social conservatism

United States Representative and conservative firebrand Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) addressed conference attendees after lunch today - he made some pretty broad tactical appeals to online activists that have been uncommon to date on the Right, and to that extent, I was pretty impressed with his speech. He also stuck mainly to economic issues, which is what conservative sweethearts will need to do on their end to help coaxing centrist and libertarian voters out of their strongholds, back into the political and policy spheres. I'm not a cameraman, but you can view (well, hear really) Pence's speech in its entirety at my Qik profile. Cross-posted at Liberty Pundits and Intelligence, Please...

If you'd told my hardline libertarian, militantly atheistic Objectivist self of the past that I'd be ever write a defense of socially conservative political views, I'd probably have called you crazy in between fits of laughter and remarks about how that particular group of people was a roadblock to human evolution. Which goes to show that everyone must sometimes eat crow.

There's been a lot of talk about how Governor Sanford's recent scandal impugns the authority of social conservatives to discuss how terrible infidelity, abortion, homosexuality and post-1960's sexual morality are. The usual suspects have already got in their obligatory sneers, but what's more surprising is how quick various members of this website have jumped on the bandwagon. No accounting for taste, but they're wrong.

As I never tire of reminding people, most of the conflicts on the Right today have happened before. The desire to rid our side of social conservatives is no exception. Frank Meyer actually wrote an essay entitled "A Rebel in Search of Tradition" in which he savaged Russell Kirk for being culturally authoritarian and thus socialist by proxy. Friedrich Hayek leveled the accusation that "conservatism has compromised with socialism and stolen its thunder" at traditionalists. In the end, Meyer's fusionism resolved the dispute, but the tensions remained, to the point that Murray Rothbard and Russell Kirk both tried to write each other out of the movment in the same issue of the same magazine. Kirk accused Rothbard's libertarians of being "chirping sectaries" who could never agree and were Satanic in their opposition to authority, whereas Rothbard wrote that fusionism was really a "libertarian manque" intended to keep those stupid traditionalists quiet. And even though any time social conservatism was dumped, it resulted in disastrous political alienation (see also the rise of the New Right in response to Gerald Ford), and anytime fiscal conservatism was dumped it resulted in political failure and division on the Right (George W. Bush), people still try and write both sides out.

But enough about history. Let's deal with the question at hand - why should the infidelity of Mark Sanford merit the expulsion of social conservatives? Perhaps I'm being willingly obtuse, but I can't remember a single time when any socially conservative Senator, Representative, Governor, President or dog-catcher has suggested that adultery be made illegal. I've also never heard a single Democratic Representative, Senator, Governor or President advocate adultery as a social good - in fact, unlike Sanford, some of them will even put themselves at the risk of impeachment to avoid admitting to it. Hypocrisy? You bet. But if we threw out every political idea that had a high profile hypocrite advocate it at some point, then we'd have nothing left to advocate at all.

The impulse to throw hypocrites out is a healthy one. The impules to throw out everyone but the hypocrites is not - it is a symptom of desperation. Suppose the Republican party followed the advice of all the people who said abandoning social conservatism because of the Mark Sanfords of the world was a good idea. Imagine the message that sends - "Alright, you've got us, husbands can't keep their pants up and we're not going to claim they should." Imagine the fun Robert Gibbs would have with that. Imagine how many voters, both socially conservative and otherwise, we'd never be able to get on our side again.

The mere fact that Sanford's so-called "hypocrisy" is getting so much airtime is the best argument for believing in a politics of morality one could ever want. As Rush Limbaugh pointed out yesterday, "Hypocrisy does two things, both at the same time: Hypocrisy shows -- and you're not going to want to hear this. You're not going to want to agree with me on this.  I know you're not.  But hypocrisy shows that there are moral values in a culture.  Without moral values in a culture, it would not be possible for anybody to be a hypocrite.  The fact that we are calling Sanford a hypocrite is the proof that there are still standards of dignity and morality that apply in our society." Or, to put it even more bluntly, hypocrisy is the one thing which liberals have not been able to turn into a lifestyle choice. 

It's true that social conservatism puts us in a difficult position. You never hear about the pro-choice Democratic "hypocrites" who forbid their daughters from getting abortions. You never hear about the college professors who are rich and still say property is theft. Even when you do, it doesn't do anything. You don't see the Democrats arguing that they should drop opposition to corporate corruption because Chris Dodd got caught. When Bill Clinton cheated on Hillary or when Elliot Spitzer paid to become "Love Client Number Nine", you may notice there was just as much outrage, if not more, than what has accrued in response to Governor Sanford. Whatever we may do on blogs, putting partisan spin on a personal tragedy alienates average people because it looks cynical, heartless and petty. Making partisan spin on a personal tragedy the basis for a massive philosophical shift is politically and philosophically counterproductive because it makes your party look like a collection of gutless wimps who allow the worst members of their party to dictate moral standards.

In his article, Max Borders argues that while cheating on one's wife is a morally disastrous act, "there are egregious moral acts the discovery of which no politician should survive...legal bedroom behavior between consenting adults ain’t one of them." It is lucky, therefore, that nobody on the Right, Left or anywhere in between is suggesting government rationing or regulation of sex. They simply suggest that sexual habits and character may be linked. It may be true that, as Mr. Borders says, Jerry Falwell's form of public moralizing has caused the GOP more harm than good. This is not an argument for abandoning one's argument. It is an argument for changing the rhetoric and presentation of it, because we no longer live in the age of moral panic that characterized the 80's. Pro-choice advocates do not abandon their argument because Margaret Sanger once took their side on the grounds that blacks should be exterminated. One can be right for the wrong reasons, and there are plentiful examples of more "libertarian" Republicans who are anti-abortion or even anti-gay marriage who are not cheating scum.

In short, it is political suicide to abandon social conservatism at a time when our most zealous supporters are socially conservative, and when a good majority of even the fiscal conservatives hold socially conservative views. It is also logically fallacious to suggest that because one person violates a set of standards, the standards are therefore invalid. Finally, it is philosophically disastrous to conflate a refusal to regulate certain things because they are not capable of being regulated with abandonment of the moral arguments against them as reflections of an individual's character.

Remember Jimmy Swaggart? He was the TV preacher who wept before America after a tryst with a prostitute. "I have sinned against you, my Lord,” choked Swaggart through tears. “I would ask that your precious blood would wash and cleanse every stain until it is in the seas of God's forgiveness." The fall of televangelism in many ways foreshadowed the decline of the so-called moral majority. The Right is now reaping what it sowed. By making social conservatism central to its platform, it left no room in the GOP for sinners. 

Now we have the Sanford affair. Many on the Right had pinned their hopes on the SC governor. He’s a solid, smart fiscal conservative and liberty lover. Yet his political career will very probably dissolve. Why? Not because what he did was unforgivable. Because back in the 1980s and 90s, the Right set itself up to make hypocrites out of human beings—if but by association with Jerry Falwell under the “Big Tent”. That's why I agree with Patrick Ruffini here.

As I have argued elsewhere, it is time to purge the Right’s politics of social conservatism. That doesn't mean anyone should give up his or her values. It means personal values should be left entirely to the private sphere. The Right should make social toleration and pluralism its new plank. Indeed, there is plenty of contrast between real pluralism and the groupist multiculturalism most of the far left embraces. And you can still have your Bible, virtues and righteousness in the free market of values—i.e. at home and at church.

Of course, there are egregious moral acts the discovery of which no politician – Democrat or Republican – should survive. Breaking a solemn contract with a spouse may very well be one of them. But legal bedroom behavior between consenting adults ain’t one of them. And public moralizing has definitely become a political liability for Republicans. The Right has set up the conditions such that no one in their party can ever have a peccadillo. They have driven their sinful behavior into a black market of their own creation. In the age of transparency, however, your trysts and broken taboos will be sniffed out quickly. And it’s not just for politically pragmatic reasons that the Right should give up on public moralizing a la Falwell. It’s also that it’s none of the government’s business what people do in their bedrooms, so it doesn't belong in ANY platform. 

That title is provocative, and deliberately so. I'd like to play Devil's Advocate and argue that blindly going along with the Dump Sanford crowd could seriously damage Republican elected officials' ability to weather future, hopefully less serious storms.

At the core of the Sanford and Ensign episodes is the cloud of "hypocrisy" that hangs over any Republican who strays from the bonds of their marriage. (Quickly forgetting that all who commit adultery are hypocrites, having taken a solemn vow of marriage.) Because Democrats are perceived as more socially libertine, they get off easier.

This is a structural disadvantage that, on the margins, hurts Republican officeholders, forcing them into resignation or disgrace more easily than their equally adulterous Democratic counterparts.

Simply put, it is a strategic error to sanctify the idea that it's worse when Republicans cheat. The hypocrisy charge exacts a double penalty on Republicans where none exists for Democrats -- first, in the accusation of hypocrisy itself, and second, in the media whipping social conservatives into a frenzy in a bid to belatedly "enforce" their moral code -- exactly the thing the secular media believes you shouldn't do 364 days out of the year -- to hound a Republican out of office. 

Think about these two survey results:

- There is a significant disparity between younger and older voters on gay marriage and some other culture war issues.

- Southerners have a significantly different view of places like San Francisco and France than do the rest of the country.

- The only region where Barack Obama does not have high approval ratings is the South.

Over and over, Democrats have been crowing that the Republican Party is turning into a regional rump party with very limited appeal outside the old Confederacy and a few Great Plains states.  It's true that the South is different from the rest of the country, which doesn't have to be a bad thing.  The only problem is that you can't talk to the whole country in the same way because of it.

The remedies to the GOP's slide proposed thus far follow the same basic paradigm.  The purists say that the GOP needs to purge the RINOs and create a clear distinction between the parties.  The problem is that the American public sees the difference between the parties and is choosing Democrats.  It turns out that the endless harping on pork and nomination battles nominally related to abortion drive the base, but seems petty and shortsighted to most everyone else.  On the other hand, the reformers are more interested in creating more conservative and market-based solutions to problems Democrats are also addressing, but they are scorned by a base that sees them as part of a cocktail-sipping Northeastern elite, thus apostates unworthy of attention.  Moderate Republican candidates who have shown their ability to win in blue states are targeted by the Club for Growth.  They may hardly better than Democrats on some issues, but they contribute to creating a majority of seats.

So how do you hold on to a base that holds increasingly unpopular ideas on social policy while reaching out beyond so-called "real America" where many voters agree with our foreign and fiscal policy but can't stand the anti-intellectualism and public moral posturing of the hard-right southern wing?

   Set it free!

Why not split the GOP into a regional southern party while creating a new fiscally-conservative, socially-moderate party in the Northeast, Great Lakes and West?  Although I don't know if this is legal, why not have the two new parties sign a non-compete agreement?

I see the following benefits:

- The two parties can get together on issues they agree on, like taxes and perhaps elements of foreign policy.

- Freeing the SoCons to be SoCons.  They always lose within the GOP at the agenda-setting stage to the FisCons.  A three-party system will involve a lot more horse-trading, so more issues important to SoCons can actually make it to the floor, where they may even have a chance of winning.

- It does not imperil the solid South.  I can't imagine that many GOP incumbents in Dixie would be ousted by a party more attuned to the region's wants and needs.

There are risks.  There are huge risks.  One wonders how Presidential elections would work. However, it doesn't seem sane to keep trying to reconcile a largely regional base with parts of the country they don't even consider "real," or to write off voters and candidates who can win because they don't tow a line that is unpopular in their districts.  If the goal is not a GOP revival for its own sake, but the implementation of conservative governance, it's worth looking at.

I saw an ad on the Metro this morning from Econ4U.org, a project of the Center for Economic and Entrepreneurial Literacy (CEEL) ...

It got me thinking: gambling is one of those issues where there are two distinct opinions on the Right. Libertarians argue that all forms gambling should be legalized. Social conservatives argue that the negative externalities and social consequences overwhelm any argument for the freedom to gamble. Some states have extensive licensing for gambling (like Nevada and New Jersey) and other states have strict restrictions or prohibitions on it (Utah and Alaska).

Both sides have valid arguments on gambling itself. But what about government-run/government-monopoly gambling for the purposes of raising revenue for their general funds?

Last November, Maryland passed a ballot initiative allowing for government-run video lottery terminals to raise money for education. Gerald Prante and Alicia Hansen of the Tax Foundation wrote opposing views on government-run slots a day before the election. Prante argued for passage, saying that while "under an ideal fiscal system in Maryland, slots would be permitted to operate freely and the rate of return in the marketplace would be close to competitive," the current prohibition is an implicit tax and passage could eventually lead to a free market for slots. Hansen argued against passage, noting that any government-run gambling is actually a hidden tax that's regressive and non-neutral.

With many states in fiscal crises, lawmakers are looking for new ways to raise revenue. Aside from any of your feelings on gambling itself, how do you, as someone on the center-right, feel about government-run gambling as a way to raise revenue? I look forward to the answers.

In response to Mr. Moran's thoughtful essay: If you are so thoroughly disgusted with social conservatives that you wish to see them leave the party, I have good news for you: there is no need to actually do any purging.  Because a political party founded on libertarian ideals, free of the oogedy-boogedy SoCons, already exists.  It is the Libertarian Party.  But, if you think that there is some merit to some of the social conservative ideas, AND if you are willing to show social conservatives a bit of respect, then you should stay put and try to make the marriage work.

Here are my thoughts.  I see the Republican Party style of conservatism to be a more enlightened form of libertarianism than that which the Libertarian Party offers.  The Libertarians are big on individual liberty.  This is a good thing.  But the Republican Party goes beyond this; it tries to construct a moral framework that attempts to guarantee the future preservation of this individual liberty.  That is to say, it recognizes that individual liberty can only really prosper in an environment that is respectful towards liberty in general.  I believe this is the great value that social conservatism brings to the Republican Party.  It reminds us that libertarianism can quickly descend into libertine-ism if the people are not prepared to accept the responsibilities as well as enjoy the benefits of liberty.  So rather than viewing libertarianism and social conservatism as warring parties forcibly bound together by a Big Tent, I tend to view them as complementary parts of a larger whole.

So rather than having one side kick out the other, I believe a better strategy is to more tightly integrate the two; to more clearly demonstrate the complementarity.  So when it comes to abortion, for instance, we have to not only play up the immorality of it, but also persuade people that legal abortion really is not consistent with a society that values the dignity and worth of every individual.  That's not a religious argument, that is a secular libertarian-esque argument.  When it comes to something like sex education in schools, sure social conservatives will in general be opposed to anything but abstinence-only education, because anything else doesn't reflect their values.  That's not an unreasonable argument.  The libertarian angle might be to support devolution of power over education away from the federal government, and to support competition among schools so that parents have choice over what kind of values education they want their children to receive.  It's a win-win: the social conservatives get to have their desired form of sex education in their schools, and the libertarians get to have a free-market approach to education.

But, honest people can have honest disagreements over issues, and especially in a party that values individualism way more than the other party, those disagreements are going to tend to be larger.  We have to remember, though, that we are all on the same team.  So if a libertarian conservative can't find it within him/herself to oppose abortion, I'd expect social conservatives to be politely respectful of that fact.  However - and here's the important part - if a social conservative finds the greatest justification for his/her views in Scripture, I'd expect the libertarian conservative ALSO to be politely respectful.  From what I see currently, though, the respect is not a two-way street.  The wise and educated libertarian conservatives, with their enlightened views on abortion, are to be looked up to; while the social conservatives, with their crazy Biblical views, are to be looked down upon.  This has got to stop.  If libertarian conservatives do find some value in social conservatism at all, then libertarian conservatives shouldn't throw them under the bus whenever they get embarrassing.

But, if you can't stand doing that, if you really do think SoCons are a bunch of uneducated rubes, then you should join the Libertarian Party.

Republicans don't have a God problem, though I am becoming convinced that there are some conservatives who have a problem with God. 

Kathleen Parker, in her latest column assails Republicans for allowing the "the evangelical, right-wing, oogedy-boogedy branch of the GOP" to what?  Remain in the party?  Have a seat at the table?  Influence politicians?  

Parker lets the mask slip, however, when she says " the GOP has surrendered its high ground to its lowest brows".  Now it becomes clear.  This is simply another attack by a self-described intellectual elite on a (sizeable) number of Americans who exasperate her.

I haven't set foot in a church in years, and have no desire to start.  My religious views are, as Parker suggests they should be for all, "in the privacy of my heart", but to suggest that ours is the only way to conduct ourselves in the political sphere isn't just lunacy, it's damning conservatism to irrelevance.  

Where is Ms. Parker's outrage over Barack Obama's plan to ensure that "we are all our brother's keeper", using the government to further his religious beliefs?  Where is Parker's disgust at the formation of left-leaning religious/political groups like We Believe Ohio and We Believe Colorado?  The Democrats are welcoming religious voters, yet Kathleen Parker thinks Republicans need to reject them?

You don't  grow a party by becoming more exclusive.  You don't win elections by alienating millions of Americans.  Kathleen Parker is showing the right way to become irrelevant as a political party, and I can only assume that her intellectual vapidity is worth it as long as the movers and shakers in D.C. can view her as one of those "acceptable conservatives".  

The GOP can be the party of religious diversity, but not at the expense of alienating evangelical Christians.  Thomas Jefferson was as close to a non-believer as you could find among the Founders, but even he recognized that freedom of religion protected the rights of the religious as well as the non-believers.  Jefferson's Statute for Religious Freedom was written in 1779, during the rise of the Baptist Church in his state.  A decade earlier, the sheriff of Spotsylvania County had jailed four Baptist preachers for 40 days.  In 1771, Edmund Pendleton (head of the Caroline County Court and member of the House of Burgesses), watched as the clerk of his court dragged Baptist minister John Waller down the courthouse steps, his head pounding "against the ground, sometimes up, sometimes down" and handed him over to the local sheriff.  After the sheriff whipped the preacher, Waller "in a gore of blood went back singing praise to God, mounted the stage and preached with a great deal of liberty."*

If Jefferson felt that "evangelical, right-wing, oogedy-boogedy" Christians shouldn't have a say in politics, one would think he would have mentioned it.  Instead, Jefferson and the founders explicitly protected the religion and speech of radical Christians as well as non-believers.  Perhaps it was because even Jefferson realized that the push for liberty had started with the human desire to worship God as one pleased, and that religious freedom had led to greater human freedom.  Kathleen Parker may want to exorcise religion from the political sphere, but she should at least acknowledge that if our own Founders had done so, this country would be a far different place... one undeniably worse than it is today. 

If Kathleen Parker had advocated coming up with a compelling secular argument for things like traditional marriage and pro-life positions, I would heartily agree with her.  It's not enough for a Republican to base their arguments on religion. Conservative principles shouldn't work only for evangelical Christians.  Conservatism needs to work for every American, but  that's a matter of messaging, not changing what it means to be a conservative. 

*The Unknown American Revolution, Gary Nash

With a few sketchy reports about a very possible breach between McCain and Palin over how and how hard to attack Obama, Palin unleashed a flawlessly executed attack of a speech on abortion yesterday in Johnstown, PA. Over at Hot Air, Allah Pundit referred to it as "one of the most red-meat social con speeches you’ll ever read." While the campaign flails about (although the ACORN ad is an improvement), Palin has taken a sturdy, fundamental approach with four steps: Relate, Attack, Contextualize, Inspire (seasoned with blue-collar Dem political hat tips). Here's the speech:

Lately, it seems certain narratives about the youth vote and digital media have been coming up time and time again, without much analysis of how useful these things actually are, so I thought I would hit on a few issues with the youth vote and new media as a college conservative.
 

Facebook doesn’t work. This kills me. Facebook constantly comes up in discussions about the digital age and it’s still pretty useless. While the importance of social networking cannot be overlooked in terms of keeping in contact with those you might not otherwise and cementing ties from introductions and the like, Facebook still isn’t a platform for political discussion or information retrieval (unless it’s photos from last weekend). The candidates’ pages are largely like comment-enabled static web pages—sort of useless, unless you’re looking for a fight. A candidate who actually made a Facebook page, replete with favorite movies, their former college networks, and a candid photo album or two might be an interesting experiment, though.

Where Facebook does hold a lot of potential is in its corporate and outside applications. Facebook's privacy policy is a nightmare; information never leaves its servers, even if you deactivate, it remains there. In terms of micro-targeting and data collection on voters, Facebook may be extremely useful if it can be utilized properly, but I don't get the sense that it's being used to its fullest on either the data side or the interactive approach to actually contact and motivate people.