Conservatives Against Oppression

"Oppression." It's a Marxist word and a left-wing myth, right? But if I spoke instead about "abuse of power" by government, or "intimidation" by union thugs, or "enslavement" of young runaways by urban pimps, I would have your attention. But it's the same thing.

The Bible condemns "oppression" and calls on governments and everyone to come to the defense of the oppressed. The Lord “gives justice to the oppressed” (Job 36:6 NKJV). He is a “refuge” for them (Psalm 9:9). Shouldn’t godly government have the same concern? To all His people in their various spheres of life He says, “Is this not the fast that I have chosen: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, to let the oppressed go free, and that you break every yoke” (Isaiah 58:6)?


This is the subject of my Worldmag.com column this week, "Conservatives for the Oppressed." I give a definition of oppression and indicate some of the variety of ways people can be oppressed.
 

Oppression is the inhuman use or cruel treatment of the weak and helpless by the stronger and more secure. It’s the little guy getting mugged in some way by the powerful and well-connected. The left associates oppression with capitalism and with corporations in particular. Evangelicals have become active in fighting the oppression that comes from drug traffickers and sex traffickers. Gary Haugen of International Justice Mission has mobilized a generation of young evangelicals against the beastly evil of human trafficking. But cruelty and injustice may also come from a local employer, a labor union, or a government agency.

Charles Colson has done good work in coming alongside the downcast and downtrodden through many of the works that Prison Fellowship has undertaken. Mind you, not everyone who is suffering and in need of Christian love is oppressed. Marvin Olasky has also done, encouraged, and highlighted Christian work on behalf of oppressed people here and around the world.

One Facebook friend found that this column brought to mind this speech from David Cameron rebuking the Labour Party for smugly thinking that only they, certainly not the Tories, could care for the poor, even though the poor were much worse as a result of Labour's stewardship of many years.



For a strikingly leftist view of oppression, see this post from Jim Wallis that he issued the very next day (no relation, I'm sure) at Sojourners, What is Biblical Politics?".

Loathed By the Right People

The King's College, the wonderful academic institution where it is my unmixed pleasure to teach, has made it to #2 on a left wing loath-list.

ThinkProgress has alerted the world to the five most scandalously conservative schools in the country. The King's College is #2 on the list.

I see that my work is paying off.

The Call to Constitutional Conservatism

In January 2009, just before Barack Obama took office as president, Peter Berkowitz called for conservatives to focus on first things and rally around the Constitution rather than fire up passion over this and that social issue. ("Conservatives Can Unite Around the Constitution," Wall Street Journal, January 2, 2009.)

Indeed, while sorting out their errors and considering their options, conservatives of all stripes would be well advised to concentrate their attention on the constitutional order and the principles that undergird it, because maintaining them should be their paramount political priority.

A constitutional conservatism puts liberty first and teaches the indispensableness of moderation in securing, preserving and extending its blessings. The constitution it seeks to conserve carefully defines government's proper responsibilities while providing it with the incentives and tools to perform them effectively; draws legitimacy from democratic consent while protecting individual rights from invasion by popular majorities; assumes the primacy of self-interest but also the capacity on occasion to rise above it through the exercise of virtue; reflects, and at the same time refines, popular will through a complex scheme of representation; and disperses and blends power among three distinct branches of government as well as among federal and state governments the better to check and balance it. The Constitution and the nation that has prospered under it for 220 years demonstrate that conserving and enlarging freedom and democracy depends on weaving together rival interests and competing goods.

I don't see how we can ignore the social issues, but when the Constitution is under assault, there can be no other rallying point in a time of civil cold war when those under oath of office to defend it don't actually believe in it.

King's Among Top Conservative Colleges

Students too often enter college knowing more about their history and form of government than when they graduate. They go into college with Christian faith and leave without it. At eighteen they are hungry for truth and wisdom, and by twenty-two they are far too sophisticated for such naive concepts.

Young America's Foundation has been publishing a list of "Top Conservative Colleges" for several years now because thoughtful and patriotic young people, along with their penny-wise parents, want to know that the college education they are about to buy will not speed out of control and a crash them into a moral and philosophical wall.

My own institution, The King's College in New York City, is on the list of fourteen. But really, if King's is not conservative, nothing is. Of course, these are not doctrinaire wing-nut factories. No one makes the list without exploring conservative principles in the context of an academically serious education. Here is what they say about King's.

The King’s College in New York City is a growing Christian college in the Empire State Building. Their 2009-2010 class added 130 new students to the mid-town Manhattan site to bring enrollment to 300.  The King’s College expects more than 200 new students in the fall for a total student body of 450 for the 2010-2011 academic year.


King’s emphasizes a core curriculum that stresses western civilization, writing, politics, philosophy, and economics. King’s graduates learn to contrast ideas based on eternal truths with trendy ideologies that come and go. They are prepared to serve in and eventually lead eight strategic institutions: government, law, business, media, the arts, civil society, education and the church.

The campus located in New York City allows for the campus art gallery to be the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the performing arts center to be Broadway, the library to be the New York Public Library, and the quad to be Central Park.  Students eat, shop, study and play in the heart of one of the world’s most influential cities. When it is time to intern, they go to places like Oppenheimer or CBS News.

The King’s College academics feature three majors: Politics, Philosophy and Economics (modeled after Oxford); Business; and Media, Culture, and the Arts.  Professors include renowned Christian and conservative authors like Anthony Bradley, Peter Kreeft, Joe Loconte, Udo Middelmann, Anne Hendershott and Marvin Olasky.  Adjunct writing professors come from the National Review, the Wall Street Journal, and World.  

All students are members of “houses,” groups of students named after greats like C.S. Lewis, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Winston Churchill, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Students this past year experienced leadership first hand by building an award-winning debate team and starting a variety of student organizations.

For more information, please contact The King’s College:
The King’s College
The Office of Admissions
350 5^th Avenue, Suite 1500
New York, NY  10018
212-659-7200

Big Government and Self-Government

Patrick Henry in the Virginia House of Burgesses, 1851, 

speaking against the Stamp Act

One of my students in her final exam essay wrote, "Why should I trust my government if my government doesn't trust me?" She wrote these words in the context of reflecting on the political problem, viz., "How do you enable to government to restrain the governed while at the same time obliging it to restrain itself?"

Her question is at the heart of the liberal-conservative debate in America today, and the line of that very practical philosophical dispute is showing up in some surprising places of late. On January 19, 2010, the citizens of Massachusetts have the opportunity not only to fill the Senate seat recently vacated by Ted Kennedy, but also to pass a judgment on the political vision our present government is aggressively pursuing, often in opposition to the clear consensus of the American people. People's attention is focused on the current plans for health care reform, for combating what is supposed to be global warming, and for reviving the economy. Behind these plans, however, are fundamental questions concerning big government and self-government.


Liberals see people as fundamentally needy on the one hand and unworthy of being trusted to provide for one another and themselves on the other. Thus, privatizing Social Security would be a disaster. People would lose all their money in the stock market. Only the government can be trusted to steward people's retirement funds wisely. (Of course, they don't steward these funds at all. They spend them, and trust that they can pay us out of the contributions from our children and grandchildren, a formula for bankruptcy when the baby boomers move fully into retirement.)

And people certainly cannot be trusted to provide for their aged parents, so all the elderly must become wards of the state. This, of course, schools people in the view that their parents are, in the end, none of their concern. Liberals take the same view of children. Get them as early as possible into the public school system. If you want to homeschool your children, (a) you must be crazy and thus incompetent, and (b) the education you provide must be strictly regulated by the local public school authorities, regardless of how bad a job they themselves are doing educating children.

By contrast, conservatives trust people to manage their own affairs according to their own lights and preferences. This may not be wise for every people in the world, but it is certainly fitting for a free people such as we.

Aristotle says that a citizen in the proper sense of the word rules and is ruled in turn, as opposed to one who is a slave by nature who, by definition, requires direction from another. A true citizen, therefore, is not simply someone who enjoys a particular legal status, but is someone who by his character is capable of self-government. This is someone who has the intelligence, moral character, and practical judgment to make life decisions of sufficient wisdom for living a life of human flourishing along with others of similar character.

In short, a free citizen must be virtuous. For this reason, Aristotle identifies aristocracy (rule by the  virtuous few, i.e. the genuinely virtuous) as the best regime. The citizens under that regime rule and are ruled in turn with a view to the common good, or at least the common interest, not seeking their selfish advantage. In other words, the more self-government there is, the more good government there will be. The more virtue there is among a people, the more they will be governed by what Thomas Jefferson called the natural aristoi.

Thomas Jefferson also said, "That government governs best which governs least." He wrote those words in the context of a fairly virtuous people. He might well have added, "...having the least need to govern." The more virtue in a people, the less need for government over a people. The more virtuous a people is, the less they are in need of the restraining power of government. They are largely governed from within. As another of my students put it in her senior thesis, "Since justice by definition entails a just observance of law, law enforcers are less needed for a just people." The internal policemen of their character renders the need for outside policing to that extent unnecessary.

Thus, conservatives are concerned for public morality because they are concerned about people's capacity for liberty, i.e. self-government, both individually and corporately. Liberals, on the other hand, understand liberty as self-indulgence and post-modern autonomy, the freedom to construct one's own moral universe and live accordingly, provided that one does not "harm" anyone else (that provision being a completely groundless restriction within a post-modern frame of reference).

Conservatives are concerned to support personal virtue among the people (yes, it requires support, largely from religion, especially Christianity), so that they can live with the dignity of free people in a free republic. Liberals are happy to see people indulging themselves in any way they please while the government manages and provides for them in as many spheres of life as possible. Thus, American conservatism tends toward republican liberty, while progressive liberalism tends toward, well, benevolent totalitarianism, which in the end, because human nature is what it is, becomes simply totalitarianism.

Thus, the government of a free people can trust the people to govern their own affairs while it attends largely to what in principle they cannot do on their own. This is not to be confused with libertarianism, because it recognizes the need for virtue in the citizenry, and also that public virtue requires appropriate (not oppressive) public support and protection. The Apostle Paul wrote to Timothy that Christians should pray for their governments so that those governments would fulfill their divine calling as government--no less and no more--"that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way" (I Tim. 2:2). What Paul means by a peaceful and quiet life is the liberty to govern one's own affairs, and to take a hand in the affairs of one's community, including taking care of the poor. This requires godliness, and is a life of human dignity. Good government provides for this liberty.

When government does not trust the people it governs, the people they distrust are either a slavish people or a free people. If they are slavish, the government indeed should not trust them, but should nonetheless take steps to cultivate better character in them so that they can live more as free people. This is statesmanship. Government that simply continues in that distrust and uses it as an opportunity to grow itself is just a form of mastery, and, as such, is not a government at all.

If the people it distrusts is a free people, then, as my student said, that people has no reason at all to trust their government. That government views them as slavish and will attempt by a thousand measures to reduce them to servile dependence. The Declaration of Independence describes this as "a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism."

Some people are called to die for liberty. Some are called only to vote.

Irving Kristol's Good Work Needs a Second Life

Irving Kristol died last week at age 89. He was the father of what is called neo-conservatism, but what James Q. Wilson in his Wall Street Journal obituary this morning says is better characterized as policy skepticism ("A Life in the Public Interest").

As the so-called "neo-cons" have come into a bad reputation recently as fanatical American imperialists, Wilson supplies us with a welcome reminder that neo-conservatism was a prudent response to the naively and hubristicly optimistic efforts of Johnson era liberals to build a beautiful world, a "Great Society," through centrally administered government programs. It is "[t]he view that we know less than we thought we knew about how to change the human condition."

Summarizing Kristol's thought, he writes:

Neoconservatism is not an ideology, but a "persuasion." That is, it is a way of thinking about politics rather than a set of principles and rules. If neoconservatism does have any principle, it is this one: the law of unintended consequences. Launch a big project and you will almost surely discover that you have created many things you did not intend to create. This is not an argument for doing nothing, but it is one, in my view, for doing things experimentally. Try your idea out in one place and see what happens before you inflict it on the whole country.

Irving Kristol's world transforming journal, The Public Interest, discontinued publication in 2005 after forty years of sober reflection on what actually works, i.e. on what is necessary for going beyond good intentions (and satisfying political constituencies) to promoting what is actually the public interest. As we now have an administration that is blithely appropriating vast regions of private life into the government sphere in the interests of "fairness" and "progress," an enterprise in social engineering that makes Lyndon Johnson look like Herbert Hoover, perhaps Kristol's journal needs to be fired up again with a new generation of bipartisan policy skeptics.

****************
Update (Sept. 28,2009):
A reader informs us that there is a new journal in the tradition of The Public Interest, entitled National Affairs.

The website says this of the new periodical.

National Affairs is a quarterly journal of essays about domestic policy, political economy, society, culture, and political thought. It aims to help Americans think a little more clearly about our public life, and rise a little more ably to the challenge of self-government.

Each issue will feature lively yet serious essays on the range of domestic issues: from economics and health care to education and welfare; from the legal debates of the day to enduring dilemmas of society and culture. We will devote special attention to the deeper theoretical questions of American self-government—seeking to cut through the conventional wisdom, help you make sense of complex issues, offer concrete proposals, and illuminate the ideas that move our politics.

In doing so, we strive to walk in the footsteps of our intellectual and institutional predecessor, The Public Interest, a journal that for decades enriched our public life with its unparalleled clarity and wisdom. We hope to provide the same service to Americans addressing the problems of a new era, and to serve as a venue for a new generation of thinkers and writers seeking to influence the affairs of the nation.

Yuval Levin is the editor, and these distinguished scholars and sages comprise the publication committee: Gerard Alexander, James W. Ceaser, Eric Cohen, John J. DiIulio Jr., Nicholas Eberstadt, Martin Feldstein, Robert P. George, Michael W. Grebe, Roger Hertog, Kay Hymowitz, Leon R. Kass, Bruce Kovner, William Kristol, Jay Lefkowitz, Lawrence Lindsey, Wilfred M. McClay, James Piereson, Diana Schaub, Irwin M. Stelzer, and James Q. Wilson. You can see among them the living connections with The Public Interest.

Thoughtful Conservatism

History will praise this beautiful woman who became one of the most thoughtful leaders of the American conservative movement. Now, what single word in that statement alerts you that I am not talking about Sarah Palin? In fact, I'm speaking of Peggy Noonan who recently wrote an essay on Alaska governor that might just as well have been entitled, "The Emperor Has No Depth" ("A Farewell to Harms," Wall Street Journal, July 11-12, 2009).

She went on the trail a sensation but demonstrated in the ensuing months that she was not ready to go national and in fact never would be. She was hungry, loved politics, had charm and energy, loved walking onto the stage, waving and doing the stump speech. All good. But she was not thoughtful....She never learned how the other sides think, or why.

In television interviews she was out of her depth in a shallow pool. She was limited in her ability to explain and defend her positions, and sometimes in knowing them. She couldn't say what she read because she didn't read anything. She was utterly unconcerned by all this and seemed in fact rather proud of it: It was evidence of her authenticity. She experienced criticism as both partisan and cruel because she could see no truth in any of it. She wasn't thoughtful enough to know she wasn't thoughtful enough.

The notion that she is going to spend the next few years in research and reflection is naive and an example of tragically pitiful wishful thinking. "But she is a ponder-free zone," says Noonan. "She can memorize the names of the presidents of Pakistan, but she is not going to be able to know how to think about Pakistan."

Looking more broadly to the genuine leadership needs of the Republican Party, Noonan states the truth for out time: "This is a time for conservative leaders who know how to think." This is not only true on account of the great international dangers that surround us, but also because of the overwhelming surge of charming statism that is flooding the nation and suffocating liberty.

William Buckley died in February of last year, just months before John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate and everyone went ga-ga over her cutely stated conservative affirmations. The liberals went apoplectic with indignation and so we reveled in the wisdom of our nomination. But not only is Palin "no Bill Buckley," she is a caricature of the sort of conservative that Buckley managed to discredit within the GOP and replace with principled people devoted to the timeless truths that provide the indispensable intellectual foundation of the great American political experiment.

That is why, now that they have won the election and are vacuuming up power and control from both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, liberals are lavishing attention on Sarah Palin with lots of flattering photographs, and celebrating her as the great hope of the Republican Party. (Time ran a cover story, calling her The Renegade.) But they're just baiting the elephant trap. says Noonan, "She makes the party look stupid, a party of the easily manipulated."

It is interesting that Sarah Palin is an Evangelical Christian, a group that secular liberals consider stupid and easily manipulated. If conservatives and Evangelicals are going to be helpful to their country, we have to be more than right. We have to be thoughtful. We have to got beyond talking points and zingers, and return once again to a principled and persuasive understanding of the nature and foundations of political, economic, and spiritual liberty.

*********
harold adds:

David, allow me to take the part of the Governor over against the oleaginous and unctuous Peggy Noonan. She was thrown into the imperial snakepit before her time, no question about that. But the only people that have any chance to survive that trial by slander, rumor, and humiliation are those who grew up with the boys and girls in that little club and are thus just like them. The savaging she has endured from the best and the brightest is unprecedented, and she has had zero--ZERO--support from the heroic elected Republicans inside the Beltway. In fact, some of the most outrageous attacks have come from the little backstabbing bedwetters inside the McCain campaign itself. As far as supportive pundits or journalists, I think it reduces to Bill Kristol and a couple of others at the Weekly Standard. (See Victor Davis Hanson's thoughtful reflections in "What is Wisdom? Sarah Palin and her Critics" ) With only support from the great unwashed, she has held her ground. And I don't know where this charge that she doesn't know anything comes from--aside from beltway ambush interviews. While being a mother of five, she dominated multi-party, multi-million dollar negotiations on a giant pipeline deal that had been mired for decades in the corrupt good old boy network and got a deal done. How did that happen? I notice hers is one of the few states in the Union that is in good fiscal condition--a veritable petro state awash in petro dollars, which few politicos would be able to keep their hands off of. She has, and the state of Alaska is positioned to be a leading economic factor when grownups get back in control of the national economy and energy policy. Oh, and as far as not being thoughtful, how about leading a meaningful reassertion of the Tenth Amendment as part of the conservative resurgence of constitutionalism among state legislatures and governors? This is just the first of many moves she will be making. She may not be destined for the presidency, but she will galvanize the conservative movement in ways Noonan never has or ever will, a factor that ought not to be overlooked when judging Noonan's analysis. And lets face it--it doesn't matter whose face is associated with conservatism, he or she is portrayed as either stupid or evil or both--e.g., Gingrich, Reagan, Thatcher. Besides, the left is brimming with really smart people who think they know how to run everyone's lives, and where has that ever worked out? Self organized, bottom up structures such as political self rule and free markets rest more on practical wisdom than the imperial court craftiness and scientific management principles the left prefer for their scheme to rule every last detail of our lives.

I don't think the left's attempts to hang Palin around our necks as some kind talisman of stupid is going to work, despite all of Peggy Noonan's good work. And regarding the Time magazine cover above (I agree with your assessment of what they are attempting), Palin will be around long after Time and Newsweek have died from lack of circulation. George W. Bush, the dumbest president ever, ran circles around them for most of eight years despite their shameless derogation of him. And remember that even Reagan was just an "amiable dunce" to these geniuses. Which leads me to a final thought. What would Noonan's old boss think of Sarah Palin? I'm guessing he would be her biggest supporter, and would be disappointed at Noonan's slide into lust for the cocktail party circuit at the expense of conservatism. I think Peggy Noonan left the reservation long ago, and I never read her anymore--not since she was caught on an open mic disparaging the rank and file of the party--something Ronaldus Magnus would never have done, or accepted.

Buckley's Descendants and the Task Ahead

Someone recently asked me, "In light of the many tributes offered at the first anniversary of William F. Buckley's passing, it seems to be a commonly held view that the conservative voice died with him. As the GOP is always searching for the 'next Reagan,' should conservatives be searching for the next Buckley?"

I responded:

William Buckley was a seminal figure in the conservative movement with a fruitful life of service. After just two generations, his philosophical descendants are legion. And if their voices are not heard as widely as they need to be, at least their presence is felt on every hill and in every valley of the cultural landscape, whether directly or indirectly.

I don’t think that we need another Buckley any more than we need another Madison. Our great need is for those who consider themselves his philosophical namesakes to appreciate the battles he fought and won on their behalf and the intellectual inheritance he has bequeathed to them, and then to take up the task he necessarily left unfinished, and make full and faithful use the opportunities his great accomplishments provided for them.

Buckley set out in the 1950s to change the political and intellectual battlefield conditions so fundamentally that we would not need another Buckley. He has done that, perhaps more successfully than he initially imagined he could. The point now is not to re-lay the foundations, but to employ our intellectual capital and cultural opportunity to understand, teach, and defend the principles of liberty that are rightfully ours as God’s human creatures, and also, with that liberty, to cultivate the fullness of human life to which God has called us.

Conservatives often forget that final concern regarding what to do with liberty, but we need to give it a much greater emphasis. Otherwise, you're just a libertarian at best, and perhaps even a nihilist.

For Harvey Mansfield's take on the philosophy of conservatism and the movement’s future, watch his lecture on this subject, "What's Your Political Ideology?"

Whither Our Good Country?

I have just discovered a fine new journal published by Houston Baptist University called The City. (The online version with blog is Civitate, now on the Principal Blogs list to your right.)

In a post-election forum entitled "Where Do We Go From Here?," Joseph Knippenberg contributes the lead article, and a very wise and insightful one. Joe is fine writer, and an equally fine political analyst informed by a thorough knowledge of the history of political philosophy.

Sadly, very few of the articles are accessible online. So I will pass along just a few quotes that will perhaps entice you to subscribe, as I certainly plan to do. Subscriptions are free.

Barack Obama and his Congressional colleagues will certainly try to capitalize on [the remarkable confluence of events favoring the electoral prospects of Democrats] to construct a "permanent" Democratic majority. But that's much harder than winning an election against an underfunded opponent identified with an exceedingly unpopular incumbent who is said to be responsible for a very unpopular was and an even more unpopular financial crisis. They won't have Bush to kick around for another four years, and from now on, everything they break, they own. ...

Obama argues that the hallmark of a judge,

...is to look out for what were once called 'discreet and insular minorities,' to correct the political process in the name of social justice, whose precepts are to be found, above all, in the compassionate heart of the judge. Law is a tool that empowers the weak, not a framework that protects all of us or a set of principles and rules that constrain everyone. ...

College and university students who take the truth seriously,

...may or may not be Republicans. The GOP will have to earn their support. How can it do so? Perhaps by returning to its roots as the party of Lincoln, a party committed to a thoughtful and self-critical engagement with our country's principles and history. ...

And this on how the GOP should engage the new President.

Republicans can challenge [Pres. Obama] by making two assertions. First, they can insist that authentic care for our neighbors is voluntary and relational. If government takes the lead, it lets us off the hook, crowding out our own efforts. In other words, it demoralizes not only the recipient but also the potential giver. Second,...they can agree with President-elect Obama (sic.) that opportunity is the name of the game, but argue that the great engine of that opportunity is the private sector, not government. This is not a celebration of greed, but rather of contagious self-reliance. ...

Reflecting on what Gingrich called "the opportunity society and on what George W. Bush called an "ownership society," Knippenberg writes,

...wealth is simple an instrument for leading a good life and that a good life is not simple a matter of consuming more and more. It is, as Aristotle recognized a long time ago, about having the capacity to judge and act for oneself and in common with others, embodying and expressing virtues that include courage, moderation, and generosity, among others. It is this moral element of the economy that I would have Republicans stress.

If, in lieu of a philosopher king, we need philosopher journalists to address our rulers and those who elect them, then Knippenberg, who is not only professor of politics at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta, but also a contributor on the No Left Turns blog, is one who fulfills that role.

The City is published three times a year, and subscriptions are free of charge.

• If you would like to subscribe to The City, simply fill out this form.

• If you would like to subscribe to Civitate.org’s online feed, to receive posts via RSS or email, click here.

Socialists Anonymous for the Right

Are conservatives in America serious about facing what we have become and about rethinking what we need to be if we are to help foster what is best in this free republic?

George Will throws a bucket of cold water on anyone who is still baffled and whining within the movement ("The Hyperbole of a Conservative").

Conservatism's current intellectual chaos reverberated in the Republican ticket's end-of-campaign crescendo of surreal warnings that big government -- verily, "socialism" -- would impend were Democrats elected. John McCain and Sarah Palin experienced this epiphany when Barack Obama told a Toledo plumber that he would "spread the wealth around."

America can't have that, exclaimed the Republican ticket while Republicans -- whose prescription drug entitlement is the largest expansion of the welfare state since President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society gave birth to Medicare in 1965; a majority of whom in Congress supported a lavish farm bill at a time of record profits for the less than 2 percent of the American people-cum-corporations who farm -- and their administration were partially nationalizing the banking system, putting Detroit on the dole and looking around to see if some bit of what is smilingly called "the private sector" has been inadvertently left off the ever-expanding list of entities eligible for a bailout from the $1 trillion or so that is to be "spread around."

The seepage of government into everywhere is, we are assured, to be temporary and nonpolitical. Well. ...

He goes on to cite "temporary" programs that started with the Depression and WWII, but which, alas, are still with us. It is the nature of most public officials that once they get their claws into a source of revenue or a sphere of control, they never let go. Why should the banks, the automakers, and the occasional trillion dollars of public "emergency" spending be exceptions to this natural law?

Will drives home his point here:

Hyperbole is not harmless; careless language bewitches the speaker's intelligence. ... In America, socialism is un-American. Instead, Americans merely do rent-seeking -- bending government for the benefit of private factions. The difference is in degree, including the degree of candor. The rehabilitation of conservatism cannot begin until conservatives are candid about their complicity in what government has become.

Conservatives need to face what they have become under George W. Bush, and then confess "Hi, my name's _______, and I'm a socialist," repent, re-study the Founding, the Constitution, the basic principles of political and economic liberty, and I would add the disgrace and dignity of man in the gospel of Christ, and then study how prudence would apply these lessons to the present shambles of which we are co-architects.

For background on W-conservatism, read Fred Barnes, "Big-Government Conservatism," The Weekly Standard, Aug. 18, 2003.

Out of the Wilderness

Did the 2008 elections show that America has become a center left country? The winners seem determined to govern Americans as if it had, as if we were Europeans. Meanwhile Republican leaders remain preoccupied with their red and blue maps, and with refining the tactics that so richly earned them being chased into the wilderness yet once more. The American people however have no desire to be remade in the image of Europe or according to the imagination of our haughty, self-serving, incompetent ruling class. If and when conservative leaders worthy of the name arise, they will not lack followers.

What would it take to lead the American people out of the dark woods, to take power from those who now prepare to dictate our lifestyles as no American government ever imagined it had a right to do? Whoever would lead us out of this mess had better be very sure of how we got in it. Wise hunters use landmarks to find their way out of the wilderness and wisdom in general comes from retracing, backward, the paths that led to error.

Our landmarks, our warning signs are written in victories that paved the way for defeats. In our greatest victory, 28 years ago, Ronald Reagan overcame the me-too crowd within his Party, took center stage and made the love of political, economic, and religious liberty popular again; he spoke American to Americans. Landslide elections followed. Unfortunately, Reagan handed over the seemingly mundane task of governance to the best connected in his Party—a group whose hearts were warmed by the fact that his popularity increased their access to power, prestige, and wealth. And so Bush I so squandered the Reagan legacy with tax increases and granting of the Left’s premises – to him we owe environmentalism’s chokehold on us – that he got only 38% of the vote in 1992 and gave us eight years of Clinton.

Then in 1994 Americans signed up for another American revolution. Republicans offered a Contract With America and again spoke American to Americans. But they turned out to be more concerned with who got the credit, got on meet the press, and got on Air Force One.

And if one ever doubted how American Americans are, note their patience with George Bush II, a leader who spoke American to Americans without understanding what he was saying. While attempting to celebrate America’s virtues, he misunderstood them and handed America’s business to the most incompetent administration in recent American history.

To lead is to gain the trust of those whom you would lead. Good credit in politics is built just like good credit in any other field. It requires understanding what is the right thing to do and then making sure that it is done. At a minimum it means doing what you say you’re going to do. If you say you’re going to cut taxes, regulation, and spending, cut taxes, regulation and spending. If you say you’re going to leave Washington in 6 years, leave Washington in 6 years. Even the most earnest and understanding American stops doing business after the second, third, or fourth bad check. This is pretty elementary.

Keeping hold of this elementary morality is difficult because, as the greatest wilderness survival story of all time teaches us, it is all too human to fall for the temptation to get something for nothing - to turn stones into bread. And for earthly princes, it is even more tempting to pretend to God-like power, and to want power to satisfy their limitless thirst for primacy.

Our first settlers rightly understood that the best way to turn a desolate wilderness into a promised land is to be mindful of these temptations. Our Founders rightly understood that the best way to turn a promised land into a Republic of Virtue was to do the same. And ever since, America has been at its best when its people reject these temptations and demand its leaders do the same.

Conservatives have recently made the mistake of confusing support for Republican leaders who have given themselves over to such temptation with what is right, and good for America. Today's Republican establishment is rotten. The way out of the wilderness requires that we leave it to rot with it’s red, blue, and purple election maps, and recognize that America is still made up of Americans yearning to be spoken to and led in their mother tongue.

-- David Corbin writes as a guest today on Principalities and Powers. He is assistant professor of politics at The King's College in New York City.

The Implosion of the American Conservative Mind

David Brooks has stirred a lot of discussion with his column lamenting Sarah Palin's candidacy for vice-president as the "conservative" pick ("The Class War Before Palin," New York Times, October 10, 2008).

He looks back to the conservative movement that Bill Buckley started, and that liberated American conservatism from the lunatic fringe. "Modern conservatism began as a movement of dissident intellectuals."

Lately, it has become increasingly an anti-intellectual, populist movement. "What had been a disdain for liberal intellectuals slipped into a disdain for the educated class as a whole."

Here is Sarah Palin trying not to let on to Katie Couric that she has never read a newspaper or serious opinion magazine in her life, i.e. that politically she receives no intellectual input in any form. Warning: this is painful to watch.




Brooks does not mention it, but the takeover of academia by the New Left has played an important role in this anti-intellectual conservative reaction. In the 1970s, university departments welcomed into their ranks the graduating Ph.D.s who were formed academically in the intellectual and political upheavals of the 1960s. These established academics understood that this generation of scholars represented a school of thought that would take its place in the larger conversation. Once in, however, the New Left shut everyone else out. That has produced the leftward skew of colleges and universities that we suffer today. As the New Left sees it, academia is not a conversation, but a revolution. It's not the power of ideas. It's just power. As a result, Brooks can say, "The smartest young Americans are now educated in an overwhelmingly liberal environment." So Republicans have been positioning themselves not only against pointy-headed northeastern liberals and Marxists, but against the life of the mind and the finer strains of human culture generally.

Recently, other professions have been abandoning the GOP too. Brooks cites some arresting figures. "The Republicans have alienated whole professions. Lawyers now donate to the Democratic Party over the Republican Party at 4-to-1 rates. With doctors, it’s 2-to-1. With tech executives, it’s 5-to-1. With investment bankers, it’s 2-to-1. It took talent for Republicans to lose the banking community."

I wonder how much of this stems from the party's embrace of stupid populism, how much of it is a widespread reaction to the current president's utter failure to lead in his second term (the surge in Iraq notwithstanding), and how much is traceable to the party's association with Evangelical Christians, especially under this Evangelical president. If it is in any way the latter, how much is attributable to the scandal of the cross, how much to what Mark Noll calls "the scandal of the Evangelical mind" (read the book here), and how much to the Evangelical tin ear for how they appear to people outside their subculture. (How can people who are so expert at contextualizing their evangelism be so inept at presenting themselves politically in the public square?)

These reflections on the new Republican anti-intellectualism come a couple of weeks after an equally provocative column on the role of prudence, and the experience it requires, in political leadership, especially the presidency ("Why Experience Matters," New York Times, Sept. 16, 2008). I recommend it to all of my students as a glimpse into the issue.

Prudence, says Brooks, is "the ability to grasp the unique pattern of a specific situation. It is the ability to absorb the vast flow of information and still discern the essential current of events — the things that go together and the things that will never go together. It is the ability to engage in complex deliberations and feel which arguments have the most weight." Prudence stands in contrast to both ideology and mere textbook learning which are doctrinaire and inflexible.

Of course, it requires intelligence of some sort, but it is not a calculation so much as it is a mental grasp or the right course of action, an intuiting of the answer. But that prudent judgment must be informed, and so it is impossible without experience, both personal and vicarious, by reading history. "The prudent leader possesses a repertoire of events, through personal involvement or the study of history, and can apply those models to current circumstances to judge what is important and what is not, who can be persuaded and who can’t, what has worked and what hasn’t."

This experience is especially important in the executive branch. Though a president may avail himself of many counselors, responsibility for executive decisions, unlike in Congress, is concentrated in one man. His most consequential decisions, moreover, pertain to international affairs and war, where events are the most unpredictable and the cost of mistaken judgment is most catastrophic.


Some conservatives have been calling Brooks an "elitist." Does that simply charge him with wanting to be governed by wisdom and with recognizing that most people are not wise? We live in a democratic country. We look to ordinary people without distinction for the selection of our leaders. But we do not select our leaders by lot. We elect those whom we think are most wise in public affairs. "Democracy is not average people selecting average leaders. It is average people with the wisdom to select the best prepared" ("Why Experience Matters"). We elect what we hope is an elite. Sarah Palin offers herself not as someone who is wise, but as someone who is ordinary, someone who is just like me. That is at best how the House of Representatives was intended to function, if that. But the genius of the American Founding is far more than that. We expect liberals to forget that. Conservatives should know better.

Footnote: The Intercollegiate Studies Institute is has been doing marvelous work cultivating a high and thoughtful regard for the Founding on college campuses. Along with ISI, Liberty Fund has been in the forefront of disseminating classic literature on "the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals." Further resources for cultivating an active, conservative mind...

Acton Institute - to promote a free and virtuous society characterized by individual liberty and sustained by religious principles.

American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI) - to research and education on issues of government, politics, economics, and social welfare.

The Claremont Institute - to restore the principles of the American Founding to their rightful, preeminent authority in our national life.

Ethics and Public Policy Center - to clarify and reinforce the bond between the Judeo-Christian moral tradition and the public debate over domestic and foreign policy issues.

Heritage Foundation - to formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense.

Institute on Religion and Public Life - to advance a religiously informed public philosophy for the ordering of society.
_____________________________________
Harold adds:

I feel compelled to point out a couple of things. David Brooks would be on the fringes of any gathering sponsored by any of the six sterling conservative groups listed above, and probably considers all of them within the orbit, or near it, of the conservative philistinism he is so worried about. Who would the members of any of these groups meet an address by with more interest and enthusiasm--Sarah Palin or David Brooks?


Second, Ronald Reagan--the humble-origins conservative that actually did stand athwart history, was no intellectual in the David Brooks style, but rather a member of Jefferson's "natural aristocracy" of talent and intelligence that occasionally bubbles up from below. Sarah Palin may need to catch up on her reading, and the populist strain--partly forced on her by the geniuses in the McCain campaign--is obscuring the essentially wholesome conservative inclinations and intuitions that have caught the attention of the base looking for the next Reagan. Is Sarah Palin a Ronald Reagan? Probably not, but then again, no one is. But I'll stand with Bill Buckley and declare categorically that I would rather be ruled by the first 2000 names in any phone book than the faculty of any college, the editorial board of any newspaper, or the curation staff of any museum. Taste and intelligence are fine qualities--but they don't trump character, humility, common sense--and a connectedness with the vastness of middle America.

In a rare divergence, my sense of this is at variance with my friend, the good Dr Innes. From my perch in deepest, darkest New Jersey, Brooks looks like a Bourgeois Bohemian in taste and temperament, the house republican at the liberal plantation there in NYC. His conservative instincts have been enervated.

Damage Limitation for an Obama White House

Two items of interest. One anticipates a natural limit on the damage a President Obama could do economically, and the other sees a possibility of light in a President Obama tunnel.

Brian Wesbury in "Change We Can Believe in is All Around Us" (Wall Street Journal, June 11, 2008), argues that on account of the lightening fast speed with which economic data is available today, the unintended consequences of a foolish economic policy become painfully but quickly apparent to the American electorate who in turn make their displeasure painfully known to elected officials.

Decades ago the feedback mechanism was slow. The unintended consequences of the New Deal took too long to show up in the economy. As a result, by the time the pain was publicized, the connection to misguided government policy could not be made. Today, in the midst of Internet Time, this is no longer a problem. So, despite protestations from staff at the White House, most people understand that food riots in foreign lands and higher prices at U.S. grocery stores are linked to ethanol subsidies in the U.S., which have sent shock waves through the global system. This is the good news. Policy mistakes will be ferreted out very quickly. As a result, any politician who attempts to change things will be blamed for the unintended consequences right away.

Bruce Bartlett explains how various neocons and libertarians are viewing Obama with hope in "Mr. Right? The Rise of the Obamacons" (The New Republic, June 25, 2008).

William F. Buckley Jr 1925-2008

William F. Buckley Jr died this morning in his study in Stamford CT.

There is an awesome chill that comes over you when someone of his stature and accomplishment for humanity passes from this world into the next. We don't depend on men, but we thank God for good men nonetheless.

NRO announced it here.

Watch a marvelous Firing Line exchange between Buckley and Noam Chomsky in 1969 over whether or not the US actions abroad constitute terrorism. They speak to our times.

Greatness and Cities

Source: National Geographic

The King's College is nestled in New York City not only because we think we have something to bring to the city, but also because there is much that New York City has to give us. New York is a rich store of civilization and conversation and generally the human concourse on which thoughtful people reflect with great profit. You find these things in many cities, but in New York it is magnified and intensified. I have lived in Toronto, Boston and New York. I have lived in the cornfields of Iowa, the hills of western Pennsylvania and the the charming mill towns of central Massachusetts. It is cities, however, that provide a unique arena for those who are ambitious to expand the mind and exercise the soul.

Wilfred McClay, humanities professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, argues in a recent First Things On the Square column that conservatives should have a natural affinity for cities. ("Why Conservatives Should Care About Cities," November 14, 2007). In short, "the idea of conservatism, far from being anti-urban, has always been inextricably bound up in the history and experience of great cities."

As an aside, he once again pays tribute to the building that houses my college, "the most beautiful tall building in the world, the Empire State, a sight that still catches my breath." In A Student's Guide to U.S. History (ISI Books, 2000), he speaks at greater length on this marvelous fashioning of God's creation glory by the hands of men.

And infinitely more impressive than the elegant eclecticism of Jefferson's Monticello was the astounding tapering design of Manhattan's Empire State Building, a colossus raised up defiantly, against all odds, during the worst depths of the Great Depression, as a beacon of hope and a monument to American ambition. If there is an abiding American yearning to flee to rootless city for the rooted land, there is also an equal and opposite yearning, who finest aspect is captured in the stirring breath-catching sight of that one solitary building, rising with magnificent improbability above the lowlands of Thirty-fourth Street. (p.44)

Fred, Huck and Rudy Part IV

 

I'm reading more and more social conservatives who are coming out for Rudy. They are are seeing that there is no righteous evangelical statesman rising from the lower ranks or riding in to answer the call. They are re-assessing Rudy and they are being persuaded by arguments that appeal to prudence. Martin Knight at RedState.com is one who has seen "Rudy's Appeal."

He likes Giuliani primarily because "he fights." He has a powerful point. When you are faced with wishy washy Republicans in a Democrat controlled Congress where the far left and jaw droppingly irresponsible Harry Reid and Nancy Polosi are in the top positions of leadership, an unbudgeable scrapper of a President is no small asset. In Giuliani, Knight sees, "an articulate, intelligent, tenacious and aggressive Conservatism that does not shy away from a fight, routinely engages the other side on the battlefield of ideas, and never ever pulls its punches."

Rudy's tenure as Mayor of New York is remarkable not just for what he got accomplished, from reducing crime, slashing welfare rolls, cleaning up Times Square, cutting taxes, etc. - things that conventional (i.e. liberal) wisdom had long declared impossible in "ungovernable" New York City, it was that he was able to be so effective in the face of the unrelenting and vituperative hostility of the New York Press Corps (at the head of which, of course, the New York Times), wave after wave of constant attacks and slander by the Left's myriad shrieking organizations, a virtually dead Gotham GOP (which, to his discredit, he did not do much to revitalize) and a City Council where his allies were less than 10% of the total body.

Knight lists what Rudy thought was worth going toe to toe over with the fire-breathing New York elite:

• supervised a 57-percent overall drop in crime and a 65-percent plunge in homicides.

• curbed or killed 23 taxes totaling $8 billion. He slashed Gotham's top income-tax rate 21 percent and local taxes' share of personal income 15.9 percent. Giuliani called hiking taxes after September 11 "a dumb, stupid, idiotic, and moronic thing to do."

• While hiring 12 percent more cops and 12.8 percent more teachers, Giuliani sliced manpower 17.2 percent, from 117,494 workers to 97,338.

• Rather than "perpetuate discrimination," Giuliani junked Gotham's 20 percent set-asides for female and minority contractors.

• Two years before federal welfare reform, Giuliani began shrinking public-assistance rolls from 1,112,490 recipients in 1993 to 462,595 in 2001, a 58.4-percent decrease to 1966 levels. He also renamed welfare offices "Job Centers."

• Foster-care residents dropped from 42,000 to 28,700 between 1996 and 2001, while adoptions zoomed 65 percent to 21,189.

• Giuliani privatized 69.8 percent of city-owned apartments; sold WNYC-TV, WNYC-FM, WNYC-AM, and Gotham's share of the U.N. Plaza Hotel; and invited the private Central Park Conservancy to manage Manhattan's 843-acre rectangular garden.

• Giuliani advocated school vouchers, launched a Charter School Fund, and scrapped tenure for principals.

• While many libertarians frowned, Giuliani padlocked porn shops in Times Square, paving the way for smut-free cineplexes and Disney musicals.

Those are family values. That approach is the other side of the mountain from Hillary Clinton who is sure to be the Democratic nominee.

Even our Lord told us to be innocent as doves, but wise as serpents. In other words, you can behave prudently among the mixed multitude with whom we share this world, and still maintain a good conscience.

Also read Wall Street Journals' Daniel Henninger, "Can Rudy and the Right Come to Terms" (October 25, 2007), and a fine couple of articles by Tony Blankley on the prudence that Christian citizens should exercise when casting a conscientious vote: "The GOP Needs a Survival Instinct" (October 3) and "Electoral Pragmatism Reconsidered" (October 10).

Some Recent Good Political Books

Here are five interesting political books that have come to my attention.

The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America (Penguin Press, 2004), by two writers for the Economist, John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge. These men are not themselves conservatives and have the advantage of being outsiders looking in. That does not make them objective, but it does give them a distance that can be helpful. From the flap: “In a relatively short span of time, because of the conservative movement’s power, America has veered sharply to the right, so that now, compared with Europe or even with America under Richard Nixon, we are a distinctly more conservative nation in many crucial respects no matter which party occupies the Oval Office.” I found their chapter on the birth of the conservative movement in America particularly informative.

A Secular Faith: Why Christianity Favors the Separation of Church and State (Ivan R. Dee, 2007) is the latest book from church historian Darryl Hart, formerly at Wheaton and now at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. Hart argues that “when Christians have tried to establish a Christian basis for the planks of political party platforms, or even for broad-based social reforms, they have fundamentally misconstrued their religion” (pp.10f.). Christianity is apolitical in the sense that “Christianity is essentially a spiritual and eternal faith, one occupied with a world to come rather than the passing and temporal affairs of this world” (p.12). That does not entail cultural withdrawal for Christians. He alerts us, however, to the difference between “the work the church is called to do in proclaiming the message of Christianity and the vocations to which church members are called as citizens” (p.14). The book is provocative. It is annoying however that in place of footnotes, he has left us with a seven page “note on sources” where he discusses the various works he used.

Church, State and Public Justice: Five Views (IVP, 2007), edited by P.C. Kemeny, addresses the question of the Christian view of the just political order as Gary Scott Smith did almost twenty years ago in God and Politics (P&R, 1989). Whereas Smith viewed the matter strictly from within the Protestant tradition (theonomy, principled pluralism, Christian America and national confessionalism), Kemeny is more catholic. The five views he includes are from Clark E. Cochran, a Roman Catholic, Derek H. Davis, speaking for classical separation, Corwin Smidt for principled pluralism, Ronald Sider for the Anabaptist tradition, and J. Philip Wogaman brings the social justice perspective. They are all described a “perspectives,” and each one is followed by a response from each of the other four. Kemeny teaches religion and humanities at Grove City College.

Christianity and American Democracy (Harvard, 2007) by Hugh Heclo of George Mason University is Harvard’s second annual Alexis de Tocqueville Lecture on American Politics with three responses. From the flap: “Christianity, not religion in general, has been important for American democracy. With this bold thesis, Hugh Heclo offers a panoramic view of how Christianity and democracy have shaped each other. Heclo shows that amid deeply felt religious differences, a Protestant colonial society gradually convinced itself of the truly Christian reasons for, as well as the enlightened political advantages of, religious liberty. By the mid-twentieth century, American Christianity and democracy appeared locked in a mutual embrace. But it was a problematic union vulnerable to fundamental challenge in the Sixties. Despite the subsequent rise of the religious right and glib talk of a conservative Republican theocracy, Heclo sees a longer term, reciprocal estrangement between Christianity and American democracy.” Heclo suggests that “both secularists and Christians should worry about a coming rupture between the Christian and democratic faiths.”

Watch a video of Hugh Heclo's lecture, "Is America a 'Christian Nation'?"

The Kingdom of Christ: The New Evangelical Perspective (Crossway, 2004) by Russell D. Moore examines this fundamentally important biblical concept in its connection with political life, and in the context of its eschatological, soteriological and ecclesiological meanings. Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary where Moore is dean of the School of Theology, says this: “For far too long, evangelicals have waited for a serious study of the Kingdom of God and its political application. That book has now arrived, and The Kingdom of Christ will redefine the conversation about evangelicalism and politics. Russell Moore combined stellar historical and theological research with a keen understanding of cultural and political realities. This is a landmark book by one of evangelicalism’s finest minds.”

Freedom's Orphans: Contemporary Liberalism and the Fate of American Children (Princeton, 2007) by David L. Tubbs, my colleague at The King's College here in New York City, is a scholarly reassessment of contemporary liberalism measured against it's effects on children, and thus eventually on everyone it governs and on the whole society they constitute. From the cover: "Has conteporary liberalism's devotiuon to individual liberty come at the expense of our society's obligation to children?...Evaluating large changes in liberal political theory and jurisprudence particulalrly American liberalsim after the Second World War, avid Tubbs argues that an expansion of rights for adults has come at a high and generally unnoticed cost. In championing new 'lifestyle' freedoms, liberal jurists and theorists have ignored, forgotten, or discounbted the competing interests of children. In the porocess of his argument, he engages Isaiah Berlin, Ronald Dworkin, and Susan Moller Okin, among others. He also analyses three key deveopments in American civil liberties: the emergence of the 'right to privacy' in sexual and reproductive matters; the abandonment of the traditional standard for obscenity prosecutions; and the gradual aceptance of the doctrine of 'strict separation' between religion and public life."