My staunch conservative friends who read this blog know I'm not one of those mushy-headed folks who thinks that Republicans should sacrifice principle for electoral gain. Not in the least. And the seeds of my change in thinking were not planted by my moving to Ann Arbor, but during the summer when I read, among other things, The Conservative Mind by Russell Kirk.
No, I do not think Republicans in general are heartless, or that they don't care about the poor. I think they are extremely well-intentioned and personally charitable people, more so than their left-wing counterparts. But as far as politics goes, they lack vision, and seem to exist largely to try to stop the advance of socialism. For that reason, it seems that, these days, conservatives are just libertarians who also want to stop abortions.
But conservatives have a competing vision for society. We believe government exists to advance human dignity. We believe human dignity is composed of many things, things which cannot be summed up in a political program or tract. They include, but are not limited to, certain freedoms, obligations, and relationships. These things that comprise human dignity are best worked out on a local, community and family basis; the results of these negotations--tradition--generally ought to be respected. We believe dependence on government, family and community breakdown, and callousness toward the most vulnerable in society destroy human dignity.
But since the introduction of welfare especially, the game has changed. Those local-level negotiations have gone out the window as government has subsidized an overly individualistic, materialistic lifestyle. Social institutions that could take the place of the government dole hardly exist anymore, having been crowded out by government. These are truths that conservatives cannot afford to ignore.
The game has changed. The danger with left-wing politics is that it doesn't just destroy what could be a truly liberal society...it also destroys the foundations upon which the entire edifice of a healthy civilizations stands. Before we rebuild that civilization, we're going to have to lay many of the foundations anew.
Lowering taxes and eliminating federal programs is desirable, but not in the short run. We may not like people being dependent on government, but we should be similarly conscious of the human toll that blind implementation of ideological programs will exact.
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