These pages have long held that social policy drives fiscal policy. The breakdown in the family has driven welfare costs, debt and obligations out of sight. Our views are in the face of what still remains among a large portion of the Republican establishment, the sneer that they are not one of “those” social conservatives like us, but rather a “fiscal conservative.”
We do not see how anyone can be one and not the other, at least competently. They work together, each package accentuating the performance of the other, solidifying the culture and making our Constitutional Republic something to be envied, a place for successful individuals and families. The bifurcation only produces cross currents that result in decay of the economy and the culture.
The fiscal conservative / liberal on social policy ilk of the Republican establishment, along with the conservatives who are so shy and inept at both, presume that conservative views on social issues are divisive, as if liberal views are not. We “socons” are to roll over while liberals ratchet their way to denigrating the society and the economy. The solution of such Republicans when not to adopt liberal views personally, is to let them run uncontested throughout the culture, but pay for the sequelae as the responsible fiscal thing to do.
It supposedly helps in the portrayal of themselves to their liberal friends and associates that they are reasonable people, adopting liberal presumptions about the nature of man, and the optionality of the family as the core of society. For some reason they like to claim that they are fiscal conservatives but the combination in our observation is particularly inconsistent on the fiscal side. They are not particularly fiscal conservatives as they are often found at the feeding trough of government in their policy advocacies and pushing for “public private partnerships.” The strongest fiscal conservative in today’s polity are also pro-family pro-life social conservatives.
Well anyway we were heartened by Jonah Goldberg’s most recent column in National Review, excerpts of which we set forth below. He dissects liberal presumptions and of course we find that supportive. Bold typeface is our emphasis. The column actually has more to it than the named theme and it is all recommended. R Mall
The sharp demarcation between cultural issues and economic ones is ultimately bogus.
. . . I’m coming to the position that every issue is a cultural issue. According to the Thomas Frank view, there are two kinds of issues: real issues and cultural (or social) issues. And, if he had his way, all elections would hinge on “real issues.” He writes in What’s the Matter with Kansas: “People getting their fundamental interests wrong is what American political life is all about. This species of derangement is the bedrock of our civic order; it is the foundation on which all else rests.”
This is of course, warmed-over Marxist twaddle. Frank thinks his view of economic interests is the only defensible view and everything else is boob bait for bubbas (Pat Moynihan’s orthodox liberal ad hominem for Clinton’s push for welfare reform) or what the Marxists call “false consciousness.” Much like Lena Dunham’s sex scenes, the list of things that are wrong with this is very long. People vote on the kind of community or country they want to live in, period. That means that taxes are a legitimate issue, but it also means that guns and abortion and free speech are just as legitimate. Liberals implicitly understand this, even if they lie about it routinely in their rhetoric. They are the first to invoke the language of values and right-and-wrong on the issues they care about, whether it is gay marriage or immigration or civil rights. And they are entirely right to do so. Where they are wrong is when they employ the language of “real issues” to dismiss any value-laden arguments that help conservatives win elections.
(For example, most of the priorities associated with repelling the “war on women” amount to boob bait for Julias. They reflect zero concern for the real problems facing the majority of Americans and the majority of women, but the rhetoric works to keep relatively affluent single white women in the Democratic column. But don’t you dare say Democrats should drop that nonsense and talk about “real issues.” No, it’s only right and good to talk about real issues when Republicans talk about the war on the traditional family, the war on the Second Amendment, or the pledge of allegiance.)
Remember when John Kerry insisted that his religion compelled him to tackle virtually every public-policy issue under the sun — except for abortion? Same deal. Democrats have no problem talking about religion when they feel it works for them. Heck, a couple of weeks ago, Kerry said that the Islamic State was an “order of Satan.”
The sharp demarcation between cultural issues and economic ones is ultimately bogus. It should be no surprise that Obama goes around prattling about inequality as a values issue. It is! Even if he gets the economics wrong. My values say that tolerating a certain amount of income inequality is necessary if we are going to live in a society that rewards merit, liberty, etc. His value system downgrades those concerns and elevates others. The economics all comes second (a view many economists will agree with).
Obama does the same thing on the minimum wage, immigration etc. Sure, you can apply strict economic analysis to these topics, and sometimes that is helpful. But that’s like setting aside all of the ingredients of a cake before you mix them together. People don’t eat the eggs, the milk, the sugar, etc. separately. They eat the cake.
And sometimes — quite often, in fact — economic analysis is utterly beside the point. And when it is, that doesn’t make the issue at hand any less legitimate. Indeed, most of the really important issues aren’t strictly speaking economic. Spout off regression analysis and cost-benefit hootenanny all you like, I will still hold that murder must be punished, slavery is wretched, rape is evil, liberty is a blessing, and honor has value; the numbers be damned.
I want to be paid more than I am and work less than I do (“Just like a Cartagena hooker!” — The Couch). Economics matters to me. But it is instrumental. Tell me that I could make more and work less if I abandoned my family or if I killed the competition and I will respond, “So what?” (Besides, it’s really hard to get at the brake lines in George Will’s car.)
Aristotle says that man is a political animal and politics is the means by which we decide how we should live. And the question of how we should live is only, at best, partially about economics.
