Social Conservatism Explained

Great Debates
101

by Sam:

Fear of Christianity? Most liberals are self-described Christians, so that doesn’t fly. Fear that the rich will take over? Most liberals aren’t worried about the rich taking over, because we are under no illusion that that the rich sit anywhere except at the top of the power totem pole. It’s the low-income folks that we worry about. Fear that big brother is on the march? Well, when civil liberities become optional in a post-911 world, what is the appropriate emotion in response to that? Conservatives (used to) claim to be afraid of the same thing, by the way. Like when it comes to guns.

Fear is not always irrational. Lots of people are afraid of what Bush represents and I don’t consider their fears entirely irrational. And to be fair, a lot of social conservatives have rational fears as well. Things like crime and unemployment are examples.

But color me hypocritical, I just don’t think feeling threatened by SSM is rational. Just like you can never convince me that fear of interracial marriage and integration are rooted in reason. Some fears are just knee-jerk reactions to change. Historically, that’s what social conservatives have promoted: resistance to change. Going back to the way things were, when every man, child, and women knew their place. It may be an unpleasant truth, but the conversative movement has never been about bringing people who are different into the fold. It has been about “us versus them”.

Yes, but we are talking about social conservatism, are we not? All the examples you give are based on economics, which is a different kettle of fish. Take a look at social issues and you’ll see more often than not societies have been getting more liberal, not conservative. Women all over the world are slowly but surely attaining 1st-class citizen rights. Gays and lesbians are on TV, making out and holding hands like their straight counterparts. When Tittygate happened during the Superbowl and America had a coronary over Janet Jackson’s breast, most of the world was wondering what the big fuss was about. Stay-at-home dads, a concept that was formerly unheard of in conservative America, is becoming a celebrated choice. When the white sons and daughters of Middle America can rap the latest 50 cent song better than urban kids, its a sign that people are becoming more liberal. Not conservative.

What are you talking about, Sam? The government has become bigger under Bush’s reign, not smaller. The Patriot Act, the department of Homeland Security, the proposed SSM amendment, and a threatened Roe v Wade are not by-products of a government trying to shrink.

Uh uh. And do you think Middle America voted for Bush because they think a privatized social security is in their best interests? Or do you think they voted for him because “Bush ain’t about to let them homos marry like that there Kerry would.” You tell me.

102

You’re right. I forgot what I was arguing - easy to do, since I’m not a social conservative.

But I would argue that social conservatism may also be on the rise. It certainly looks that way in the U.S., and didn’t a whole schwack of social conservative governments recently get elected in Europe?

Or maybe it’s that there’s a pendulum - liberals get elected, go too far, and get tossed out. Conservatives get elected, go too far, and get tossed out. Then liberals come back with a slightly more conservative message, etc.

Maybe what we’re seeing is a natural oscillation around the ‘correct’ policies as we experiment back and forth trying to discover what we really want.

As for the ‘fear of change’ - I suppose you can characterize it that way, but then I could say liberals live in ‘fear of stasis’ or ‘fear that conservatives will take away their choices’. I just don’t know that those kinds of characterizations are useful. I think calling your opponent a big fraidy cat is counterproductive.

One thing I think liberals have to realize is that a lot of the institutions they want to change have a lot of value - institutions like marriage are clearly an important part of the social fabric - almost every society has evolved marriage of some sort. So demanding radical changes to it without much thought as to the ramifications of that change may not be the smartest thing to do, even if there are legitimate grievances to address.

Perhaps both sides need each other. Liberals need social conservatives to put the brakes on the the speeding train of social change, and conservatives need liberals to push them along when the old institutions no longer work.

103

Sam Stone: * In fact, it’s conservative ideas that have been winning, in case you didn’t notice. And not just in the U.S., but all around the world. Roll back the clock to 1975, and have a look at the world. Trade barriers everywhere, strong union movements, wage and price controls, 55 MPH speed limits, socialist governments all over the place, the rise of ‘industrial policy’ with Japan as the lead example, nationalization of industry throughout the 1st world. etc. Today, free trade is the rule, exchange rates fluctuate, markets are freer, wholesale privatization has occured, wage and price controls are a thing of the past, and free market theories in general are on the ascendancy.*

As Leonard pointed out, this is all about economic issues, not social ones. (Parts of it aren’t even correctly described as “economic conservatism”: conservatives have traditionally often been somewhat protectionist, if not downright isolationist.)

Socially, it’s very clear that it’s liberal ideas that have been winning: civil rights, women’s rights, the beginnings of gay rights, the acceptance of various kinds of families and relationships including single parenthood and domestic partners, and so forth.

What we’re seeing in social conservatism is not a movement; it’s a backlash against a movement. Even the people that social conservatives consider their heroes accept the new liberalized reality. A southern conservative President makes sure he has blacks and Hispanics represented in his cabinet. A conservative Vice-President refuses to disown or condemn his lesbian daughter. The wives and daughters of conservative Cabinet members have careers. Conservative Congressmen get divorced, or admit to having affairs, and it doesn’t wreck their political careers.

We are not going to see a return to liberal conservative values, despite the current backlash. In fact, liberal social values have become so widespread that many conservatives will hastily distance themselves from the embarrassing idea that conservatism is against equal rights for minorities or women. In thirty to fifty years, we’ll doubtless see conservatives distancing themselves from the embarrassing idea that conservatism opposes gay rights too.

104

Well, that would hardly be possible, would it? I think the dimbulb who originally posted this meant to say “we are not going to see a return to socially conservative values”.

105

Liberals DID win the big issues of equal rights, rights for women, and the other things you mentioned. But they won those 40 years ago. Since then, Liberals have stopped being a movement and have become a coalition of special interests - environmentalists, trade unionists, animal rights activists, socialists, communists, gays, etc. They don’t even agree amongst themselves. The union laborers in the Democratic party can’t stand the PETA types, and they sided with Bush on drilling in ANWR.

Perhaps that’s really the problem here - Liberals WON. The war is over. And yet the soldiers are still in the field; they just don’t know what they are fighting for any more. There’s no coherency.

106

Not until a couple days ago, Sam.

107

Sam Stone: Liberals DID win the big issues of equal rights, rights for women, and the other things you mentioned. But they won those 40 years ago.

40 years ago?! Nonsense. The 1965 Voting Rights Act was hardly the summit of civil rights legislation: minorities still had a long way to go before attaining the level of equality they have today. The women’s movement didn’t really take off till the 70’s, and widespread social acceptance of things like single parenthood, domestic partnerships, two-career families, househusbands, etc., came much later, as did the beginnings of gay rights.

If we “roll back the clock to 1975” as you originally suggested, and compare social values then and now, it’ll be obvious that our society has become far more socially liberal during the past 30 years, rather than simply stagnating at a level of “liberalness” already attained 40 years ago.

108

I can’t speak for Union members, but the Democratic Party and especially Liberals have not supported drilling for oil in the Alaskan wilderness. Robert Kennedy, Jr. is one of the leaders in the Natural Resources Defense Council which is fighting to preserve this area.

By the way, equal rights based on gender have never been guaranteed by the Constitution in the United States. The Equal Rights Amendment did not pass. The social conservatives acted out of fear of unisex bathrooms.

109

Sam Stone: * They don’t even agree amongst themselves. *

Neither do the conservatives. Libertarians, social conservatives, fiscal conservatives, free-traders, Buchananite isolationists, neoconservatives, fundamentalist Christians, Christian Zionists, nationalist and racialist fringe groups—they’ve all got deep and bitter disagreements with one another’s positions, and their politicians as a result often do very contradictory things, but they find common ground enough to support what are generally described as “conservative” candidates.

110

I don’t know about that. I remember 1975. I remember free love. I remember Deep Throat and Behind the Green Door playing in mainstream theaters. I remember women’s lib being a big deal - opening a door for a woman could get you a dirty look or a rude comment. I remember drugs being commonplace - Our grade 9 graduation dance was conducted in a haze of pot smoke, and the teachers would just confiscate the pot if you were too blatant about it. They probably smoked the stuff in the teacher’s lounge later. Cheech and Chong were all the rage. I remember casual nudity being more common, and women went braless regularly and conspicuously.

In a lot of ways, society feels a lot more conservative today. Certainly there was still room for movement on the rights front in the south and some of the more backwards places, but the war had already been won. There was still some mopping up to do.

111

Oh yeah—public concern for the environment is yet another area in which we’ve become far more socially liberal in the past few decades. We never learned a thing about “ecosystems” when I was in grade school in the '70s.

112

Sam
Those movements still require constant vigilance, and they are united in that.

Women still campaign for equal pay and abortion rights. Unions are still pushing for worker protection and rights. Environmentalists, animal rights guys, etc: they all win and lose battles every year. They have not won what you perceive as major victories for the past 40 years because, probably, there is not stunning discrimination against any group, save homosexuals, in the US anymore.

The social liberal wing of the Democratic Party can be better viewed now as a social libertarian wing. The liberal aspect, at least in my view (pass laws to protect…) is gone save for homosexuals, in giving homosexual partners equal rights under the law. Now, it is much more a battle to prevent the government from actively passing laws to restrain liberties. This I view as more of a libertarian stance. My definitions may be off, so define it as you wish (active vs. passive may be more appropriate).

This has a huge disconnect from the traditional economic policies of the Democrats. But, things have changed (notably the deficit). I think the Democrats could very easily move towards this, and become the party of restrained spending. With careful apportionment of resources, I don’t think that social programs would necessarily be compromised.

I’d like to get your views on this defense of marriage nonsense. Divorce is a much more severe and common threat to families, yet for all the talk of preserving the family and getting government out of raising children, nobody ever talks about divorce laws. The government has an active role in defining marriage and divorce, yet all the attention is on marriage. For all the hand-waving justifications given to this FMA as a defense of the family, why do you think divorce is not addressed if there is not an element of homophobia here?

I personally think (and I have heard it echoed in post-election commentary) that the government should get out of churches. It shouldn’t define marriage, which should be a sacred institution. This should be left to religious organizations, and thus divorce should all go through the same. Benefits that are given to married people should be also given to people who file for a civil union (through the state government), although this will not be called a marriage. Gay marriage will be an issue for the churches. Government has no reason to limit civil unions to heterosexuals, so it shouldn’t. Divorce will also become an issue for the churches, where civil unions will be dissolved with civil remediation, etc. I’m a liberal atheist and I have no problem with this, I’d like to know what social conservatives would think of this.

113

I feel there’s a lot of talk in this thread about the weakest to justify of social conservative views… mostly stuff based on Christianity like gay marriage, creationist “science”, “under God”, etc.

I live in California, where liberalism is more likely to run amok, so I may be a social conservative because of that. (I actually like to label myself a “South Park” social conservative.) And when I mean “amok”, I don’t mean the little stuff like the recent decision to remove the cross from atop the Spanish Mission in the LA county seal. I mean “amok” like the last ballot proposition trying to change the three strikes law to make the third strike only for violent felonies (fine print: a lot of felonies get excluded like arson or DUI grave bodily harm). Or the recent one that passed, $3 billion for stem cell research (fine print: NO AUDITS!). The natural liberal leanings of the California voter gets taken advantage of to pass propostions which are terrible or just plain goddamn thievery.:mad:

Plus there’s far less defensible liberal behavior which social conservatives don’t think should be tolerated… like intoxication, promiscuity, obscene language, public sexual displays… you know, the stuff that gets you labelled as cool in high school. :slight_smile:

114

Sam Stone: I don’t know about that. I remember 1975. I remember free love.

Do you remember female doctors, lawyers, and cabinet members? Do you remember interracial marriages among your parents’ friends?

What seems to have focused your adolescent attention was the sex, drugs, and nudity of the so-called “sexual revolution” or “counterculture” which did take place in the 60’s and 70’s. But that’s not at all the same as the profound, long-term social acceptance of some of those changes that followed during the subsequent decades. Abandonment of parietal rules, equal pay for equal work, Title IX, laws against workplace sexual harassment, and so forth were far more than mere “mopping up”.

115

edwino: I pretty much agree with everything you’ve said. As I see it, the real problem here is that the government has sort of co-opted the institution of marriage. Licensed it, passed laws around it, etc. So there’s a mixing of church and state right there. And that’s a problem.

I think civil union should be for everyone. The state oversees a civil union just like any other contractual obligation. Marriage itself then becomes a matter of faith alone. You can get married without the state being involved, but if you want the legal protections of marriage you have to enter a civil union and sign on the dotted line.

Then open up civil unions to all. And if some churches want to marry gays, that’s their business. If some want to exclude it, that’s fine too. If two baptist homosexuals want to get married and the church won’t let them, well, they’ll just have to settle for entering a civil union. That gets them all the legal protection they need, visitation rights, etc., but they won’t be ‘married’.

And perhaps there is the road to common agreement with the conservatives - argue not that gays have the ‘right’ to be married, but that marriage should not be co-opted by the state at all.

116

You got my vote right there.

117

**Kimstu said:

Okay, perhaps the whole braless thing did make an extra impression in my adolescent brain. But the point I’m making is that the ‘war’ was won in the sense that society saw the ‘rightness’ of those things - it just took a while longer to work it’s way through the infrastructure (that is still taking place). But by 1975 there weren’t many people arguing that equality was wrong.

Although maybe I should retract some of that, because thinking about it, I remember the ERA still being an issue in presidential elections in the 1980’s. So let’s say 20 years instead of 40.

118

Okay guys, so which is it? Should we expect social conservatives to be more comfortable with the notion of the state getting out of the marriage business, or less comfortable with it?

119

With due respects to Sam Stone, Kimstu, he has never claimed to be a social conservative.

If we let the church (only) define marriage and let the government fill in the gaps, I can’t see a fair argument against that except homophobia.

But I’m still puzzled why these social conservatives give lots of lip to protecting marriage and the family and never say a word about divorce. The only reasonable answer I can come up with is that the issue is politicized. Even if it is not blatant, there is an undercurrent of homophobia. Think of all the people you know who think being gay is “icky.” The Religious Right and the RNC have found that they are able to exploit that. There are tons of divorced Republicans, but fewer and fewer gay Republicans. So when they give lip to protecting the family, they ignore the biggest threats and focus on the one that they know will mobilize the broadest segment of their base without alienating that many. In 2004, that happens to be those who do not wish to see hot man-on-man or woman-on-woman monogamy.

120

Sam Stone: Okay, perhaps the whole braless thing did make an extra impression in my adolescent brain.

Male chauvinist pig! :wink: (Man, I really don’t miss the overheated rhetoric of the battle years.)

SS: So let’s say 20 years instead of 40.

That makes more sense to me; I’d agree that the fundamental battles for civil rights and women’s rights were basically won by the mid-80’s. The major new social liberalization trend since then, AFAICT, has been gay rights. Maybe also greater social acceptance of disability and mental illness (remember Nixon’s Watergate plumbers looking for discreditable dirt about Daniel Ellsberg in the records of his former psychologist? I seriously doubt that seeing a “head-shrinker” these days would be considered such a sign of vulnerability in a political opponent).

edwino: With due respects to Sam Stone, Kimstu, he has never claimed to be a social conservative.

Yes, I know, but he’s undertaking to speak for their views in this thread, and he and Shodan (who may or may not be a social conservative either, for all I know) seem to have come up with diametrically opposing interpretations of them. Sam suggests that we could find common ground with social conservatives by getting government out of the marriage business; Shodan thinks that that’s exactly what social conservatives are dreading. Anybody got the Straight Dope?