Seizing The Moral High Ground For Reform

LAST WEEK Mitt Romney cracked jokes with Jay Leno and mildly corrected Chris Matthews about the propriety of a Mormon advising Catholic bishops on church doctrine. But he got his Three Strongs message in: Strengthen America’s military; strengthen America’s economy; strengthen America’s families.

Mild mannered Mitt was careful not to frighten the horses on anything so controversial as reform of the welfare state so it was John McCain who got branded the “cranky warrior” for getting angry about Iraq.

Rule One for conservative candidates in twenty-first century America is: Don’t get defined as the mean-spirited candidate.

Of course, it’s grossly unfair. The Rev. Al Sharpton can base an entire career on rage: “No Justice, No Peace!” Well-born feminists can swoon with outrage at the gender-based equivocations of ex-Harvard president Larry Summers. Media mavens can puff their important chests out like pouter pigeons over the edgy comments of former radio shock-jock Don Imus.

When conservatives try moralizing they get stigmatized as “mean-spirited.”

And it’s not just in America. Ever since the 1997 general election blowout the Conservative Party in Britain has been tagged as the “nasty” party. They hardly mention uncontrolled immigration, the failing National Health Service, and the “bog-standard” government school system without being labeled as “nasty.”

Nicolas Sarkozy, the next president of France, had to watch his mouth in last week’s pre-election debate with the socialist candidate SÃƒÂ©golÃƒÂ¨ne Royal lest he be judged too negative. But it was OK for Mme Royal to rip into him to her heart’s content.

The reality of conservatism was described Sunday in the British Telegraph. Maurice Saatchi, an associate of Margaret Thatcher, called for a conservatism of “practical idealism.” He invoked the spirit of Ronald Reagan in his 1982 speech to the House of Commons. Then he wrote:

[It is] an error to think of Conservatism in terms of "practicality" and "efficiency". True Conservatism is practical idealism. Its motives, instead of being merely mechanical or materialistic, are idealistic to the point of being Utopian.

Why then do practical, idealistic conservatives get castigated as “mean-spirited” or “nasty?” It’s simple.

If you try to reform government pensions, you are accused of throwing granny out into the street. If you try to reform government health care you are accused of snatching granny’s medicines away. If you try to reform government education you are accused of blaming “our” teachers (usually women) and of not caring about kids.

Notice the common factor here? You cannot seize the high ground when you propose to reform a government program that benefits women. This is not because we have put women on a pedestal, oh no. In the twenty-first century we are past all of that.

In the post pedestal age, the problem is how to reform programs that benefit women without being stigmatized as nasty and mean-spirited. After all, everyone recognizes women as more caring, more responsible, and more deserving than other humans.

You reform the programs with women leading the charge. It was conservative women who grasped that the Equal Rights Amendment made the relationship between the sexes into something “merely mechanical or materialistic.” It was conservative women who understand that abortion on demand reduces sex into something “merely mechanical or materialistic.” And it is conservative women with their moderate sisters who will lead the nation against a welfare state that makes the journey and meaning of every well-lived life into something “merely mechanical or materialistic.”

The vision of socialism and the welfare state was to free people, women and workers especially, from a life of drudgery to live a full, creative life. Wrote Leon Trotsky at the end of Literature and Revolution:

The average human type will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Marx. And above this ridge new peaks will rise.

But the cult of creativity is a chimera. Very, very few people are truly creative and indispensable, can ever hope to be, or ever will be. The reason we know this, writes Spengler, is that people on the cutting edge of research rush to publish before someone else gets there first. Obviously such people are in a horse race with other equally highly trained thoroughbreds, unlike Johann Sebastian Bach, a flat-out genius who had the field all to himself.

There is another way to build a life of meaning.

In the world of faith there is quite a different way to be indispensable, and that is through acts of kindness and service. A mother is indispensable to her child, as are husbands, wives and friends to each other.

Best of all, you don’t have to be a genius.

It is when a critical mass of women begin to articulate this incandescent truth to America that conservatives will reach the Promised Land of moral superiority. And then we will begin to reform the welfare state.

Christopher Chantrill blogs at americanmanifestobook.blogspot.com.

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Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

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Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

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The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

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Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

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Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

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The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

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[In the] higher Christian churches... they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

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“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

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The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

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