By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK
There is no reason to assume that readers of this column are familiar with the Fox News program The Five, so permit me to give a brief description. It features four conservative commentators and one liberal, lately Juan Williams, discussing the issues of the day.
It is Fox News’ attempt to replicate — with reverse spin — the format of ABC News’ The View, which features four liberal commentators and one conservative.
Why am I bringing up the program now? Because I suspect that Greg Gutfeld, one of the show’s conservative commentators, has caused some confusion in conservative circles. Gutfeld, the author of several books and a former editor of Prevention and Men’s Health magazines, is a likable man, humorous, bright, well-informed, and an articulate defender of the conservative position on issues such as national defense, law and order, and the excesses of the liberal nanny state. But he is also a harsh — very harsh — critic of Pope Francis.
He is a critic not in the way many readers of this publication are critics of the Pope. He opposes not only Francis’ position on global warming, immigration, and the welfare state, but the very notion of papal authority itself. He recently called the Pope the “most dangerous person on the planet.”
Why this hostility? Gutfeld sees papal authority as a threat to achieving a society where important “freedoms” are recognized. He favors the legalization of recreational drug use and prostitution, and is opposed to the censorship of pornography. “Big religion” is as much a threat to him as big government. How then can Gutfeld be considered a conservative, when most of the Republican candidates for the presidency and conservative talk-show hosts — including most of the other conservative commentators on The Five — disagree with him on these issues?
This can be one of those “teachable moments” you hear people talking about. It throws a spotlight on a serious divide in the conservative movement that is not talked about as much as it used to be: Not all conservatives are the same. There is a traditionalist and a libertarian wing to the movement. These wings of conservatism almost always vote the same, and probably will for the foreseeable future, but for different reasons.
I can remember being confused about this question as a young man in the 1960s and 1970s. Fortunately for me, William F. Buckley was still alive at the time, and National Review, the magazine that he edited, regularly wrestled with this topic. What perplexed me back then was the stock definition of conservatives that I heard among members of the media and government officials: that “conservatives favored limited government.”
I can remember asking myself how that could be, when the leading conservatives at the time favored vigorous government action against abortion, pornography, recreational drug use, and street crime; also big government spending on our military.
My confusion was heightened when I discovered that the economist Milton Friedman, a favorite among conservatives because of his defense of free-market capitalism, was “pro-choice” and in favor of the legalization of narcotics. How could he be a conservative when so many of the other conservatives at the time disagreed with him on these issues?
With the help of National Review columnists such as L. Brent Bozell and Frank S. Meyer, I was eventually able to find a way through this maze. I learned that, even though traditionalists and libertarians in the conservative movement agreed on the threat posed to the country by modern liberalism, they did so for different reasons.
The goal of the traditionalists was to form a just and safe society, along with a virtuous citizenry. In contrast, the major concern of the libertarians was the threat to individual liberty posed by the state. The libertarians reflexively sought to keep the government out of our lives, even, in most instances, in matters such as abortion and physician-assisted suicide.
How then were libertarians and traditionalists able to work together in the conservative movement? They had a common enemy: the liberal welfare state spearheaded by the Democratic Party. The traditionalists and the libertarians opposed the concentration of power in the federal government. The libertarians opposed it on principle, because it posed a threat to the autonomy of the individual. The traditionalists, on the other hand, opposed big government because it was under the control of secular liberals, who were employing the power of the federal government to undermine traditional values through their campaigns against neighborhood schools and local laws against abortion, pornography, public indecency, and illegal drug use.
I don’t think it an overstatement to say that the traditionalists would not have been as opposed to a powerful central government if that government were dedicated to ridding the country of abortion on demand, pornography, the sale of illegal narcotics, and illegal immigration.
Free-market economics? There is a relatively small number of traditionalist conservatives who favor the economic theories propounded by G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, which call for government regulation of the economy to prevent concentrations of corporate power. But most traditionalists agree with the libertarians in support of free-market theory. There is, however, a difference in emphasis between the two wings of conservatism.
The traditionalists are more pragmatic; they support the free market because it works, and because those in the government and the academy proposing to regulate the economy tend to be secular liberals who seldom miss an opportunity to call for the United States to model itself on the “progressive” command economies found in the Marxist countries of the world. (It was no accident that New York Mayor Bill de Blasio honeymooned in Cuba.)
The libertarians, in contrast, support free-market theory because it keeps the government out of our lives. They oppose minimum wage laws for the same reason that they oppose laws against pornography and prostitution; because these laws infringe upon individual freedom, in this case the business owner.
The bottom line: As long as the secular liberals are forces to be reckoned with in government and academic circles, the libertarians and the traditionalists will find a home in the conservative movement and the Republican Party. But occasionally, as with Greg Gutfeld’s outburst against Pope Francis, the fault lines will appear and threaten to expand.
Perhaps the alliance between the two groups will continue for many years. The late Frank Meyer, onetime editor at National Review, pushed the case for what he called “fusionism,” a vision of conservatism with traditionalists and libertarians as natural allies.
At the risk of oversimplifying, Meyer argued that free-market theory and a commitment to the maximum liberty of the individual were central elements of the heritage of the West, which traditionalists should seek to preserve; and that a virtuous society was the necessary underpinning for a free-market economy and a society where the rights of the individual were protected, and that libertarians should welcome that underpinning. Many conservative intellectuals were persuaded by Meyer, but not all.
One last thing: Some fans of Greg Gutfeld will argue that his opposition to legalized abortion should be noted. It is true: Gutfeld can be as articulate on the rights of the unborn as anyone in the media. But he does not come to his conclusion because of a theological perspective on the “sanctity” of human life. Libertarians agree that the one legitimate responsibility of government is to protect innocent life. Reason leads Gutfeld to conclude that the unborn child is entitled to this protection.
That makes him an ally of traditionalists on this question, but does nothing to alter his opinion that Pope Francis is “the most dangerous person on the planet.”
From what I can tell, Gutfeld is a good man — and will be a valuable ally as long as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama remain on the world stage. But there are limits to the collaboration. For libertarians, human fulfillment has been achieved through mankind’s struggle to liberate itself from authoritarian rule. That includes shamans, tribal chieftains, feudal lords, kings, emperors, dictators — and the hierarchy of the Catholic Church.
One cannot help but wonder if that stance will one day bring to an end the “fusion” Frank Meyer described for us.
Powered by WPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress