A Frothy Mixture of Collectivism and Conservatism

In 1960, a Republican senator named Barry Goldwater published a little book called The Conscience of a Conservative . The first printing of 10,000 copies led to a second of the same size, then a third of 50,000, until ultimately it sold more than 3 million copies. Goldwater's presidential candidacy crashed in 1964, but his ideas did not: For decades, Goldwater's hostility to Big Government ruled the American Right. Until, approximately, now.

Rick Santorum, a second-term Republican senator from Pennsylvania, has written a new book called It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good . The book is worth taking seriously for several reasons, not least of which is that it is a serious book. The writing and thinking are consistently competent, often better than that. The lapses into right-wing talk-radioese ("liberals practically despise the common man") are rare. Santorum wrestles intelligently, often impressively, with the biggest of big ideas: freedom, virtue, civil society, the Founders' intentions. Although he is a Catholic who is often characterized as a religious conservative, he has written a book whose ambitions are secular. As its subtitle promises, it is about conservatism, not Christianity.

Above all, it is worth noticing because, like Goldwater's Conscience, it lays down a marker. As Goldwater repudiated Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon, so Santorum repudiates Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. It's now official: Philosophically, the conservative movement has split. Post-Santorum, tax-cutting and court-bashing can hold the Republican coalition together for only so much longer.

As a policy book, It Takes a Family is temperate. It serves up a healthy reminder that society needs not just good government but strong civil and social institutions, and that the traditional family serves all kinds of essential social functions. Government policies, therefore, should respect and support family and civil society instead of undermining or supplanting them. Parents should make quality time at home a high priority. Popular culture should comport itself with some sense of responsibility and taste.

Few outside the hard cultural Leftâ€”certainly not Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) who makes several cameos as Santorum's bete noirâ€”would disagree with much of that. Not in 2005, anyway. Moreover, Santorum's policy proposals sit comfortably within the conservative mainstream. But It Takes a Family is more than a policy book. Its theory of "conservatism and the common good" seeks to rechannel the mainstream.

In Santorum's view, freedom is not the same as liberty. Or, to put it differently, there are two kinds of freedom. One is "no-fault freedom," individual autonomy uncoupled from any larger purpose: "freedom to choose, irrespective of the choice." This, he says, is "the liberal definition of freedom," and it is the one that has taken over in the culture and been imposed on the country by the courts.

Quite different is "the conservative view of freedom," "the liberty our Founders understood." This is "freedom coupled with the responsibility to something bigger or higher than the self." True liberty is freedom in the service of virtueâ€”not "the freedom to be as selfish as I want to be," or "the freedom to be left alone," but "the freedom to attend to one's dutiesâ€”duties to God, to family, and to neighbors."

This kind of freedom depends upon and serves virtue, and virtue's indispensable incubator and transmitter is the family. Thus "selflessness in the family is the basis for the political liberty we cherish as Americans." If government is to defend liberty and promote the common welfare, then it must promote and defend the integrity of the traditional family. In doing so, it will foster virtue and rebuild the country's declining social and moral capital, thus fostering liberty and strengthening family. The liberal cycle of declineâ€”families weaken, disorder spreads, government steps in, families weaken still furtherâ€”will be reversed.

"Freedom is not self-sufficient," writes Santorum. He claims the Founders' support, and quotes John Adams ("Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people") and George Washington to that effect. But as University of Maryland political scientist William A. Galston notes, Washington and (especially) Adams stood at one end of a spectrum of debate, and it was a debate that they ultimately lost.

Other Foundersâ€”notably James Madison, the father of the Constitutionâ€”were more concerned with power than with virtue. They certainly distinguished between liberty and license, and they agreed that republican government requires republican virtues. But they believed that government's foremost calling was not to inculcate virtue but to prevent tyranny. Madison thus argued for a checked, limited government that would lack the power to impose any one faction's view of virtue on all others.

Freedom, for Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and others, was an end, not just a means. A government that allows individuals to pursue happiness in their own fashions, they believed, is most likely to produce a strong society and a virtuous citizenry; but the greatest benefit of freedom is freedom itself. Civic virtue ultimately serves individual freedom, rather than the other way around.

It was in this tradition that Goldwater wrote, "Every man, for his individual good and for the good of his society, is responsible for his own development." Note that word "and": Individual and social welfare go togetherâ€”they're not in conflict. All the government needs to do, Goldwater said, is get out of the way. "The conservative's first concern will always be: Are we maximizing freedom?" Reagan spoke in the same tradition when he declared that government was the problem, not the solution to our problems.

Where Goldwater denounced collectivism as the enemy of the individual, Santorum denounces individualism as the enemy of family. On page 426, Santorum says this: "In the conservative vision, people are first connected to and part of families: The family, not the individual, is the fundamental unit of society." Those words are not merely uncomfortable with the individual-rights tradition of modern conservatism. They are incompatible with it.

Santorum seems to sense as much. In an interview with National Public Radio last month, he acknowledged his quarrel with "what I refer to as more of a libertarianish Right" and "this whole idea of personal autonomy." In his book he comments, seemingly with a shrug, "Some will reject what I have to say as a kind of 'Big Government' conservatism."

They sure will. A list of the government interventions that Santorum endorses includes national service, promotion of prison ministries, "individual development accounts," publicly financed trust funds for children, community-investment incentives, strengthened obscenity enforcement, covenant marriage, assorted tax breaks, economic literacy programs in "every school in America" (his italics), and more. Lots more.

Though he is a populist critic of Big Government, Santorum shows no interest in defining principled limits on political power. His first priority is to make government pro-family, not to make it small. He has no use for a constitutional (or, as far as one can tell, moral) right to privacy, which he regards as a "constitutional wrecking ball" that has become inimical to the very principle of the common good. Ditto for the notions of government neutrality and free expression. He does not support a ban on contraception, but he thinks the government has every right to impose one.

The quarrel between virtue and freedom is an ancient and profound one. Santorum's suspicion of liberal individualism has a long pedigree and is not without support in American history. Adams, after all, favored sumptuary laws that would restrict conspicuous consumption in order to promote a virtuous frugality. And Santorum is right to observe that no healthy society is made up of people who view themselves as detached and unencumbered individuals.

"But to move from that sociological truism to the proposition that the family is the fundamental unit of political liberty," says Galston, "goes against the grain of two centuries of American political thought, as first articulated in the Declaration of Independence." With It Takes a Family , Rick Santorum has served notice. The bold new challenge to the Goldwater-Reagan tradition in American politics comes not from the Left, but from the Right.

Jonathan Rauch is a senior writer and columnist for National Journal and a frequent contributor to Reason. The article was originally published by National Journal.

There's Liberty, and Freedom, and License. Each has a separate meaning, and not everyone agrees as to the precise meaning of each term.

My take:

Liberty -- society is unencumbered by layers of government restriction. You can live where you want, work where you want. Society may restrict individual action, and basic economic reality may restrict individual action even more, but government restrictions are intended to be minimized. The Republicans support this more than the Democrats.

Freedom -- individual actions are enabled. You want to go to college? Government will pay for it. You want to have an abortion? Government will pay for it. You are free to do as you wish, and be sure that others will bail you out if things go wrong. Democrats support this more than Republicans.

Or, to put it differently, there are two kinds of freedom. One is "no-fault freedom," individual autonomy uncoupled from any larger purpose: "freedom to choose, irrespective of the choice." This, he says, is "the liberal definition of freedom," and it is the one that has taken over in the culture and been imposed on the country by the courts.

Quite different is "the conservative view of freedom," "the liberty our Founders understood." This is "freedom coupled with the responsibility to something bigger or higher than the self." True liberty is freedom in the service of virtue -- not "the freedom to be as selfish as I want to be," or "the freedom to be left alone," but "the freedom to attend to one's duties -- ”duties to God, to family, and to neighbors."

Government is incapable of distinguishing between those two freedoms. Pretending that it will is significantly responsible for what ails the American family in particular and civic virtue generally.

Santorum says this: "In the conservative vision, people are first connected to and part of families: The family, not the individual, is the fundamental unit of society." Those words are not merely uncomfortable with the individual-rights tradition of modern conservatism. They are incompatible with it.

I agree with Santorum. An individual is not the basis of society. The family is because a family is a microcosm of all that society is: first, a unification of individuals. A society exists so that the individual can survive, grow and reach goals. If you do not believe that, then it seems to me, that any individual would have the right to raise the child of any other individual, or are children not considered individuals with rights?

I don't know that I believe in all the government programs that Santorum supports; I'd have to know more about them than is given in this article. I do know that government should not make laws which hamper the family or destroy its rights.

License -- individual action is unfettered. Anything goes. If it feels good, do it. The Modern approach. Santorum apparently doesn't like this. Neither do I. Libertarians support this more than either Republicans or Democrats.
Obligation: No obligations to anyone but yourself
Consequences: Bad things can happen and no one should be blamed except the individual who made choices that led to certain consequences.

Liberty -- society is unencumbered by layers of government restriction. You can live where you want, work where you want. Society may restrict individual action, and basic economic reality may restrict individual action even more, but government restrictions are intended to be minimized. The Republicans support this more than the Democrats.
Obligation: Individuals have obligations to other individuals and to society in general. Social constructions, such as the family or church, become centerpieces of social interaction. Individuals are valued, but are secondary to larger social forces. Government intrusion is to be expected if things go very wrong, and so society attempts to ameliorate problems within itself so that government intrusion is not invited.
Consequences: Anti-social behavior may lead to ostracism and perhaps even vigilante justice. Those who do not try to get along can expect little social assistance. Economic realities may be painful, although churches and charitable organizations are apt to cushion the blow to some extent.

Freedom -- individual actions are enabled. You want to go to college? Government will pay for it. You want to have an abortion? Government will pay for it. You are free to do as you wish, and be sure that others will bail you out if things go wrong. Democrats support this more than Republicans.
Obligation: No obligations to anyone but yourself. Society, however, and government itself is expected to have endless obligations to the individual.
Consequences: People who support this type of Freedom expect to be bailed out when trouble strikes.

Goldwater and Reagan, and Madison and Jefferson, were saying that if you restrain government, you will strengthen society and foster virtue. Santorum is saying something more like the reverse: If you shore up the family, you will strengthen the social fabric and ultimately reduce dependence on government.

Here is the heart of the debate. I agree with Goldwater and Reagan, and Madison and Jefferson. Earlier conservatives recognized the inseparable link between morality and virtue, on the one hand, and human free will on the other. The State is founded on the legal use of force, whereas Civil Society is rooted in moral persuasion. The State really is not capable of strengthening the social fabric, or promoting virtue beyond such narrow limits as "Thou Shall Not Kill", "Thou Shall Not Steal", etc. In sum the state can only "wield the sword" as a "terror to evil doers". It is only capable of restraining certain forms of vice, not positively promoting morality or virtue. Even in this limited role, it is often more likely to be an instrument that allows the evil doer to wield the sword as a terror to the innocent. IMHO, big government "conservatism" is an oxymoron that needs to be opposed.

The faulty assertion of the article is to link Goldwater ideologically to Reagan.

Goldwater was a radical libertarian who enthusiastically supported homosexuality and abortion. Peggy Goldwater, the wife of his youth, who died when he was about 66 years old, was an actual member of the national board of directors of Planned Parenthood USA from approximately 1940 to her death in 1975. To Peggy Goldwater's credit, she was part of the incoming group in a 1940 purge of the PP Board who swept the overt Nazi sympathizers like Margaret Sanger from the PP board. OTOH it would appear that the Sangers and the Lothrop Stoddards and their ilk had, through their overt praise of the Nazi Eugenics courts become grave public relations liabilities. Barry Goldwater, in spite of Reagan's magnificent nationally televised speech on his behalf in the 1964 campaign, never supported Reagan in return for any presidential nomination. Barry bragged that he had brought his own daughter to have her abortion(s). He also bragged that the homosexuality of several of his descendants was nobody's business but their own. Goldwater's morality was limited to matters other than sexual ethics or Judaeo-Christian morality. He objected wildly during his presidential campaign to a supportive group: Mothers for a Moral America because they touched on sexual morality with which he did not agree. Barry Goldwater was certainly colorful, unquestionably eccentric and quite dishonest in politics at least in his later years. Facing near certain defeat at the hands of a pro-life Democrat Bill Schultz (?) in 1980, Goldwater called Arizona pro-life leaders and purported to surrender to them if they would endorse him on the last weekend of the campaign. They made the colossal error of endorsing him. He squeaked into re-election by a sliver and then proceeded to tell the pro-lifers that he was going to vote pro-abort anyway and, since he would not be running for re-election, there was nothing they could do about it. This was accompanied by some impious flapdoodle about seeing the shade of dead Peggy and not wanting to disappoint her.

Reagan, on the other hand, had been a pro-abort as governor of California in his earliest years, signing a very pro-abort law passed by the California General Assembly. Within a year, Reagan, as governor, was going door-to-door with petitions for an initiative to outlaw abortion. He had seen the light. He never waffled thereafter and he committed the previously Planned Parenthood Bush the Elder (whose mother Dorithy served on the PP Board with Peggy Goldwater) to public support of the pro-life cause. Dubya is pro-life on his own via his faith. Reagan wrote a book against abortion and published it while in the White House and addressed the annual Pro-Life March each year he was president.

Like Ayn Rand (in an absolutely hysterical issue of her Ayn Rand letter pleading with her gulls to support Gerald Ford over Reagan in 1976 to save the sacred abortion holocaust, an illegitimate and unjustified initiation of force en masse if there ever was one), Goldwater viciously opposed Reagan for the 1976 nomination, even making a commercial warning California Republicans that Reagan would be a serious risk for starting a nuclear war (the same sort of commercial lie that Lyndon Johnson used to bury Goldwater in 1964). Of course Reagan's election four and eight years later resulted in the evaporation of the soviet union in the face of Reagan's restoration of American military strength and resolve against not only the soviets but also against numerous weak-kneed cabinet officers and his own wife.

` When Goldwater wrote Conscience of a Conservative, abortion was not an issue. Santorum agrees with Goldwater's book on national defense, military spending, guns, keeping taxes in check, the evil of communism and other totalitarian systems, the senselessness and evil of most forms of regulation, etc. The difference between the two men is very much a difference over family, abortion, sexual perversion and Santorum wins on each difference.

Santorum may lose his re-election bid because the Demonrats have gotten Bob Casey, Jr., to ignore their despising of his late father and run as a PRO-LIFE, PRO-FAMILY candidate against him. Thus, the race comes down to one between morality advocated by one who makes governmental Santa Claus promises (Casey, Jr., who is not the man his father was) and morality advocated by a common sense conservative (Santorum, who is one of the two or three best young GOP Senators).

If you are hunting for RINOs, then look for "Republicans" who support or even abide the wanton slaughter by slicing, dicing and hamburgerization of innocent unborn babies for the convenience of the spoiled pouty homicidal set like Goldwater and Goldwater's daughter. You won't go wrong.

The faulty assertion of the article is to link Goldwater ideologically to Reagan.

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