This will be my last post on this small series that has developed on various types of conservatives. As you notice, I have posted both from the Crunchy Cons and from David Frum of the American Enterprise Institute and his interview by CNN. But, let me now quote directly from the FrumForum, a conservative forum for various stripes of conservatism. As you read it, and Crunchy Cons, etc., it is important to realize that there is a fight going on for the soul of conservatism.
Soon, the Republican National Committee will be considering a motion brought by Republican members from at least 10 states that has been nicknamed the “Purity Test.” It is formally called the, “RNC Resolution on Reagan’s Unity Principle for Support of Candidates.” Here is the bottom line. If a candidate wishing to be a Republican candidate does not support at least 8 out of the 10 principles, then he may not be supported by the Republican Party at any level. But, here is the problem, the resolution would exclude from Republican leadership anyone who is a David Frum conservative or a Crunchy Con conservative. If one is not both morally and socially and economically conservative, meaning laissez faire economics and sociology, then one cannot be a Republican backed by a Republican committee.
Let me give you quotes from an additional article found on the FrumForum. It is titled The Not So Big Conservative Base:
. . . that the American electorate is not nearly so polarized as many think – rather, the political leaders are polarized. This would explain, perhaps, a pattern of sharp and quick backlash against uniparty government in the last two decades – witness the voter repudiation of Democratic Party control in 1994 after just 2 years of controlling both the executive and legislative branches; of all Republican government in 2006, after just 4 years; and now, it increasingly appears, of all Democratic government in 2010, already shaping up after just one year of Democratic power. Given the full reins of power, each party seems to govern to the extremes of where the bulk of the electorate is.
. . . Conservatives have, for many years, taken solace in polls that consistently show that more Americans define themselves as “conservative” than “liberal,” including a recent Gallup poll showing a whopping 20 percent gap in favor of “conservative.” Almost as a mantra, conservatives like to describe the U.S. as a “center-right” country. What Fiorina points out, however, is that rank and file voters are not defining “conservative” in the same way as the pundits and politicos. Fiorina’s polling data finds that fully one-third of those who call themselves conservative do not hold traditionally “conservative” views on either economic or social issues. These people might be deemed “attitudinal conservatives.” They are tired of gay pride marches, tired of anti-war protests, tired of what they perceive as liberal excesses seen in daily life, from crazy tort suits to school policies that expel kids for drawing a picture of a gun, fed up with what seems excessive, out of control spending. But they are neither social conservatives on issues such as gay marriage and gun control, nor free marketers on the economy.
. . . This suggests that Republicans need to re-establish the Reagan coalition of moderates, libertarians, and social conservatives. This can be done, with each group finding the resultant product preferable to the liberal nostrums of the Democratic party. But doing so requires that people stop the incessant arguments about who is a “true” conservative; stop thoughtless “RINO hunting,” and cease defining everyone who disagrees with them on some issue as “not conservative.”
You get the idea from reading these quotes. It is an article worth reading. There are many of us who are moderates, but, as the article explains, are forced to choose between alternatives that are phrased only in the catch phrases of the radical ends or each party. Besides that, as yesterday’s and today’s post point out [if you follow the links], there is even outright lying going on in both parties. Each party uses only the most radical members of the party in order to make their point. And, sadly, all too often the most radical members of each party are the ones who write the platform that many in the party have no intention of supporting once elected. I am one of those who is about ready for a third party alternative if neither party can find a way to moderate its tone and to build a true coalition.
I voted for President Obama only to be told by some fellow moral conservatives that I should go to confession and confess what was essentially labeled a mortal sin because I voted for a Democrat. At the same time, I am set upon by fellow social liberals because I do not support abortion on demand, etc. The “conservative” Republican cannot see how anything that the Lord says about taking care of the widow and orphan could have any application to today’s debate on the health system, etc., while the “liberal” Democrat cannot see how anything the Lord says about the sanctity of life could have any application to today’s debate on abortion and euthanasia.
But, the Republican Party may be making a serious mistake. They are trying to complete the job that began with the previous election. I voted Republican through a couple of Presidents. What drove me out was that I worked in the inner city and I saw that none of my concerns were being addressed. Nope, that is the wrong way to phrase it. My concerns were considered to be “liberal.” There was no room for a moderate. There was no room for a Crunchy Con. And, now, some (maybe many) in the Republican Party are trying to finish the job by outlawing those who are moral conservatives but socially progressive. If the only way one can be conservative Republican is to be a laissez faire capitalist then I cannot be a Republican. I am an ordoliberal capitalist.
The article I cited above says that if the Republicans wish to return to being a strong power again, then they need to build a coalition that allows for people like me, for Crunchy Cons, and for FromForum-type of people. I hope they are listening!
As far back as 1992 an older man I was friends with explained to me that he was disappointed in the way politics had changed in the last twenty years. He said that what was happening was that there were no longer liberals or conservatives and that the parties were being hijacked by radicals and reactionaries. I have found myself (especially in a city like Seattle) feeling as though I have had the problem of being what I consider a moderate actual conservative rather than a neo-conservative. This has led to some tension with family and friends who don’t see there being any room for difference.
I was once declared a flaming liberal for preferring McCain to Bush in 2000. In 2008 the same person who told me I was a flaming liberal for preferring McCain in 2000 told me that by NOT voting for McCain in 2008 meant I was letting someone as bad as the antichrist into power. When I pointed out how this person spoke to me in 2000 about McCain by saying I was another college-educated flaming liberal the person said “now you’re just taking things personally.” To that I replied, “Well, yeah, because you keep making things personal.” The fact that I hadn’t voted for a Democrat wasn’t good enough, I had to vote for the proper Republican to be considered on the same team.
Most people who identify Reagan as their hero now don’t realize how pragmatic he could often be. They probably don’t care that Joan Didion switched from Republican to Democrat because she thought Reagan was not really conservative about smaller government or fiscal policy (not that most conservatives really care what Didion thinks anyway, now that I think of it, even though she said she ardently supported Barry Goldwater at one time).
Sounds like the Republicans are having the same reaction to Obama winning in 2008 as the Democrats did to Dubya winning in 2000: Enforce Party Solidarity, Party Loyalty, Party Ideology, The Party, The Party, The Party, The Party, The Party.
Purity of Ideology Without End, Amen.
And All Heretics Must Be Burned.
I continue to fail to understand why Christianity translates into social liberalism, i.e. coercive implementation of social policies. As a physician I personally take care of the uninsured regardless of ability to pay. I certainly do not demand that YOU pay for it as a gesture of MY Christianity. I would be very interested to know precisely what you saw in the inner city, and what you felt the Republicans ought to do about it.
I see a great danger of Pharisaism when pulling a lever for a candidate = doing my Christian duty, having personally expended neither time nor coin.
On a practical note, I see in history far more evidence of government programs creating pathology than alleviating it.
Hmm, I am not trying to avoid you, but I think the answer to your question about my time in the inner city will take a full blog post in and of itself. So, I will start working on it.
As to coercive implementation of social policies, I will point out that there are quite a few Old Testament laws that are quite coercive if that is the definition you use of coercive. For instance, an Old Testament Israelite was not allowed to harvest the corners of his field despite the fact that it was his field, and his grain which had been planted on his field. Any poor person could come in after he had harvested his field and harvest the corners and anything left which had not been picked on the one pass which the Law allowed. Thus, his field, his labor, and his grain were given free of charge to the poor. That is just one of several laws I could easily cite.
So, apparently, God has little problem with coercive social policies. And, uhm, I could also cite you several examples in which God punished, at least once with death, some who violated some of those coercive social policies.
I thought you would mention the year of Jubilee and how Israel probably never followed it. As fiscal social policies go the year of jubilee is arguably the most coercive policy in the scriptures.
There were quite a few laws and events of the Old Testament that I could have mentioned. And, God exercised judgment in the New Testament as well, though those Scriptures are rarely quoted.
They probably never followed and look what God did to them: Babylon invasion and captivity anyone? “I will give my land a Sabbath rest” said the Lord, and he gave them 70 years of captivity for each of the years of Jubilee which they had not kept.
Yes, that is one of the punishments to which I was referring. Apparently the Old Testament God was more ecological than the modern New Testament God. The other possibility, of course, is that the modern Christian of certain theological persuasions is not following in God’s footsteps in the area of the ecology.
Whoa. Do I misunderstand? Are you seriously equating the laws of the Old Testament with the Great Society or some other modern liberal program, in terms of moral force and implicit rectitude? The Mosaic Law was coercive, so Barack Obama can be coercive???
The Mosaic Law was coercive in some of its social policies so one cannot claim that it is non-Biblical for a government to choose to have some coercive social policies. I nowhere equated any current particular program with the Old Testament. But, it would not be anti-Biblical for a modern government to implement a social policy that takes care of the poor by taking some of one’s hard earned money. That is precisely what happened in Old Testament Israel in more than one of its laws.
A social policy can be good or bad depending on its construction, its means of financing, whether it has a disproportionate impact, etc., etc. But, a social policy cannot be declared to be wrong simply on the grounds that it takes some of what you own. That is what taxes are. They are levies that take some of what you own. That is, unless you wish to declare that God, the Temple, and the King were wrong in Old Testament Israel. That would be a difficult claim to make and remain a Christian.
That does not mean that every current proposed social policy is correct either. Nor does it mean that all taxes are appropriate or being appropriately used. But the debate cannot be solved simply by trying to say that the government is stealing your money.
Nevertheless, let’s look at your sentence construction. Are you then saying that no modern program, law, regulation, or decree can have “moral force and implicit rectitude?” I believe that you are expecting me to draw back in shock and say that nothing can be equated to Scripture. But, there is a half-truth there. We are constantly called to “imitate” those who have gone before. That was part of Saint Paul’s whole thrust to Saint Timothy. Current law, regulation, decree,or program is not Scripture, but, if we are serious about having a Judeo-Christian nation, then current law, regulation, decree, or program should, in various ways, reflect the same ethos and concerns as that which we find when we look at both Scripture and Holy Tradition.
Finally, yes, the Mosaic Law was coercive, so we have a principle there that modern governmental law can be coercive. If you do not pay your taxes on April 15, you go to jail. But, we have a major difference with the Old Testament. We, at least, can vote for our representatives every two years.
No, there is an implied part of the argument I didn’t get to mentioning, which was probably unfair to leave unsaid. Most historical study of ancient Israel indicates that the year of Jubilee was never actually practiced. God can say people should do something but that doesn’t mean they ever did it, possibly not until as late as the time of Nehemiah in the post-exilic period. When Israel consistently failed to do what God decreed even in theocratic terms He dumped them into exile for years. Liberals want to coerce social generosity and conservatives want to assume that existing social generosity is enough but I am skeptical about the kindness of people in either of those directions and a pessimist about the human condition.
My skepticism about nationalized health care in particular is that we have a post-industrial economy predicated on the fractional banking and lending at interest of a currency that is backed by fiat. So the money is as good as the word of the government issuing it and we have reason to be skeptical about the value of that word. Spending that money in a national health care program bothers me. This is also not a problem that will necessarily be fixed by conservative reactions to the Great Society or the New Deal. Republicans aren’t going to annihilate social security or medicare. They aren’t going to dismantle the alphabet soup of bureaus and administrations. They are more likely to help invent new government departments. The EPA was set up under the Nixon administration and Homeland Security was set up under Bush 2’s tenure. Conservatives have been trounced not because liberal policies are necessarily smarter or better but because for now people think liberals have been more consistent in keeping their word. I would contest that if I felt like it but I’m job-hunting.
Kozak, I figure you were probably replying to Fr Ernesto and not me but I was writing in reply to what you wrote earlier in case you were writing in response to me. I don’t disagree that all societies employ different forms of coercion. One of the problems we Christians in America have is that we are stuck in a tradition in which we “can’t” make the case that some coercion is necessary anymore without being accused of being tyrannical. This is most evident when liberals and conservatives talk past each other as being “fascist” or “socialist”.
My worry about Christian conservatives is that in their pursuit of “Christian” policies they don’t see how the policies of the religious left backfired in unexpected ways. The invention of the modern-day teenager came about as a by-product of the unforeseen consequences of social policies pursued by progressive Christians more than a century ago. I’m not saying we should repeal child labor laws or anything, just noting that in the zeal to correct for perceived errors in the Social Gospel movement the religious right may be in real danger of overcompensating in the other direction. We aren’t beyond having a new Christian hobbyhorse that is equivalent to prohibition in our time.
I have no problem with people being skeptical about programs based on previous experience or sound reasoning. The issue is the sound reasoning part. We need to have sound reasoned debate, not the sloganeering that has been characterizing too much of American politics, both left and right, lately.
I do have a problem with quite a few Republicans speaking as though they are going to dismantle the Great Society or the Roosevelt programs when we all know that they are not and did not even try when the Republican Party was in charge.
More than that, I have a problem with those who are undertaking a purge of all moderates in the party, the RINO people, under the guise of a purity that the party never had under Ronald Reagan. I voted for Reagan and Bush. Until Bush, I had no one argue that my emphasis on the poor, the widow, and the orphan was somehow not Republican.