“...small government and fiscal conservatism will not survive the victory of social leftism.”
This is true. Sorry. The libertarians are wrong. One cannot have small government when the vast majority of citizens are immoral and/or unwilling to restrain the sinful impulses that are a natural part of human life. We are riding on the momentum of morality left from previous generations, but it’s coming to an end. The closest we ever came to a libertarian society was at the founding. It’s not realistic to believe majorities will now vote against their own selfish interests to restrain the federal government. Voting against one’s own interests is also a socially conservative virtue.
One of the reasons, if not the main reason, the vast majority of citizens are immoral and don’t restrain themselves, if they in fact are, is because of social engineering by the government. You’re not going to solve it without taking away policies which create and support it. Then, when people are on their own, you can have a Great Awakening, or whatever.
I don’t think a person who doesn’t think people would be better on their own—that is, without nanny government—when they must be responsible or die, is actually a conservative. No matter how incapable the people appear at present of achieving anything beyond overriding or starving to death within a couple months.
It is hardly realistic to attempt to sustain moral virtues with a giant government acting against them. The chicken and egg might be a little hard to separate here, but the leftists did not take over because someone on our side didn't run socially conservative. They took over because they are a self-sustaining cabal, and they coopted people like George W Bush into growing the government. (Not to mention Nixon).
“One cannot have small government when the vast majority of citizens are immoral and/or unwilling to restrain the sinful impulses that are a natural part of human life”
And how would you propose to choose those virtuous individuals who would manage that large government that will force us all to be virtuous? By a vote of that unvirtuous majority?. That’s the problem that we have now.