Tantalizing though the prospect may be, for now let’s just take Ron Paul’s straw poll victory as a sign of the high-spirited vibe of this year’s CPAC. And all the quarreling should encourage conservatives — it speaks to a vibrancy and diversity in the conservative movement that often goes unrecognized.
Just like it would be false to tar the burgeoning democratic revolution in Egypt as an orchestrated coup by religious extremists, it is equally wrong to lump most of the conference’s attendees in with Frank Gaffney and his conspiratorial ilk.
But Kevin McCullough isn’t as welcoming:
“Libertarians and Conservatives are as different as Libertarians and Liberals. The truth is libertarians are the worst form of political affiliation in the nation. Combining the desire of economic greed, with the amoral desire to promote any behavior regardless of its cost to our culture is a stark departure from the intent of the Founding Fathers.”
The inclusion of GOProud, a gay conservative organization, was among the weekend’s controversies. Though it was their second year in attendance, Mike Huckabee, Jim DeMint, the Media Research Center and several religious groups boycotted the conference in response to GOProud’s involvement.
Well, intelligent people know that supporting equal legal protection for gay couples is not quite the same thing as “promoting any behavior regardless of its cost.” The basic principle of libertarianism is that the permissiveness of a behavior varies in relation to its cost to other people. Arguments against the legal recognition of gay couples come from either a religious, taxonomic or social standpoint — either God says it’s not cool, it isn’t “marriage,” or it will lead to the collapse of civilization as we know it.
Most Americans favor civil unions for gay couples, effectively ending the taxonomic argument, and there is no data at all to support the social one (though it’s often used anyway), leaving only biblical justifications for opposing legal recognition for same-sex couples. Continuing to grind that axe will only land conservatives alongside millenialists and the John Birch Society in the annals of unrealized apocalyptic prophesying.
Fortunately Gov. Mitch Daniels understands that Mr. McCullough is dead wrong.
In an interview with the Weekly Standard, he was quoted as saying conservatives “would have to call a truce on the so-called social issues. We’re going to just have to agree to get along for a little while.” Compared to looming fiscal issues like the national debt, the argument goes, social ones are insignificant. I would add that a Republican party that hews too tightly to social conservatism loses its clout with young voters.
On cue, the Reagan-era ‘three-legged stool’ metaphor has been trotted out to demonstrate that social conservatism is an indispensable wing of the conservative movement. It was a useful metaphor right up until the midterm elections, but it isn’t any longer. Reeling from the backlash of the Bush administration, itself a stool with only two legs, the term articulated a movement on the defensive, just trying not to fall over.
But now that the American electorate appears ready to give conservative principles another go, let me propose that wheels rather than chair legs make a better metaphor. And everyone knows bicycles ride faster and further than tricycles. It’s time to cut the training wheel loose.
Libertarianism is a sensible political ideology for Christians who don’t hold to dogmas of biblical inerrancy and religious jurisprudence. In an age where greater access to educational resources has led to less dogmatic interpretations of faith, Republican presidential hopefuls ignore libertarian voters to their own peril.
Jordan Bloom is an editor for the Virginia Informer. He is a member of the Student Free Press Association.
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