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What Do SoCons Want?
There’s all this conflict between SoCons and libertarians on Ricochet, but, as far as I can tell, the arguments are usually around SSM and drug legalization. Ok, but traditional marriage and keeping drugs illegal are known quantities and not terribly controversial positions. So what else do SoCons want? I assume more restrictions on abortion, which the way things are going, would also not be very controversial.
Anything else? What do you want the government to do to protect the culture, and especially children? What is the government’s role? There must be concrete issues besides those that I mentioned. I think it’s the unarticulated “other” that libertarians are most concerned about.
Published in General
They want to tell you how you should live your life.
Do they? I want to hear them say it. Libertarians declare on a regular basis what they really want. I want SoCons to say exactly what they want. They’re not afraid to, right? We’re among friends, even if it’s contentious. I want to elicit answers. I want to understand them more. I want concrete legislation they want to have passed; since it’s the only way we have left to save the culture.
If they don’t tell us what they want, we’re going to continue to assume the worst.
Tort reform.
Eliminate the federal income tax.
Eliminate the Department of Education.
Any one of those would have an incalculable impact on the relationship between citizens and government. If any one of them actually happens, I’ll be amazed.
The relationship between legal conditioning and non-legal conditioning of culture is circular, like the relationship between body and mind. You can’t fix one while ignoring the other.
Awesome response, but there’s no light between us on these issues. We even agree on the results.
Anything other than I mentioned that I might disagree with? I’m even sympathetic about abortion. It’s almost always a pure evil, but not one I’m sure we can strongly regulate.
Watch it Aaron; you’re beginning to sound like a FiCon!
Let me offer an example.
Generations ago, nobody expected government to provide healthcare or elderly care. Were the sick and elderly left to die? Of course not. Charitable arrangements abounded then as now. And their funding didn’t come from government.
But funding wasn’t the only difference. Because there was not an expectation that government would provide the care, there was a greater non-legal expectation of family and neighbors to provide these necessities. There were common standards of honor and shame, with non-legal incentives and consequences.
So today we are in a bit of a Catch-22. Families have been broken. There are still many healthy ones, but even loving families today are scattered across state lines and the economy has adjusted to the commonality of two-income households. Assisted living facilities now often take the place of three generations living together. Marriages are more fragile because the expectations are higher and the options more varied. And so on.
Do we need to repair the family before such legal arrangements as Social Security and Medicare can be repealed/reduced? Or will repealing these laws force society to reclaim those non-legal traditions? If recent history should teach us anything, it’s that people can willfully deny reality to persist in foolish ways.
Reasonable people can disagree. But I fall on the “Repeal and hope for the best” side. Government programs can’t be dismantled piecemeal because the funding can always be restored in the next term.
Fred Cole and I (and others) had a long discussion about libertarianism many months ago. The general consensus we came to, as I recall, is that libertarianism is strictly concerned with law while so-called “social” conservatism is concerned also with the non-legal traditions which prevent the need of laws. So one isn’t necessarily at odds with the other (though in practice they often are at odds). The scope of interest is different.
I think for Socons, the only thing we want the government to do is shrink. It’s the ever expanding role of government that has helped create cultural decline. We see this in Europe too, as the welfare state grows and takes on more of the responsibility that familes, churches and communites used to take on, then people become more preoccupied on pleasure, and less on their family and their well being. As the government grows, it takes away responsibilty and obligations from the individual.
So if we want a revival in values in this country the best then that could happen is the government going bankrupt and forcing people to have to look upon themselves for their well being (maybe not the best thing but the best I can think of)
I think many SoCons, though certainly not all, would agree that some of the “morality” laws of the early 20th century (like laws against buggery) overstepped. Not everything that is wrong and should be discouraged merits a legal remedy. Nine times out of ten, government isn’t necessary. Many of those laws (like Prohibition) were driven by Democrats, anyway.
I’m even in favor of legalizing minor drugs marijuana, though not harder drugs like heroin.
In addition to marriage laws and abortion laws, there is euthanasia. We don’t acknowledge a right to assisted suicide.
But really, isn’t the marriage disagreement enough? You know the Left is going to continue to hammer that one for decades. SoCons like myself aren’t going to back down on that. If the law demanded that I acknowledge a gay “marriage”, I wouldn’t. That’s how seriously I take it.
So libertarians and FiCons will have to stomach our stubbornness on that one. But my olive branch is that I think most legal issues related to marriage go away if we eliminate the income tax, and that’s a priority we can share. Even minus the legal issues, Democrats will cry havoc and let loose the poodles of war.
Why are we fighting again?
Not only that, but it pushes private organizations and actions out of the picture. Government hates competition. Look at education.
They have been saying it. Go read the threads where Rachel and Merina have been commenting. They’re subtle, but that’s the gist of their arguments.
Do you think Libertarians could have any real influence stemming that tide? The reason I bring those up is that I don’t thing most libertarians give a flying fig about those issues in the grand scheme of things. Yeah, we want gay people to enjoy the same privileges as us because we care about gay people, but we hate that it hurts the feelings and causes dread in SoCons and the religious. At least speaking for myself.
I hope they’ll have the courage to stop being subtle.
Foreign policy, abortion, immigration, SSM, and drugs.
Do you mean adopt the Fair Tax? Do you really think that a SoCon priority? I get that it’s a Huckabee thing, but who else?
I don’t know. Maybe because Socons will pass moral judgement on behaviors and Libertarians usually won’t do that. I think that’s why people get so vitriolic in their criticism of religious folks, they live by a pretty strict moral code put in place by God. A code that, for some, can be difficult to live by and they meet someone who may think that their lifestyle is sinful they get really defensive, Even if the religious person didn’t do or say anything to provoke them.
It’s like if you go to the doctor and say you smoke, you know smoking is bad for you but you get pleasure from it and yes are also addicted, but when the doc asks “do you smoke?” knowing that the doctor is aware of your health status and the detriment to smoking and some people may get a little annoyed at the doc or lie and say something like “yes I smoke, but only like 2 cigarettes a day, its not like I smoke 3 PACKS a day” blah blah. I think that’s why people get their back up.
This typo always amuses me. Yes, a fine woman is intoxicating. Though generally “soft” not “hard” is considered the womanly quality.
Haven’t I been upset enough for one evening without you mentioning a consumption tax that would certainly not replace anything, because there is no such thing as a tax that goes away?
Is it that you think they want to have laws to attempt to force other people to live their lives in a certain way? Or do you object to them expressing their opinions (often strongly)? (And please forgive me if I misinterpreted, it appeared to me that you were/are objecting)
SoCons are not monolithic in their wants. Some SoCons advocate for the following things:
Other SoCons decidedly don’t want these things. I would wager most of the SoCons here don’t want most of the things on this list.
There are probably as many flavors of self-identified “social conservative” as there are flavors of self-identified “libertarian”. Some social conservatives might not think very hard about politics beyond a few precepts (like “abortion is bad”). That there is wide variance among people who’ll self-identify under a certain label doesn’t make the label completely useless, though.
As a social conservative with libertarian leanings, I do not advocate for anything Midget faded rattlesnake referenced. So I agree there are different flavors of socon.
I’m not going ballistic, but I would like to point out that if I were this simplistic about libertarians a number of them would go ballistic. The other day I was told that I am so stupid I should never say anything about libertarians after I made a comment much milder than this. Just sayin’…
Well… think about it this way:
Conservatives are often wary of liberals’ strong opinions because conservatives suspect the liberals of wanting to get the government involved whenever liberals feel really passionate about something. Some libertarians also feel that way about some SoCons: it’s not the strong opinion itself that’s unsettling, it’s the (perceived) implied threat of government action that comes along with it.
Merina, ignoring Tuck’s inflammatory comments for a moment, I am deeply interested in your candid answers on the subject. A lot of dancing goes on in the pages of ricochet. Is there anything you want that isn’t covered by the usual suspects?
“OK, but traditional marriage and keeping drugs illegal are known quantities and not terribly controversial positions.”
While these issues are often lumped together they actually have nothing in common. Unlike traditional marriage drug laws are an actual prohibition for which countless Americans are jailed or worse for violating. Gay marriage on the other hand, if you believe in such a thing, is simply left unrecognized by the state. An uncomplicated application of the non-aggression principle leads libertarians to their position on the latter while any attempt to apply it to the former is a non-sequitur.
Yes, marriage is an institution which ideally the state should not be involved in, but the privatization of marriage is at best a long ways off and in the meantime we have a duty to stop the state from altering beyond recognition an institution which predates it. We also have a duty to stop the state from turning modern English into some dialect of Orwellian newspeak by acquiring for itself the power to redefine important words into utter meaninglessness beyond the technical legal definitions given to them by the state.
This is a good, tough, polite and fascinating discussion. Thanks, SoCons (or VirtueCons) for stepping up.
I notice it’s evening all across North America at the moment, and this thread is humming. I sometimes wish Ricochet had some kind of running tab or thread for Late Night Cafe, or Late Night Bar and Grill; a more or less topicless “room” to wander in or out of every evening, something like the AMU.
Here’s the incomparable Sinatra, singing “It’s a Quarter to Three” (“One More for My Baby, and One More for the Road”)
I can only speak for myself, of course. There are indeed many self-described SoCons who favor many Big Government programs and initiatives. Ricochet seems to attract more Limited Government types.
I can say that I have spoken with many conservatives in the South of various kinds who would support the three moves I proposed. And yes, that means replacing the national income tax with some simpler tax system, at least until the federal government can be knocked down to a size that can survive a smaller tax income. Most believe the TSA and HSA have only limited utility, if any. But they are universally hawkish on foreign affairs.
Those conservatives vary widely on the degrees to which they would downsize government. I’m not convinced, in an era of ubiquitous information access and direct amateur reporting, that the FDA and EPA are needed. But my relatives won’t go that far. In fact, most conservatives I have known personally can’t imagine actually eliminating an entire federal agency. They merely want to scale back.
My views on government’s optimal size and nature are radical, as are the views of libertarians. I think most Americans, conservatives included, can’t imagine life very different from what they experience or are otherwise unwilling to try it. Most voters want Big Government to one extent or another. Most voters think only in terms of less/more, not in terms of repeal and elimination. They respect the Constitution, but don’t realize how irrelevant it has already become in regard to the present political reality.
We do. Sort of.
Whoa, thanks, Midge! I feel like it’s 1962 and someone just handed me the key to the Playboy Club!
(suddenly remembers we’re on the SoCon detente thread) Er–I mean–
Thank you sister, your kind words might yet lead me to the Kingdom of Heaven!
Oh, yes, Midge, I comprehend that thought-string. I asked Tuck his slant because if it’s the first, then he should have less “trouble” with the opinions of SoCons (VirtueCons) here on Ricochet if they were to include a “standard disclaimer” that while they are advocating, they are not advocating for new/additional government action. Unless, of course, they are, in which case at least the discussion would be explicit.
When I read VirtueCon opinion here on Ricochet, I assume it’s not advocating new/additional government action unless it explicitly *is.*