By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK
The difference between economic conservatives and social conservatives has been raised several times in First Teachers over the past decade. It is a question worth exploring with high school students. Both Rand Paul and Ted Cruz are labeled as “conservatives” and described as “on the right” by the media and in the vernacular, even though their views on foreign policy and social policy are sometimes far apart. White it is true that both senators usually vote the same and are unequivocally opposed to modern liberalism, they do so for different reasons.
It is not a new issue. I can remember L. Brent Bozell (the father of Brent Bozell, head of the Media Research Center and frequent quest on Sean Hannity’s program) and Frank S. Meyer back in the early 1960s digging deep into the reasons for the division between what they called the “traditionalist” and the “libertarian” wing of the conservative movement.
Their analysis usually took place within the pages of William F. Buckley’s National Review. It was always an enlightening and entertaining exchange, especially for someone like myself, in my late teens at the time and trying to figure out what it meant to be a conservative. (I knew I wasn’t a liberal. Watching Abbie Hoffman and Tom Hayden made that clear to me. But I wasn’t sure what a conservative was.)
National Review published an analogous discussion in its online edition on December 29, 2014. This time the topic was liberalism. The author was Kevin Williamson, one of National Review’s talented young guns. His article, entitled “Whose Liberalism?” focused on the paradox of liberalism’s historical development: specifically, the manner in which an ideology that began as a protest against government power has evolved into a push for an ever-expanding central government. Except when social issues such as abortion, legalized euthanasia, and the legalization of drugs and pornography are on the table. The liberals want the government out of our lives when that is the case.
This is an issue that will likely come up in discussions of current events at the high school level, especially among honors students. Are liberals in favor of an expanding central government — as they appear to be when they push for greater government control over American businesses? Or against it — as seems to be the case when legalized abortion and recreational drugs are being debated?
This is not a simple question, even though I once had a colleague when I was a public high school teacher who thought it was. For her liberals were those who “favored humanitarian goals.” It did not interest her whether that goal was sought by expanding the power of the central government through controls over big business, or by reducing it by getting out of the private lives of the American people on matters such as abortion or censorship.
It should go without saying that there is more to it. Why should we trust the government to “do good” in one case, but not the other? Why should we be confident that the government will not abuse its power in economic matters, but fear the tyranny that will result if we give it the power to regulate abortion, drugs, or sexually explicit lyrics in popular music?
Williamson’s answer? He begins by noting that the original liberals in the late 18th century, writing around the time of the French Revolution, were opposed to the king’s power over both the economy and over what we say, write, and read. In other words, the original liberals were both social and economic conservatives: They wanted the Old Regime out of their lives. Williamson points to John Locke as the father of social conservatism, and to Adam Smith’s work as the intellectual foundation of economic conservatism and free-market economics.
What changed this consensus? Why did some of the 18th-century liberals abandon free-market theory and call for increased government power over the economy, in some cases even socialism? Williamson argues that this wing of liberalism, the modern “left,” turned to a social programs “that evolved to address the perceived shortcoming and excess of capitalism as practiced in the 19th and 20th centuries.”
Others, those we call the “right” in our time, rejected this change in outlook. They saw “laissez-faire economic policies, constitutional government, individual rights, and property rights” as “forming a unitary whole.” They were as concerned that the social and political programs designed to “address the shortcomings and excesses of capitalism” would lead to an abuse of government power as surely as the economic programs of the Old Regime kings. For them, liberty and freedom meant the liberty to run our economic affairs as much as it meant the liberty to write and speak freely in criticism of the government.
Why did the liberals who became champions of the power of government disagree? Why were they willing to trust the government to regulate economic matters to a degree they would not trust it to regulate the press? Williamson calls this confidence an “intellectual defect of the Left.” He argues that they seek “to establish something very much like the arbitrary princely powers” that Adam Smith “warned against, and that Washington fought against.”
The liberals who called for government programs to alleviate poverty did not see it that way; they did not see themselves as advocating “princely powers.” They saw themselves as proponents of greater power for popularly elected governments that came to power after the overthrow of the Old Regime kings. They were willing to trust those governments with power they would not grant to a king.
Williamson understands this, of course. But it does not alter his conclusion. He opposes “making ever-greater portions of society subject to arbitrary princely powers even when those powers enjoy the endorsement of a plebiscite, as though handing over Augustus’ powers to the tribune of the plebs would constrain the imperial tendency.”
Fair enough. But it should be noted that Williamson is writing an opinion piece, and thus not obliged to “give both sides.” Teachers of high school age students, on the other hand, have that responsibility, not just for the purpose of being “fair,” but also to develop more fully their students’ understanding of the issue. What Williamson calls “the endorsement of a plebiscite,” modern liberals call a democratically elected government.
That makes a difference. Not that the fear of a “tyranny of the majority” is irrational; or that a majority that is not “tyrannical” can still be unwise in its assessment of the efficacy of increased government regulation. But regulations over a multimillion-dollar corporation put in place by a government voted into office by the American people are not the same as the economic controls enacted by someone like the 18th-century French King Louis XIV. They have to be analyzed differently. Williamson’s piece in National Review offers an effective teaching tool for teachers seeking to initiate this discussion.
+ + +
Readers are invited to submit comments and questions about this and other educational issues. The e-mail address for First Teachers is fitzpatrijames@sbcglobal.net, and the mailing address is P.O. Box 15, Wallingford, CT 06492.
Powered by WPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress