Matt Zeitlin: Impetuous Young Whippersnapper

You want to see me come out as a social conservative? Well, I kinda-sorta do so, in a 1400 word way. Check it out below the fold.

Ross Douthat describes, in a lengthy and very good post, exactly what Social conservatism means to him:

nce: How far do we want to go in the contractual direction, and to what extent do we want to preserve and shore up the beehives? To what extent do we need to provide space for the dissenters to breathe, and to what extent do we want a society where the conformists can flourish? My preference would be to inhabit a society that’s formally contractualist, that protects the rights of minorities and provides opportunities for dissenters and free spirits to find their way in the world, but that is undergirded by sturdy beehives – by rooted communities that are, as Haight puts it, high on social capital and low on anomie. This is the American model, I would argue, from Tocqueville’s time down to our own: a nation balanced between contractualism and community. And the question becomes, for those who think this model has been a great success, where do you strike the balance? And which side of the equation needs shoring up? This answer will vary depending on where and when you live. So, for instance, I probably would have been a liberal, in some sense, had I been alive, writing and voting at mid-century, since the America of that era seems to me to have erred too far on the side of in-group prerogatives, authority and (yes) patriarchy. But the America of this era seems to me to have become unbalanced in the opposite direction, requiring a different, more culturally-conservative approach to social reform than the United States of, say, 1952.

Well, I’ve read de Toqueville, and I think there’s great value to community in the way Ross describes it. I think that a society with stronger community roots and a sense of shared values and purposes is a good one. Yet, like Ross, I believe in a legally contractual society to protect those in the out-groups. I’m pretty sure that on binary questions that are often relegated to the “social” realm of politics — gay marriage, abortion, obscenity laws etc — Ross and I oftentimes disagree. This begs the question — how much do government policy and “culture” or community have to do with each other?

In school, I’ve been studying Japan’s post WWII rise. One thing that many Western observers, especially TR Reid, marveled at was how Japan’s culture was a. conducive to economic growth and b. seemingly totally awesome. Reid describes high social cohesion, low crime, low unemployment, low divorce rates and the apparent absence of the social problems that have so plagued America. Surely, the homeogenity and wealth of Japan contribute to it, but what struck me was how little government had to do with this very admirable society. In so much as Japan’s government was a factor in their culture, it was by encouraging the most positive aspects of it and by not trying to remake Japan in some rationalistic fantasy, but instead to work with their deep stream of traditionalism and conservatism to create a modern society. One of the lessons that Burke and much conservative thought teaches us is that government and “culture” or “community” have little to do with each other. If a culture is strong and cohesive, the government will reflect those values and cohesion or it will take something on the scale and ambition of the French Revolution or Lenin to take it apart.

But back to Ross and social conservatism in America. On the issue of historical interpretation, Ross and I disagree, he thinks that the devaluing and erosion of community since the 50s have to do with governmental policy — “Traditional forms of social organization are weaker in today’s America than they were fifty years ago, but they’re still much, much stronger than in Europe, where the economic left has held the whip for decades.” I disagree. It’s not because of the expansion of the welfare state that community has become less cohesive. Brink Lindsay’s thesis in the Age of Abundance, which I find much more convincing, is that expanded prosperity enabled people to see outside their narrow, provincial horizons and seek self-actualization on a individual basis. Tyler Cowen, in seeming synthesis with Lindsay, has also pointed out that as countries get richer, their people are more positively free and will demand larger government. So, the factors that lead to community breakdown — or community erosion — drove the big government policy that Ross laments. So, what can a social conservative do? There are a few issues that I think that social conservatives — which I will broadly define as Toquevillian communitarians – that self identified liberals and conservatives can all get behind.

This one issue is family strengthening – real family strengthening that isn’t just gay scapegoating. The biggest problem facing social conservatism is the growing inequality and devaluation of marriage — not gays getting married. Gay marriage, to follow Jon Rauch, is probably one of the biggest social conservative coups in years. When was the last time we saw so many clamoring to be included in the key social institution? But before you think that my social conservatism is just liberalism in a communitarian gloss, I think that Bush’s (minimal) efforts to provide federal funds for marriage counseling, Ramesh Ponnuru’s pro-family tax plan and a whole gamut of Ross and Reihan’s “Sam’s Club” Republican ideas are part of a social conservatism I could get behind.

I’d probably also be willing to make (essentially) symbolic concessions on mostly trivial – yet controversial – church/state issues. If a small city wants to have a creche, they can have a creche. Prayer at football games and graduations? As long as there isn’t compulsion, the expression of a community’s (mostly) shared values and beliefs is a powerful thing that my own secular and liberal upbringing and education hasn’t really been able to provide. It’s also something we should protect. Though Bush’s faith based program initiative turned out to be a unremarkable part of his domestic agenda, if restarted under a Democrat, the government funding religious organizations that do social work is unobjectionable. Jewish Family Services is the type of organization that’s fighting in the social conservative trenches — and the government should be able to support it without censoring their religious message or roots. So yes, liberals might freak out if we’re “funding preaching,” but we’d also be funding social cohesion. Americans aren’t going to suddenly abandon religion, we might as well try to work with those small scale organizations that are a better reflection of community values and demand loyalty and respect in a way most government programs can not. But before you think that I’m just some kind of cryto-republican, in a recent bloggingheads, Josh Cohen — procedural liberal extraordnaire — makes an essentially conservative argument for Louisville and Seattle’s now unconstitutional race-oriented school districting. Kentucky and Louisville weren’t implementing some court order from upon high, instead, their assignment plans were the result of a democratic polity best trying to grapple with the problem of de facto segregated schools, and the Court struck them down on haughty, legalistic grounds. Were the Louisville and Seattle plans in blatant violation of Brown vs Board or any amendment or case, as had been commonly interpreted? No. And a conservative should defend localities doing their best to ensure justice and equality in their schools.

You’ll notice how these are all very small scale ideas and policies. That’s because being socially conservative isn’t about government or policy, per se. Rod Dreher captures this sense of conservatism in his blog and in Crunchy Cons. Social conservatism — or communitarianism — is about you, me and the communities that we call our own. It’s about shared values, openness and cohesion from the family outwards. It’s about recognizing that we are never, to quote Sandel, “unencumbered selves” that it’s impossible – and undesirable – to radically separate individuals from the communities and social structures in which they originate. Government is secondary to these concerns. All social conservatives and communitarians should want is the space to preserve their traditions, cultivate their communities and values, and not have government actively intrude on them. For some, the perceived assault of secularism, liberalism, relativism and overall degeneracy are just too much and so they call out for a strong governmental pushback. But if you want to be conservative, you’re not going to be a revolutionary.