Political question

[jedusor]

As I understand it, the core idea of a conservative political ideology is "keep the government out of our lives." If that's the case, why are Republicans in favor of legislating things like abortion and drugs?

This is an honest question, not a jab at the right, and I hope the comments will stay respectful.

Comments

[imagines.livejournal.com]

This is something I've been curious about myself for some time, so I'm hoping your commenters can shed some light.

I did actually meet a conservative Republican this year (a cousin of a friend of mine), who called himself a "true conservative" and was quite annoyed that the conservative party has turned to legislating things like that. His belief really was that the government should stay out of people's lives. I have no idea what his religious beliefs were, but it was kind of funny to realise that I, a Democrat, was finding all sorts of ideological beliefs I had in common with him. It made me think hard about why and to what extent I support a liberal government.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

The core idea of a libertarian political ideology is "keep the government out of our lives." The core idea of a conservative political ideology is "keep the government out of our free market." (Or so I think.) Conservatism, especially neo-conservatism, involves a kind of in loco parentis attitude.

[lemurtanis.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I would definitely say that conservative no longer equals Republican. The neoconservative movement has been in charge for the last 8 years, and they seem all in favor of lots of moral legislation and lots of spending. It's weird.

[phaseonehundred.livejournal.com]

Maybe the religious right is infecting the republican to gain more popularity?

[zephyrofgod.livejournal.com]

Actually, yes, thanks to the Moral Majority in the eighties.

[pr1ss.livejournal.com]

4 and 8 years ago the Republicans kept talking about the "big tent" concept. What that meant was building a coalition of groups with assorted strongly-held feelings. Tack on various ethical prejudices to a platform that is basically designed to coddle the super-rich, and they get enough votes. This year it went a little too far. The banking crisis impacted too many of their usual voters. I'm sure the plan will be fine-tuned and back again soon.

[cramerica.livejournal.com]

Well put!

[phaseonehundred.livejournal.com]

Not all republicans want to legislate those things. The popular republicans do but there are less heard of groups like Republicans for Choice (and conversely democrats for life- you can google both of them) the RfC basically says that banning abortion = regulation = bad.

But with that aside, republicans have turned into something off the spectrum, as have democrats. I hate calling them right and left because they really aren't. Most of the third parties are a little more on the line than demo/repub and most of the people who are happy with it are religious. Of course, if the demos or some third pary were pro life then they'd like them too.

Liberal =/= democrat and republican =/= conservative. It really all depends on the candidate in question.

[lonesomepolecat.livejournal.com]

My understanding is that there are multiple types of conservatism.

The old school conservatism is mostly about either or both of minimal government and minimal interference in financial matters (including having a balanced budget or a surplus so that financial shortfalls don't force the government to impact lives more than necessary). These are actually two different types of conservatism, but they seem to overlap a lot. As much as both sides would like to argue against it, there's also a fair amount over overlap in the old style conservatives and the liberal types. There's really very little difference in "don't legislate against my firearms" and "don't legislate against my ability to marry whomever I want regardless of gender or the number of people I'm already married to". However, the two are often placed on opposite ends of the spectrum (I think, largely because the former is old style conservatism and the latter is new style liberalism).

The newer types of conservatism are largely based around social issues. They don't care much about balanced budgets or minimal government, they are socially conservative so want the government to restrict civil liberties that they view to be morally wrong (even if it's not the widely accepted moral stance). They tend to be religiously based (mostly Christian in this country) and are often fundamentalist (take their preferred holy book literally, regardless of how much sense that makes).

Currently, the Republican party (at least at a federal level) is playing to the civil liberties type conservatives rather than the financial/government type conservatives. This, obviously, really pisses off the old school conservatives so a significant number of them are tending towards the Democratic party at the moment. For similar reasons, you get people who are really into restricting liberties like abortion who prefer the republican party regardless of their other policies (while on the campaign trail, we had a few conversations like "Does Barack oppose abortion?" "No" "Well, I can't possibly vote for him then").

For a while at least, playing to the (mostly religious) civil liberties types was a great move on the Republican party's side as a lot of them feel that voting for a government that will enforce their views on the rest of society is a moral and religious requirement. Thus, they're willing to stand in line to vote come rain, hail or extreme attempts to disenfranchise them through onerous voter requirements. I don't understand why, but the liberal civil liberties inclined people tend to be more easily intimidated.

[(Anonymous)]

I'd be careful trying to make that casual (and causal) a historical analysis of conservatism. Both what you've labeled old-style and new-style conservatism have been around in some form for quite a while.

If you look at the origins of the term conservative, after all, they suggest more of the second type of conservatism. Burke was more a social conservative than a fiscal conservative, I'd say.

Conservatism, fundamentally, is about resistance to change. But resistance to change through government is a funny thing, as what government does in passing new laws is always to change things, and anyway, you can never completely stop change from happening.

So you see legislation about abortion and gay marriage and drug use which are designed to preserve 'traditional values' but which also tamper with the way our country deals with morality in ways that are somewhat innovative.

But you also see legislation to minimize government, I supppose on the theory that less government interference means less interference in 'the way things are always done'.

It's a contradiction, but there are fundamental contradictions in the way progressives do business, too. The world is too complicated to have straightforward answers.

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

Abortion is a special case because the fundamental disconnect there has to do with when an organism becomes human.

For those who believe that a blastocyst is already a human being (which may or may not involve belief in a soul), this is not a question of reproductive choice or a question of the woman's "right to choose." For those who truly hold this belief, the idea of exceptions for rape is anathema; they would probably hold that the baby is a second victim of the crime. While I disagree with this position, it does have the merit of being logically consistent.

For those of us who believe that birth is the moment when the developing organism becomes an independent human life, as opposed to a growth within a host organism, there's a different logical conclusion. The difficulty for us is to understand that the people in the first group aren't trying to impose governmental control on women's bodies; they are trying to protect a class of human beings who (in their view) are being murdered. [For comparison, there have been cultures in history who don't consider an infant fully human until it has survived for a certain length of time, typically a month; they consider infanticide a prefectly reasonable thing to do if the baby is "defective" in some way. That is as appalling to us as abortion is to a true believer.]

However, I think the vast majority of those who oppose abortion are actually in a third camp. They mouth the line about human life beginning at conception, but they see unwanted pregnancies as God's punishment for people having sex when they shouldn't. That's why they'll make exceptions when it's "not the woman's fault," which undermines their whole position, in my opinion. Those are the pseudo-conservatives you're asking about, I think, and they want government out of their lives but expect government to make sure the rest of us toe their line.

[palecur.livejournal.com]

A lot of what you're seeing under the conservative label right now is actually social radicalism driven by a particular type of religious belief. Conservatism, as I understand and occasionally attempt to practice, rests the concepts in these two quotes:

"When it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change" (Lord Kelvin)

"Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our father." (G. K. Chesterton)

Lord Kelvin's maxim is essentially a classy way of saying "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" -- novelty is not by itself a reason for social policy, and the burden of proof is on those proposing the change. Change should be difficult, in this view, because the phase-space of possible changes includes many more bad changes than good ones -- just as in evolution most mutations are harmful or fatal -- and our judgement about what is a good or bad change is necessarily limited and flawed. Nonetheless, changes should be possible when there's a clear good-faith consensus for it. This is, for instance, why there's a solid principled conservative case to make for voting against California's Prop 8 -- gender-blind marriage can be seen as a beneficial change whose time had come, if not overdue.

Chesterton's quote has many of the same overtones -- we do things the way we did them in the past because there is the accumulated wisdom of generations behind that way. Presumably people did things differently and it was unsatisfactory, and Chesterton exhorts us not to invalidate their judgement out of hand. We can do re-examine modern conditions to see whether or not those traditions still fit, but just as novelty is not a reason to impose a change, so is antiquity no reason to discard an existing societal feature.

If very little of this sounds like the modern Republican party, well, I agree.

[mh75.livejournal.com]

This really bothers me, as well. I think there is a disconnect between what the parties represent about themselves and what they are (i think more so with the republicans, but, i may be wrong there). I also think it is problematic that we only have two parties. It results in an all or nothing approach to the party platforms. I suspect an large percentage of Americans would prefer a greater compromise.