# Will the death of American social conservatism produce a completely new party system? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 17, 2014, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632 "2014-05-17T14:37:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![spifflog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c5a1d2/32.png) [@spifflog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spifflog)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2014, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/61 "2014-05-19T14:14:00Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > So do I, but see post #27. People wishing for something to happen, and them actually happening are two different things. It wasn’t that long ago in 2008 that Obama won the election and many on this site were postulating how the county would be now that the Republican party was dead. Low and behold, in 2010, Republicans had a net increase of 69 seats in Congress. Some are predicting similar results in 2014. I don’t see the huge shifts that many see. As I’ve said before, many on this site judge the country on the (vocal) liberal participants here. The country is more conservative than is perceived on this site, and as I travel the country, it is more conservative than I tend to remember. I live in big, east coast city so I don’t live in the big red country west of here. I’m increasingly libertarian so that’s my perspective. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2014, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/62 "2014-05-19T14:24:45Z")
> [@spifflog](#): > > People wishing for something to happen, and them actually happening are two different things. > > It wasn’t that long ago in 2008 that Obama won the election and many on this site were postulating how the county would be now that the Republican party was dead. Low and behold, in 2010, Republicans had a net increase of 69 seats in Congress. Some are predicting similar results in 2014. I don’t see the huge shifts that many see. Like I said in the OP, we are talking about impending but not imminent changes, on a generational time-scale. Of course the GOP will survive these changes, but what it means to be “Republican” will change, as it has several times before. ---
**Author:** ![spifflog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c5a1d2/32.png) [@spifflog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spifflog)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2014, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/63 "2014-05-19T14:33:33Z")
As will what it means to be a “Democrat” change. Both are changing and have been since their creation. Part of it is my age (50) but there was a time in my life when Republican were in the White House 20 out of the last 24 years, and many on the right where wondering what it was going to be like with the Democrats relegated to a second class party. The Dems shifted slightly, the American people wanted to hear a different voice, and here we are. I’m not seeing the profound shift that you and many others are seeing, or wish to believe is happening. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2014, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/64 "2014-05-19T14:39:02Z")
> [@spifflog](#): > > I’m not seeing the profound shift that you and many others are seeing, or wish to believe is happening. See the OP, there is statistical evidence for it – the change in question being that social conservatism is far less salient in the Millennial generation than in elder generations, and there is no reason to expect any reversal in that trend. ---
**Author:** ![davida03801](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b5e925/32.png) [@davida03801](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davida03801)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2014, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/65 "2014-05-19T15:33:23Z")
In the long term of multiple decades political parties have a tendency to morph and can move in far from previous positions. In the 1840’s and 1850’s it was the descendants of the Democrats that supported slavery. In the 1860 election is was that new radical and liberal Republicans with the wild ideal that slavery was an evil institution that ran and won. The democrat candidates wanted to continue with slavery as it was. Took decades for the Dems and Repubs to morph to what they are now. I personally don’t think the two parties have changed all that much, but certainly perceptions have. Where the two parties will be in 50 years is anyone guess, but for sure they will change. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2014, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/66 "2014-05-19T17:10:14Z")
Although I’m not a social conservative, I can make an argument for it that doesn’t rely on religion. It’s basically the social precautionary principle. The argument goes like this: Like any ecosystem, society is an evolved construct. When looking at social structures, it’s important to consider that these evolved for a reason, even if we don’t quite understand it. We muck with them at our peril. This is the same argument for not having a ‘progressive’ policy towards managing an ecosystem to make it ‘better’. If we tried applying ‘social justice’ to animals and started mucking about in the ecosystem to make it more fair, do you think we’d be likely to make it better? Or would we get bitten in the ass for mucking about with things we don’t understand? For example, should we implement universal day care? What will be the social effects of that? Is it better for young children to be in institutions than with their mothers? Will the long-term effect of this be that more single mothers have children? Or perhaps child birth will increase if parents can have children and both still work? What happens to the generation after that? How will this change social attitudes? How will this affect family unity in the long run? It could be argued that the replacement of charity as a largely private function into an entitlement has broken a number of social conventions that were very useful - in the past, people who received charity were generally given it with expectations that they would A) work to relieve the conditions that required the charity, and B) pay it forward. It was part of a social contract that helped keep people in line and kept communities more tightly bonded as everyone relied on each other. Taking that function and giving it to a faceless bureaucrat, and turning it into a ‘right’ removes all such obligation and exchanges local decision-making for bureaucracy. How does that effect society in the long run? And religion seems to be touching a universal need, since it arises pretty much everywhere. If we destroy traditional religions, will people seek something else to replace it? Perhaps something more dangerous like worship of the state, or something equally goofy like Gaia theory, new age nonsense about crystals and chakras and healing auras, Wicca, or tribal politics as secular religion? The social order is always changing. The automobile did more to destroy the nuclear family than did any ‘progressive’ politics of the time. So you can’t avoid change, and conservatives need to realize that. But at the same time, there’s an argument to be made that destroying old social orders because they are ‘unjust’ is a dangerous thing to do. It may be the right thing to do, but it needs to be approached with a little more humility and care. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2014, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/67 "2014-05-19T17:14:48Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Although I’m not a social conservative, I can make an argument for it that doesn’t rely on religion. It’s basically the social precautionary principle. Not WRT **any particular element** of it, you can’t. We’ve been over this before WRT same-sex marriage – all arguments against it are religious ultimately and the “social precautionary principle” does not hold water. ---
**Author:** ![PastTense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pasttense/32/14550_2.png) [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2014, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/68 "2014-05-19T18:06:22Z")
> [@BobLibDem](#): > > I don’t think the coalitions change much. The social conservatives will dwindle in numbers (and dramatically dwindle in enthusiasm once a caucasian returns to the White House), but they will always pull the lever that has an R on it. So you reject the view that social conservatives will ever vote based on their economic self-interest? In Iowa the leading Republican candidate is running on a platform than calls for eliminating the Department of Education. Say you’re lower middle class and pro-life. Would you vote for a candidate who is pro-life but wants to eliminate the Department of Education with its Pell grants and student loans–and you’ve got a kid who wants to go to college and there is no way you can afford to pay for it? ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2014, 9:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/69 "2014-05-20T09:03:06Z")
> [@BobLibDem](#): > > To answer the OP’s question: no. Although the Republican Party deserves to wither and die, I tend to think it will survive. Once Obama leaves office, the Teabag wing will lose their steam and their influence. After throwing an eight year temper tantrum over a black guy in the White House, they’ll lose their unifying force. The corporate Republicans will still pay nominal lip service to social conservatism, but they know damn well that their far right brethren would just as soon dive into a pool of broken glass as they would vote for any Democrat for any reason. The presidency will be ceded to the Democrats for a generation, but Republicans will continue to use any Senate presence of 40 or more seats to stymie everything a Democratic president wants to achieve. > > One thing that will NOT happen is one of the parties embracing libertarianism. That morally bankrupt philosophy is over-represented on these boards by a factor of several thousandfold, but it will never be anything more than a fringe group of zealous devotees. We’ll never be libertarian as the Libertarian Party sees it, but we continue to become more libertarian with time. The country is inexorably moving towards more freedom in both the social and economic spheres and the public is only growing more and more distrustful of government. The last time the American public’s attitudes towards government warmed was when it was being cut, during the Clinton years. I think that in 50 years America will be a very different place and both right and left will have victories to cheer. Fiscal realities plus changing American attitudes means that the federal government in 50 years will be nothing more than an insurance company with an army. It will have mostly abandoned any of its other roles. On the bright side for liberals, at least no one will be able to say that the government is too complex for a President to manage. Just keep the checks going out. Who can screw that up? ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2014, 1:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/70 "2014-05-20T13:36:56Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Although I’m not a social conservative, I can make an argument for it that doesn’t rely on religion. It’s basically the social precautionary principle. That argument fails because the entire point of _politicized_ social conservatism is to make laws against spontaneous social phenomena. (It won’t do to get meta and declare these laws to be part of the existing system which is to be preserved under some “social precautionary principle” – there are simply too many cases where the politicized social conservative agenda demands the repeal of existing laws, which is obviously ruled out when one resorts to this argument.) ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2014, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/71 "2014-05-20T14:11:01Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Perhaps something more dangerous like worship of the state, or something equally goofy like Gaia theory, new age nonsense about crystals and chakras and healing auras, Wicca, or tribal politics as secular religion? Those are goofy compared to what now? ---
**Author:** ![Red\_Wiggler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/red_wiggler/32/13190_2.png) [@Red\_Wiggler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Red_Wiggler)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2014, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/72 "2014-05-20T16:26:37Z")
It’s difficult for me to imagine another “Great Awakening” in the age of the internet. Previous forays into intense religiosity came in the times of respect for authority and poor avenues for the communication of ideas. Some generation is really going to have to go off the deep end for a new age of “traditional” morality to occur. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2014, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/73 "2014-05-20T16:27:26Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > It’s not a very sophisticated estimate, but you can do a back-of-the envelope estimate based on fertility rates and interconversion rates. > > Religious people have more children than secular ones\* (evangelicals have about 2.5 per women, secular people about 1.5), and people raised ‘secular’ are somewhat more likely to convert to a religion as adults, than people raised religious are to lose their religion. (The Pew Forum refers to this as secularists having a lower ‘retention rate’ than religious people as a whole, and also lower than most individual religions). Those two are factors that tend to decrease the relative proportion of secularists. On the flip side, there is a much larger _number_ of religious people right now, in America. So even if only 33% of raised-religious people convert to secularism as adults, as compared to 50% of people raised secular, that still produces a net outflow of people from religion into secularism. > > Assuming birth rates and interconversion rates stay the same, the religious and secular populations should reach equilibrium at around 60:40. IIRC, relatively soon, within a couple generations or so. Anyone with the time and access to the data is welcome to make a better estimate, as I said this is purely back-of-the-envelope. > > \*Religiosity is also somewhat heritable, IIRC the heritability is around 0.5. Where are you getting these figures? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2014, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/74 "2014-05-20T16:28:32Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > I suspect there’s going to be more racial division in the near future rather than less, as well. What do you base that on? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2014, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/75 "2014-05-20T16:29:42Z")
> [@Red\_Wiggler](#): > > It’s difficult for me to imagine another “Great Awakening” in the age of the internet. Oh, it’s conceivable, by [some interpretations](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss_and_Howe) we had one in the '60s. But another **Christian** Great Awakening is out of the question. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2014, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/76 "2014-05-20T16:36:40Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > What do you base that on? Watch the old HBO movie, “The Second Civil War”. Balkanization is historically no nation’s friend. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2014, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/77 "2014-05-20T16:39:55Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Watch the old HBO movie, “The Second Civil War”. Balkanization is historically no nation’s friend. You know that was a made-up movie, and not a thing that actually happened, right? ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2014, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/78 "2014-05-20T16:45:31Z")
Well, \*Idiocracy \*may yet turn out to be a documentary, so yaneverknow. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2014, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/79 "2014-05-20T16:51:20Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > You know that was a made-up movie, and not a thing that actually happened, right? I recognize it’s a satire, and fiction, but like all good satire it was meant to make a point: a future America with 1 billion people, speaking several languages, and with racial enclaves all over, is not going to be a United States. Geez, even the Flemings and the Walloon can’t get along over in Belgium, and you think we’ll do better? ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2014, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/80 "2014-05-20T16:59:55Z")
We’ve never had multiple languages or racial enclaves before, have we? :rolleyes: [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632.md?page=5)