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Economic and Social Conservatives - Part 1
As conservatism has evolved, there are two primary groups into which conservatives fall. The first is economic conservatives and the second is social conservatives. Both groups can legitimately trace their roots to America’s Founding Fathers and, in fact, to the first Englishmen who arrived in the New World.
In the 1950s, as conservatism began to develop as a movement, a "fusion" of these two groups developed to repel their common enemy, namely, communism. (Ryan Sager gives a complete discussion of the history of "fusion" or "fusianism" in his book entitled "The Elephant in the Room".) In the post-1964 era of the Republican Party, conservatives became a dominant force in the Republican Party. Thier fundamental values are those embraced by Barry Goldwater. Goldwater's values were a combination of social conservatism (sometimes referred to as traditionalism) as expressed by William F. Buckley and the economic conservatism (sometimes referred to as libertarianism) advocated by philosopher Ayn Rand.
Economic conservatives advocate limited government, free markets, federalism, local control and personal liberty. They are, above all, champions of individualists, self-made men and risk-taking entrepreneurs who abhor big government.
Ronald Reagan observed that, “If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. ... The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.”
Social conservatives rose to prominence in Republican Party affairs during Reagan’s presidency. Adam Wolfson of the Claremont Institute summarizes the emergence of social conservatives in the Republican Party as follows.
“[T]he Religious Right's eventual alliance with the Republican Party was almost accidental. To begin with, in the 1964 presidential election, which first-wave conservatives consider foundational, evangelicals spurned the conservative standard-bearer Barry Goldwater in favor of Lyndon Johnson. Throughout the '60s the majority of evangelicals were Democrats, not Republicans, and it was arguably Jimmy Carter who made the first direct appeal to Evangelicals, a majority of whom cast their vote for him that year.
But almost as soon as Carter had won their vote, he pushed the Religious Right into the Republican camp. Carter's support of the Equal Rights Amendment and abortion rights, and his threat to take away the tax-exempt status of parochial schools outraged religious conservatives, who increasingly began to see themselves as a distinctive political movement. In 1979, Jerry Falwell founded the Moral Majority, and a year later Ronald Reagan won the White House in part by appealing to these religious voters.
From 1976 to 1988 a genuine political realignment took place, as evangelicals and fundamentalists moved, en masse, from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party. Not only were they voting Republican, something they had occasionally done in the past, but they were joining Republican ranks in great numbers, and soon a large majority, something in the neighborhood of 60 to 70%, would identify themselves as Republicans. They are today the face of the Republican Party: Conservative Christians made up nearly a third of Bush's total vote in 2004.”
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Both groups of conservatives consist of self-reliant people who share a desire for independence and good government. However, the two types of conservatives are not always in agreement. As Wolfson observes, “it goes without saying that the Republican Party remains the party of free markets, private property, and business interests. But where the man and the dollar come in conflict, to use Lincoln's terms, today's Republican Party can increasingly be relied upon to side with the former.”
Above all, economic conservatives understand that a good government will avoid interfering with America’s commerce. They unashamedly advocate capitalism, which Larry Kudlow has aptly described as “the greatest anti-poverty program ever devised by man.” They believe that a person has a right to keep what he has earned and that any government which violates this right is neither protecting our rights nor acting as a government that derives its powers from the people.
Social conservatives are more focused on moral issues. They advocate an educated, morally upright society whose elected officials are of the highest character, which President Calvin Coolidge succinctly described in saying, “We do not need more knowledge, we need more character. We do not need more government, we need more culture. We do not need more law, we need more religion.”
There should be no natural division between economic and social conservatives regarding morality because both groups understand that morality is a precondition for the self-governance our forefathers fought so hard to secure for us.
Economic conservatives clearly understand that capitalism, which thrives on a strong work ethic, brings out the best in people and rewards hard work and frugality.
It is far less clear that all social conservatives understand that without economic liberty, no other liberty is possible. If they did, they would not have helped make either Lyndon Johnson’s or Jimmy Carter’s disastrous presidencies possible, nor would big-government-advocate Mike Huckabee have received as many votes as he did in this year’s Republican primaries. Increasingly some social conservatives focus more on religion rather than morality as evidenced by their rejection of economically conservative candidates who don’t belong to a church or perhaps don’t appear to cite religion frequently enough in their public statements.
This is not offered as a rejection of social conservatives. Any conservative Republican who has sought public office - as I did - quickly learns that social conservatives often constitute more than half of the volunteers aiding his campaign staff. Rather, it is a wake up call for those who ignore a candidate’s economic positions and vote for the candidate on a single moral issue, or how often he goes to church. Conservatives who do this may be working against their own cause.
How so? Well, consider this. When government confiscates the wealth of the citizens, it denies them their inherent right to their own lives. The one thing that elevates man above animals is his ability to reason. Man indeed lives by reason and depends upon it to sustain his life. He produces in order to trade with others and thereby satisfy his wants and needs. The process of producing and trading with others is of benefit not only to the individual, but also to the entire community. This is the nature of man and the individualist knows it best.
In laying claim to what a man produces, a government makes a claim on his life. That is the morality of cannibals - it is the morality of the Democrat socialist savages who long to reshape America as a nation that worships at the altar of socialism. It is also the morality of big-government Republicans who are little more than tax collectors for the welfare state.
Thomas Jefferson certainly understood this when - before Karl Marx was born - he said, “To take from one, because it is thought his own industry... has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who... have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.”
The road back to a vibrant, liberty-defending Republican Party will be a hard one to navigate. We must undo two decades of decay since President Reagan left office. We must pick our course carefully and unite conservatives if we are to succeed. Clearly we need to seek out candidates who will advance the cause of freedom on both the economic and moral fronts.
Whatever our differences as Republicans are, we must unite against our common enemy: the authoritarian Democrat Party and their fellow travelers in the current leadership of the Republican Party. The need to unite against the common threat is pressing, and we should try to postpone thrashing out our internal differences until after we push the Democrat Party into permanent minority status.
Our political situation is so serious today that we are going to have to work together to overcome their economic system of choice, which is socialism -- a system that requires powerful centralized government. As government grows, we move further down the road to repressive government, and what lies at the end of that road is despotism and serfdom.
In light of the crisis we face, if we are to achieve any success in our mission to reclaim and rebuild the Republican Party to defend our liberties, the primary thrust must be on the economic front.
This should be self evident because, if our free-market system slips away from us, America will quickly fall into an immoral abyss where the only virtues will be need and a willingness to serve a single, unopposed master - a master who will gladly establish a state religion called liberalism.
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