Yet another new blog joins the ODBA: criesinthenight, who has a great read on the focus of the First Things article on The New Fusionism between social conservatives and neo-conservatives:
At the core of the welfare state is one message: you can’t do this for yourself. Social Security is a repudiation of the belief that I can invest my money for retirement better than the government. More, taken collectively, they say that society can’t take of their own without the coercive force of the government. This is the effect of social defeatism… the effect of a failure to believe in ourselves.
And so it is that we must still turn inwards to the practical and economic, to restore confidence in our ability to be right. But in what seems to be a Catch-22, we can’t give up the welfare that holds our self-confidence captive because we don’t believe in ourselves. This is why ideas like faith-based initiatives are such a dangerous idea for the lives of welfare programs. If people become accustomed to help from organic social structures like the Church – whose strength is a result of the free giving of its members’ time and energy – they will have faith in others and through that, faith in their own abilities; that would begin to spell the end for welfare.
First Things has to be my favorite journal at the moment, and I read Bottum’s article with a good deal of interest. The possibility of being right, and the improbable marriage of former liberals turned neo-cons and evangelical Christians is something Bottum looks upon with a degree of hope. A fusion of the ideas of social conservatives with the action of liberals. Who could ask for less?
For starters, “paleo-conservatives” – an epithet if I’ve ever heard one – classical liberals, and libertarians all hold objections to the idea that government needs to be the catalyst for change. Reagan’s admonishment that government is the problem, not the solution seems to fall by the wayside. No matter, argues Bottum:
The angry isolationist paleoconservatives are probably right—this isn’t conservatism, in several older senses of the word. But so what? Call it the new moralism, if you like. Call it a masked liberalism or a kind of radicalism that has bizarrely seized the American scene. Mutter darkly, if you want, about the shotgun marriage of ex-socialists and modern puritans, the cynical political joining of imperial adventurers with reactionary Catholics and backwoods Evangelicals. These facts still remain: The sense of national purpose regained by forceful response to the attacks of September 11 could help summon the will to halt the slaughter of a million unborn children a year. And the energy of the pro-life fight—the fundamental moral cause of our time—may revitalize belief in the great American experiment.
And there you have it. An idea that many Republicans of either the economic or social stripe haven’t caught on to yet. Neo-conservatives and social conservatives at their root seek government intervention to set right the wrongs of the world.
The question is whether or not this is good, or even desireable?
Russell Kirk, imaginably, might argue yes. Nozick certainly would not. von Mises would not. Nor would the vast majority of liberals, socialists, or progressives; though they might certainly admire the means if not the ends.
In the end, the stuggle between individual action and social action continues. Objectively, the “American experiment” has always been a testimony to individualism rather than socialism. Why then would a marriage of liberal action and social conservativism be an advance?
I suppose this is why I could not call myself a neo-conservative. I simply don’t believe in the government as a means for change. Certainly, I am a social conservative. Abortion is a tragedy that needs to end, and it is the intervention of government through Roe v. Wade that allows it to persist. Fair wages should be the obligation of an employer to do business. Speech should in no way be restrained or inhibited – or encouraged by the state for that matter. Religious belief does and should play a role in the public square. Government should ideally be so small that it couldn’t possibly infringe upon rights, yet sizeable enough to defend our rights when threatened. The defense of life, liberty, and property are what the Founders and the classical liberals would identify as the prime objectives of American governance.
Liberty’s propogation shouldn’t be at the tip of a sword as the neo-cons would have it, nor should it be through the heavy hand of governance as this “new fusionism” proposes.