In Defense of Social Conservatism

Rush Lardass is a hippocrite.

It's about it being a distraction.  The latin lady lover has got to go.  Let the big flush begin.  This republican leadership is so screwed up.  Their strategy is so inept. 

Take for example Pelosi.  The republicans all but have given her a mulligan on the CIA issue.   Instead, the republicans are busy focusing on healthcare.  Hey IDIOT republican leadership, Pelosi is driving healthcare.  Throw her under the bus and this socialist healthcare crap goes with it.  She is the dealmaker getting this thing done.

Dumbass Republican Leadership. 

 I wish I had more time to address this post, but suffice it to say that:

1) I never said infidelity was a "morally disastrous act." Indeed, as immoral acts go, it's pretty small. Murder and rape rank higher.

2) I never suggested for a second that anyone should abandon their morality. I merely said that the Right should abandon political moralizing and live by example. This is as much a pragmatic suggestion (a la Ruffini) as it is a desire to get the moralizers out of our faces.

3) You have to admit that the moral majority posturing creates the conditions under which "sinners" (everyone) will find it increasingly difficult to function politically and professionally once their sins are public knowledge. I would have liked Sanford to be able to weather this. Alas, he cannot because of the moralizers in his party.

4) You cannot inculcate or legislate morality. So why does the right keep trying to?

5) You've had fun with straw men here. 

6) You've defined social conservatism to suit your argument.

Good article.

Let us be clear: Conservatism preaches  that we are creatures of habits, we are not angels, and that "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely." We cannot and should not give in to Cults of Personality.  Thus, nothing in the personal affairs of Gov Sanford diminishes those insights.

It is well that hypocrisy is brought up. We often here about how this proves Republicans are hypocrites. Well. Let someone show me that brave speech by Bill Clinton and John Edwards where they forthrightly forsook the hypocritical route of pretending to be faithful while having affairs. Someone please point to the Edwards admission that his love child is his and his announcement of his financial support for his own son.

Christians know that Jesus came to save, not the perfect, but sinners. If what Gov Sanford was sinful in your eyes, then cant go on prattling about social conservatives are moralizers. You are one too. And if what Gov Sanford did wasnt wrong in your eyes, then you cant go on prattling about hypocrisy, as YOU are the hypocrite for trying to impose a morality you dont really believe in.

In the end, Gov Sanford has given in temptation and now has to face consequences of personal decisions on his family. At the personal level, its his wife and children that he has to atone to, not us spectators. At the political level, he has lost personal credibility and as such has possibly ended his career. He needs to put family first and amend his home situation before he can amend the political damage. But that loss is his alone and not on the wider conservative movement.

One last thing: Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue. I believe the double-standard is a tribute from Democrats to Republicans that says "Hey, your politicians actually have to have principles. Ours dont."

Patrick Ruffini thinks Gov Sanford shouldn't resign because "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."

I disagree. I am sorely disappointed that a Governor I regarded highly for his forthright fiscal conservatism has let his family and his constituents down, but the double standard exists for a reason.

"But adultery is different -- a human failing that strikes Democrats and Republicans equally"

Yes, the human failing strikes equally, but the political impact is different. Bill Clinton lives on, popular as  ever, while Republican adulterers become side-show acts. When you base your politics on principles, you need to live up to them. Failure to keep commitments on the personal level exhibits and impacts on the political level. If you base your politics on pandering, than philandering is just a side hobby.

The double-standard is the homage that unprincipled Democrats pay to the Republican voters for actually voting based on principle. We can always find new leaders to follow, but we can't always find new principles. So the double-standard stays, a marker that says a Republican will need to be more ethically clean, more honest, and do more to live his or her professed values to be considered a credible leader. So be it.

max Borders:

#4 is wrong, which is exhibit A in why libertarians get it wrong. ALL legislation is an act of dictating morality. you "cannot" do this?!? It happens. ALL. THE. TIME. The US Congress House just legislated 1200 pages of anti-Co2 morality, using the IPCC/AlGore religion as their justification. Repent carbon-emitting sinners, Brother Waxman, the Torquemada of the eco-fascists is ready to skin your hide if you are a heretic! Like the middle-ages sinners, you can pay to get out of Co2-hell, with 'carrbon offsets' a method quite akin to the payments that corrupted the catholic church in the middle ageas and cause the reformation - see, there really are no new ideas under the sun. Now if you are saying we SHOULDNT legislate certain acts of morality... then say it that way. I dont know why the Right is bashed over the something the Left does at 10X the volume and severity but there ya go, I think too many people are victims of media-twisting of reality... time for a refresher...

http://www.constitution.org/col/jrb/00420_jrb_fedsoc.htm

PS. NextRight comment bar continues to be broken.

Seems like some of you are forgetting about that whole Renaissance thing western civilization had awhile back.

Are some laws in this country based on morality?  Yes, and they're the dumbest laws on the books.  Blue laws, DOMA, sodomy laws before Lawrence v Texas, laws against interracial marriage before Loving v Virginia, etc.  All those and more where the only reason to implement them was that it's what God wanted. 

Laws against murder, theft, and other crimes are not based on morality, they're based on preserving liberty.  Murder is illegal because it denies another person their right to live.  Theft is illegal because it denies them their right to their property.

Similarly, pollution regulations are not solely based in morality.  Sure some supporters may think so, but at their essence they're an attempt to capture the value of externalities and to limit harm.

There is no double standard that allows Democrats to get away with crimes, because they don't make their character their politics.  When your morality IS your politics, and you show yourself to be immoral, you're done.  Democrats can get away with cheating on their wives because they don't spend all their time in the public eye crusading against adultery.  Social conservatives don't have any other policy aside from their morality.  Huckabee was the perfect embodiment of that attitude.  He publicly stated we needed to change the Constitution to be in line with the Bible.  That's the result of socially conservative politics, and it's completely antithetical to liberty.

The Republican party doesn't need to abandon social conservatives, but they damned sure need to quit focusing on them.  Social conservatives are a dwindling percentage of voters and turn away moderate support of candidates they like, and the biggest reason why isn't because they're moral, but because they're not.  They're some of the most hateful and arrogant people in the country and nobody wants to hear such people lecture them about morality.  In 20 years the religious right will have the same impact on candidates they support as conspiracy theorists like 9/11 truthers do today.

Dude, as a fairly liberal Democrat I'm not saying social conservatives are wrong, or that your party should abandon them. What I'm saying is don't keep sending out guys like Ensign and Sanford preaching about morality and family values, and then find out they can't keep their pants on. Evertime a human gets on his soapbox and preaches morality and then says his political party should adopt his "morality" he's just setting up his party and himself for failure. Were all sinners, no party has dibs to morality, the gop just makes themselves look like fools when they get caught with their pants down. Morality begins in the home and should be what the parents instill in their children, not what a party's platform reads. I don't need the gop trying to legislate their idea of morality on me. Especially a party that believes in preventive war (Iraq) torture and denying Americans health care. Aren't they moral issues also?

Nothing new, but this has been going on the last few days and I keep hearing the same thing:  it's better to have values that you break than to not have any at all. And then there's the opposite assumption that liberals don't have values or don't value values. I agree with the first, but cannot agree with the second. I also do not agree with Republicans (not always conservatives) use of 'values' and 'morals' as a political tool to tar things of which they merely don't agree.

Having grown up in a deeply conservative culture and now live a very liberal culture, both sides have values. It's just Republicans have made an art form out of using it a a blunt political tool. I know people and arguements on both sides that are simple wrong at times. Well meaning, but wrong. However, the beard squad on the religious right have always scared the b'jesus out of me because they believe their faith precludes them from rational laws, and allows them to judge others and be bigots.

I was watching 'Milk' last night and saw the old footage (real footage) of proposition 6 in California. . . and it was so wrong. It was a witch hunt, truely scary stuff cloaked in 'morality' and 'god'.  I thought, 'my god, we are almost done with that b.s.'

This is not to say I'm against 'morality', just relative morality used politically. If anything, I wish social conservatives would talk more about ethics which does expressly have a place in government. Generally speaking, everyone has a pretty good sense of morality:  don't lie, cheat or steal. 'Do unto other's as you would have done unto you' pretty much sums it up. However, it's ethics that really gets hairy. Questions like, 'when do we kill', 'when does societal needs trump individual rights'?

Sandford, who cares? Or should anyone care other than his wife, family and South Carolina. Not only did he cheat, he did so embarrisingly.

First of all, you have never been a real Objectivist, so quit the pretense.

Now, your concepts are confused, muddled, and worthless. Social conservatism holds that the government should impose and enforce morality onto people. Advocacy of private morality is entirely irrelevant to the definition of social conservatism. (Are you paying attention, Rush Limbaugh?) Social conservatives believe that all personal decisions ought to ultimately be the province of government, because preserving the culture trumps individual rights. Any definition of social conservatism that denies this or attempts to evade it or mitigate it is an invalid and dishonest one--one that obliterates the reason for creating and needing the concept of "social conservatism." The rest of the conservative movement holds that government should butt out of personal decisions as long as no one's inalienable individual rights are being violated. Therefore, social conservatism is fundamentally incompatible with the rest of conservatism.

Therefore, you are mistaken that true social conservatives are that numerous and that fiscal conservatives are also generally socially conservative. They are not. The truth is that most conservatives do not really want the government interfering in personal decisions, and they have simply gone along with the loud-mouthed social conservatives so far out of sheer good will and inertia. That good will has now worn untenably thin. And here is another truth: Social conservatives (minus the Mormons) do not have deep pockets. The ones with deep pockets are the Club For Growth type conservatives, but thanks to the social conservatives, they have been driven from the Party or effectively gagged, so why would they open their purse strings for the Party? They need a reason to come back, and that reason is the overthrow of the anti-capitalist agenda of the social conservatives, who can barely keep their vicious, snarling contempt of businessmen and capitalism in general in check.

Second, you cannot have a state of affairs where lawmakers breach their own laws (or  the spirit behind them) in private yet remain invulnerable to the consequences. That is why the "hypocrisy" charge always has legs.

Finally, although Fusionism may have had plausibility in the past, it no longer has any in 2009. Just because people bought into Fusionism in the past does not mean that Fusionism is tenable today. I submit that it must be dispensed with and replaced with Ayn Rand's formula--a state strong in its proper functions (national defense, police, courts), dedicated to the service of inalienable individual rights in the form of laissez-faire capitalism.

It seems to me that this entire discussion is good for the GOP. Reason being, the party is now actually disucssing delicate matters that it didn't want to confront in the past, because it was winning elections WITH FISCAL, FOREIGN POLICY AND SOCIAL CONSERVATIVES AND LIBERTARIANS. That is no longer the case and now we are seeing the fissures that had been building for decades.

I try very hard not to look at politics through any particular prism, be it my regional birthplace (the South), my race (white male), religious belief (Methodist), sexual orientation (gay), so on and so on. I detest identity politics and yet I find myself immersed in it regularly. We all do it, it's just a question of admitting it. The mere fact that we're discussing social cons here is a dialogue on identity poltiics. Millions of voters who profess a belief that the Bible is literally the word of God have every right to participate in our process of elections and governing, BUT their overall worldview is such that the very essence of running things -  compromise and concession when necessary - cannot be allowed. Thus, they make pronouncements about this and that issue with a certainty of themselves. There is no room for discussion,  because, in their view, none is needed. They are simply correct and God-driven in their mindset. I find that perspective highly frustrating and baffling, mainly because I believe that God bestowed all of us with a mind and conscience so that we will use them, rather than shelve our intellectual capacity for understanding and decsion making. Bottom line here is the whole Mark Sanford "affair," combined with John Ensign, David Vitter, Mark Foley, Newt Gingrich, etc., etc. proves something quite discomforting to those who insist on purity -  there is no such a thing, it is a fantasy.

I remain a Republican for many reasons, not the least of which being that I see the party's future as being tied much more closely with a reality-based platform (has anyone ever read the Texas GOP platform? Good grief - it's full of condemnation and judgment) and general principles that are encompassing, not divisive. I agree with many of the posts here about giving social cons a choice - either be team players and realize that you're NOT going to get your way all the time or step aside and create your own movement outside the GOP. I keep hearing that the party will not survive without social cons, and to some extent, that argument has validity. But, there are millions, repeat MILLIONS OF CONSERVATIVE-LEANING INDEPENDENTS WHO WILL PULL THE LEVER FOR REPUBLICANS IF THEY SEE THE PARTY AS RATIONALE AND REASONED, NOT HATEFUL, BITTER, HYPOCRITICAL AND PETTY.  But, to reach them we have to see the world for what it is, not what some of in our coalition insist it should be.

"Social conservatives believe that all personal decisions ought to ultimately be the province of government, because preserving the culture trumps individual rights."

You are falling into the age-old libertarian trap, which is to view society as composed of two units, individuals and the government. In reality, there is a web of institutions and organizations that are intermediate between the individual and the government ("civil society") -churches, families, unions, corporations, local communities, extended kin, ethnic groups, and so on.  You are quite right that social conservative believe that to some extent culture trumps individual rights, in the sense that individual "rights" are only rights within culture, culture being not a contractual but organic. However, social conservatives do not see the government as the necessary social mechanism for defending culture -most are skeptical of it as such a mechanism. What they ask is that government not go out of its way to upset the existing culture and more or less enshrine local mores and custom into law. This is the common law tradition or "mos maiorum," the way of the fathers, that is at the heart of traditionalism or social conservatism.

"There is no room for discussion,  because, in their view, none is needed. They are simply correct and God-driven in their mindset."

This is hardly realistic. I have found social conservatives, and Evangelical Christian in particular, to be among the most eager debaters and "discussers" in our society. On a related note, being "correct and God-driven in their mindset" is by no means confined to social conservatism -we would be hard-pressed to find any activist who is not zealous, whatever the cause.

"I keep hearing that the party will not survive without social cons, and to some extent, that argument has validity"

A better question is should the party survive without social cons? I believe that libertarianism is merely old-fashioned liberalism, and that its logical consequence is new-fashion liberalism. It is the misfortune of conservatism in this country to have been conserving old liberal traditions against new liberal traditions -a more intellectually honest conservatism would eschew liberalism all-together and embrace an alternate vision. I believe such an alternate vision could pull in a new coalition of voters, reshuffling the American political scene -I am thinking of socially-conservative blacks and Hispanics, working-class and rural whites, Catholics, Evangelicals, Reagan Democrats, Midwestern and Western moderates, and Southerners. Such a coalition would result by eschewing the business wing of the party, which is already jumping ship, the wing that is embarassed by people who take the Bible seriously and listen to country music.

Yours, &c,

V. Maro Grammaticus

http://rumromeandreason.blogspot.com/