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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Action

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

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Churches

[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

Class War

In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class. In the nineteenth century, the academic middle class won the battle for power and status... Then came the triumph of Margaret Thatcher... The academics lost their power and prestige and... have been gloomy ever since.
Freeman Dyson, “The Scientist as Rebel”

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

Conservatism's Holy Grail

What distinguishes true Conservatism from the rest, and from the Blair project, is the belief in more personal freedom and more market freedom, along with less state intervention... The true Third Way is the Holy Grail of Tory politics today - compassion and community without compulsion.
Minette Marrin, The Daily Telegraph

Conversion

“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

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

Drang nach Osten

There was nothing new about the Frankish drive to the east... [let] us recall that the continuance of their rule depended upon regular, successful, predatory warfare.
Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion

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

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

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