Social Conservatism vs. Economic Conservatism
Publius at Legal Fiction explains:
My friend Feddie over at Southern Appeal wrote a post this week lamenting the rampant individualism and the “me culture” that he sees with respect to various social issues in America today. Obviously, I disagree with many of his views on the merits, but that’s not the point today. The point is that Feddie, like many other social conservatives, is most certainly not a libertarian with respect to social issues. His argument is that social libertarianism is amoral and lacks the values necessary for a healthy society: "Sadly, most Americans have bought into the idea that nothing matters more than their personal happiness. But embracing this form of radical individualism has a profound effect on society: It creates a culture of death and despair."
Fine. But here’s my question. Why isn’t that exact same logic applied in the economic sphere as well? You know who Feddie sounds like when he talks like this? Karl Marx. Marx viewed Western liberalism (classical liberalism - meaning libertarianism, not Ted Kennedy) as morally bankrupt as well. The freedoms of Western liberalism were inherently amoral because it was content to let people "freely" starve and live horrible lives under the control of the more powerful. Marx wanted to impose a value-laden order upon an amoral economic libertarianism. It’s the exact same logic that Feddie was applying, except that Marx applied it to the economic realm rather than the social realm.
I think that most conservatives are blaming the wrong victim. They look around and lament the decline of the moral order, the decline of the community, the decline of the family, and the increase of various social ills from drug use to teen pregnancy. The problem, though, is they blame it on the wrong man. They blame it on the moral decline caused by 1960s, or Hollywood, or rap music, or college professors, or ending school prayer, or the lack of the Ten Commandments. To them (and this is critical), the real problem is some abstract notion of a “decline” in “moral values,” however that concept is defined.
But that’s the wrong man, my friends. The real culprit is free-market capitalism. So much of what conservatives see as the breakdown of traditional social orders were caused by concrete economic forces, and not by some abstract decline of the even more abstract concept of moral values.
Look at what Jonah [Goldberg] said - “Markets topple established customs, they raze settled communities and erase whole ways of life.” That’s got to be true, right? What do you think is causing the worldwide fundamentalist backlash? Values? What does that even mean? No, it's caused by the concrete stresses of globalization. The markets are changing the world order and scaring the hell out of people – whether through technology or immigration or economic dislocation.
As Publius explains, it's possible to look around and find lots of things to lament when it comes to the state of American values and social relationships — but the blame for this situation cannot be laid at the feet of a cabal of liberal elites. There's no back room of sinister figures plotting on how they can undermine traditional morality. There is, instead, a back room of corporate leaders working on what sorts of goods (physical or not) they can "sell" to the public in order to make a profit.
Overall, this overwhelming drive to sell and buy takes a serious toll on traditional social structures. The drive to find the "next big thing" (the next Furbie, the next Tickle Me Elmo) to sell to millions of Americans is not a "conservative value" in the social sense. The drive to keep buying newer and better things, conspicuous consumption, and so forth are not "conservative values" in the social sense. They are products of market capitalism and they have social costs — costs that social conservatives should at the very least be concerned about. When, however, was the last time you saw a social conservative at least bring up the issue? When was the last time you saw a social conservative offer a serious critique of capitalism?
You only seem to see such things from liberals. Publius explains that he is a Democrat because he thinks the Democratic Party is most likely to take action to relieve such economic stresses that cause problems:
[T]hink of how much better life would be for so many people if everyone had health care? What if no parent ever had to worry about lacking the money to pay for their child's injury or illness? This concrete measure would do so much more than putting up a plaque of the Ten Commandments in a classroom (which would have approximately .0000000000000000000001% effect on people's lives).
In a sense, he's arguing that the Democratic Party will do more in defense of social conservatives' most basic principles (even if not their immediate agenda) than will the Republican Party. He's arguing that (for example) taking away economic stresses that burden families is more important to the defense of strong families than outlawing gay marriage. He has a good point. What will do more to make families stronger, more stable, and more capable of supporting society: reliable and decent health care or a constitutional ban on gay marriage? Living wages or a monument to the Ten Commandments on the court house lawn?
Doesn't sound like a tough choice to me.
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Comments
“Taking away economic stresses that burden families” is one of those liberal “feelgoodisms” that sounds so good but gets fouled up in the mechanics and not infrequently produces unintended consequences far worse than the problem that spawned them.
Strong families are built not by removing stresses from life but by meeting challenges head on and conquering them. Adversity builds character, whereas having life easy does not.
Strong families are built by two strong individuals (a man and a woman, by tradition) committing to each other and working to make a life together. Sometimes things don’t go as planned, or as hoped, but that is what life is about: conquering challenges.
We don’t want to remove obstacles from the path; we want to be sure that there are ways that people can find to get over or around the obstacles.
Care to cite some examples?
False Dilemma fallacy, since removing “economic stresses that burden families” doesn’t necessarily make life easy and economic stresses are not the only challenges in life.
Incorrect, since “family” does not only mean “a man and a woman, by tradition.”
Who is this “we”?
>Adversity builds character, whereas having life easy does not.
That’s laughable. THAT’s one of the classic *right-wing* “feelgoodisms” that conservatives use to justify their lack of action in not helping anyone but themselves — an attitude that’s always struck me as particularly unChristian.
Have you actually done ANY reading of scientific studies on the subjects of what “adversity” does to “character”, particularly adversity in childhood? Because you are talking about families here.
If adversity builds character then the people who had horrible, abusive childhoods would be among the strongest people around us what with all that “adversity” to build their characters. Instead they are more often the broken people in society. Ever seen the statistics on people with mental illness who come from abusive homes as opposed to happy, stable homelifes? Ever seen the statistics on the number of criminals who come from abusive homes as opposed to those who come from happy, stable homes?
Though anecdotal, I can testify to this from personal experience. My siblings and I certainly had childhoods with plenty of adversity. And if I’ve managed to overcome some, not all, only some, of the results of it, my two siblings have not. One is barely functional: a former honor student who has only ever worked as a janitor and is incapable of maintaining any kind of social relationships due to his obsessive-compulsive disorder. The other sibling, who was once a cadet at the Air Force Academy, has been arrested multiple times and is a completely non-functional schizophrenic.
Here’s some data that’s not anecdotal from the website schizophrenia.com
http://www.schizophrenia.com/hypo.php
“Another recent study done in Finland indicated that adopted children that had a high genetic/biological risk of schizophrenia (their mother had schizophrenia) – had an 86% lower rate of developing schizophrenia when brought up in a healthy family vs. a dysfunctional family. In the healthy family only 6% of the children developed schizophrenia, whereas approximately 37% of the children of dysfunctional families developed schizophrenia”
If adversity built character then wouldn’t the children raised in dysfunctional homes be LESS likely to develop schizophrenia since after having lived through all that adversity they’d have built far more “character” than the children from happy homes who didn’t have to face the same adversity?
You need to get educated on the subject before you talk or post about it again.
Most Republican families are very hierarchical and run by a tyrant (who was usually an ignorant bully). Republicans back this curious arrangement because they have created a fantasy in place of reality. An orphanage would be even worse however.
>>Strong families are built not by removing stresses from life but by meeting challenges head on and conquering them. Adversity builds character, whereas having life easy does not.
I happen to have just finished reading “A Natural History of Parenting” by Susan Allport. In it she references (pp 49 -51) some work by Jane Lancaster. I’ll quote the relevant parts:
“For as with all animals, human males do not provide care under just any circumstances. Parental care is most pronounced, most predictable in the same circumstances in which all male care has evolved: when men are certain that the children they are caring for are their own (I will come to adoption later) and when men can make important contributions to their children’s well-being.”
(My highlighting both in the last paragraph and in the next one.)
“According to Lancaster, the decisions that twentieth-century American fathers are making are very much the same as those that fathers — of all species — have always made. They are more likely to leave a partner if they are not sure the children are their own; they are more likely to leave if they are unable to make a substantial economic contribution to their children’s welfare. “A lot of the breakdown of the American family,” noted Lancaster when I called to ask about her work, “is based on a lack of opportunity for men who don’t have advanced skills. These men are more likely to leave one partner and find another because they know that their children aren’t going to be any better off if they stay.”
The original paper was:
Lancaster, Jane B., and Lancaster, Chet S. “Parental Investment: The Hominid Adaptation.” In “How Humans Adapt: A Biocultural Odyssey,” Donald J. Ortner, ed. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1983
The facts are that fathers who are poor are far more likely to desert their children than middle-class or wealthy fathers. If you’re truly concerned about having “strong families” then why don’t you try doing to something to improve the conditions that inherently result in more “weak families.”
You don’t want to help? Then don’t. But don’t have the gall to pretend you’re doing the poor any favors. Because that is what you’re trying to do with your self-serving “Adversity builds character.” If you yourself are not actually throwing someone under the bus, at least have the self-honesty to admit that you are not willing to extend a helping hand if someone’s lying in the street and the bus is coming. There’s no virtue in that. Yet you act as if it were one. Spout as many aphorisms as you want, it won’t succeed in disguising what you’re doing.