. Additionally, while there are some differences, I don’t believe the tension between these different strains of conservatism are as great as you describe. Maybe that is true in places like New York or D.C. but not as much in the rest of the country. If conservatives have had some trouble coming together it is due more to poor choices regarding who should be the standard bearer. We simply must do better than a Bush or McCain.
That said, as someone who takes the limited government principles enshrined in our constitution seriously I am absolutely opposed to any attempt by government to “define the beautiful” or seeking to “achieve some kind of collective excellence” along those lines. Lets not forget that the government is run by bureaucrats and politicians. I have little faith in their ability to accomplish such olympian feats.
It is one thing for the state to protect institutions necessary to its survival (the family) and protect its most vulnerable innocent members (the unborn). It is quite another to use the government as a national moral compass, a role it is both ill-designed and ill-suited for.
As Russell Kirk said, “politics is the art of the possible.” I suggest we leave fantasy to others.
Joel, read the rest of it and see whether I alleviate any of your concerns. I’d be curious to know.
To the social conservatives, from an old-fashioned fusionist: why are you so bent on having the government do the church’s job?
I share your views entirely about what constitutes righteous behavior, but I disagree earnestly about the means by which it should be produced.
Hunter:
You are right about the external threat of Communism contributing to the alliance, but people often forget the internal threat of liberalism. Sure, many “conservatives” were swayed by the charisma of Obama measured against the failure of Bush, but give them a few years of liberal rule — remind them what the Left believes in practice and not meaningless rhetoric — and the bonds will reforge.
What concerns me about the socios is that they believe in small government for everyone else. The “we’re not the one changing things” argument just doesn’t fly. You can’t look to the middle and say, “Hey, we’re not pushing for school prayer, we just want to return to the way it was before the dastardly Left outlawed school prayer,” because the effect on the voter is the same. All the muddled middle sees is “Blah, blah, blah, mandatory Christian prayer in school.” Say what you will about the rift, the libertarian reputation is not as bad as the socios. We don’t see the soft middle going, I was going to vote for McCain, but I just don’t trust his stand on MFN trading status with China . . . but I’ve seen plenty complain about the socios “forcing their religion down my throat.” Until the social conservatives are willing to work tactically for achievable objects (such as returning “moral” issues to the states) we’re going to continue to have troubles getting together.
To the social conservatives, from an old-fashioned fusionist: why are you so bent on having the government do the church’s job?
Straw man much?
Cranky,
I have in view, among other things, Mr. Nation Smoking Ban himself, Gov. Huckabee. I don’t much like statists of any stripe, regardless of the other ways in which I agree with them.
As I said in the other thread, I don’t care much for Huckabee either. But even then I’m not sure he’s quite prepared to have the state intrude as much as his detractors claim he would.
Why is Huck considered a conservative? Last I checked, he was simply an anti-abortion tax & spend statist. That makes him a liberal AFAIC.
Is it possible that we’re finally hitting a problem not of SoCons vs LibertarianCons but of the limits of a Liberal vs Conservative framework?
Is the problem one of definition?
Would not statist vs anti-statist be a better descriptor of where the current battle lines could be drawn?
I’ll be frank. There is not much of the present US government that I would work to “conserve” or “preserve”. Constitutional restoration? Restoration of federalism and state’s rights? I might be able to get on board with that. But none of that is particularly “conservative” if that word is to mean anything. It is, in fact, radical. It’s just radically anti-statist.
Maybe I’m just typing “out loud” here.
Would not statist vs anti-statist be a better descriptor of where the current battle lines could be drawn?
Thomas Sowell’s dichotomy between a constrained vision and an unconstrained vision has always seemed rather apt to me.
Hey guys, it’s fine to say that statism should be resisted wherever it comes from, the right or the left, but Hunter’s original point is well-taken: The threat of statism comes from the left these days far more than from the right.
The idea that somehow, somewhere, religious conservatives are huddling together and planning a coup d’etat so they can legally mandate church and sunday school attendance is beyond fanciful. Social conservatives, raised on the Augustinian model of the City of God and the City of Man, do not want the two to become, in the unfortunate words of Lemon v. Kurtman, excessively entangled–as much as a protection for the church as the state.
No, it the neo-liberal (as opposed to classical liberal) who wants to take power (all power) at all/any cost that is the biggest threat to freedom at this time in our history.
But you guys know all this. I ramble.
Original article: “the reality is that they have primarily fought a rearguard action in which they attempt to preserve laws under attack by an activist judiciary.”
This deserves a bit more comment. Many laws libertarians love to see gone, such as anti-obscenity and anti-vice legislation, often were struck down in an increase of governmental power. A federal government with the power to strike down all laws inimical to libertarians will in fact use that power for anti-libertarian ends.
Libertarians who favor same-sex marriage, for instance, need to ask themselves: Will I bear some blame if all the non-libertarian laws on the books are used to marginalize traditionalists and force them to accommodate same-sex marriage?
Hunter,
Good article. You alleviated my concerns.
Comstockery now! Comstockery tomorrow! Comstockery forever!!
I continue to be amazed how so many people, libertarians as well as liberals, insist that somehow their freedom, their l-i-b-e-r-t-y, requires that they be empowered to exclude entire classes of innocent human lives from the legal protections of personhood, and summarily kill members of those classes for any reason or no reason, and by the cruelest means imaginable.
I thought libertarianism included a principle of non-initiation of force.
As for liberalism, its highest value seems to be mere libido.
Huh. I had no idea that a libertarian ideal was to be in favor of gay marriage. So….if the underlying principle is that the Federal Government has no business speaking to personal matters like marriage, that is being in favor of gay marriage. Thanks for the clarification. I’ll keep that in mind next time I oppose taxation. Which would clearly mean that I’m in favor of people buying illegal drugs.