Let's Get One Thing Straight: Core Beliefs

An emergent strain of thought that ought to be quashed appears in the comments to my most recent post. Writes Greg:

Maybe it's time for Republicans to return to their roots? Let's go back to the start, decide what we believe in, and build a whole new platform.

Do we really need to be anti-gay? How does that really help us? ...

Are we really on the right side of the cloning debate? Are we saving babies or just stifling technological growth?

How can we properly frame the debate on social programs so that we can all come to an understanding and a middle ground?

Most of these things aren't hard if we put politics aside and start talking to each other like people that want to SOLVE problems.

Writes congressional candidate Jon Scott:

...we need to put aside our differences and come to some sort of agreement on flashpoint issues that divide the Party and pull us away from forward progress. That was one of the central tenets of my campaign.

In his comments, Hayden wrote: “The party needs to recruit some moderate, smart, energetic young people to make them relevant” and I couldn’t agree more as long as those recruits agree that taxes should be low, government should be small, and the US should have a strong national defense.

Some on this board will bristle at that sentiment because their definition of conservative is somewhat different. The problem is that those three principles are our core beliefs as a Party and we have abandoned them for social conservatism. It is fine to be socially conservative but we cannot be so at the expense of our core beliefs and that is what has happened in Washington.

The place to begin is with Greg's suggestion that we can "SOLVE problems" if only we'd put politics aside. The essential and unmitigable reality is that he has the democratic process exactly backwards. It is politics that enables us to resolve more fundamental differences — to "solve problems" as a civic grouping without devolving into violence. In other words, if we put politics aside, we aren't digging down to shared core beliefs, but rather, we are exposing our core beliefs as incompatible.

For example: If you want me to buy that the greater good is served by backing down the path toward evil (just a little, just this once, promise) to grant medical scientists the right to federal funds in order to clone and kill embryos, I say no sale. If you want me to compromise the crucial institution of marriage to gain the votes of people too spineless or indifferent to stand up to emotional blackmail, I say no deal. If you want me to accept that mothers can "initiate the demise" of their children as long as an inch of the newly formed bodies have not yet tasted air, I say, so help me God, no.

These are "core beliefs." These are principles. You put politics aside, and this is what you get.

Low taxes and small government are preferences that must serve more substantive beliefs. For some — to give the liberal cliché its due — those more substantive beliefs are greed and selfishness. For others, they are liberty and independence. For still others, they are means toward the development of moral maturity. The political system is what enables us to work together, despite fundamental differences, to implement our shared governmental preferences. With those preferences in place, we act in other arenas (most notably, the social sphere) in order to turn them toward our ends.

I wouldn't be surprised if a significant portion of modern lowercase-L libertarians would allow all that I've written thus far — whether out of agreement or for the sake of argument. The friction appears when we acknowledge — or put forward for acknowledgment — the fact that libertarianism is negated not by social conservatives, but by liberals. What do we do when, as is currently the case, social conservatives must put aside their preferences for the sake of defending their core beliefs against liberals? How ought libertarians and the representatives of our shared Republican coalition respond when social conservatives feel it necessary — as with abortion, embryonic stem-cell research, and same-sex marriage — to assert their core beliefs beyond the social sphere, into the civic sphere?

What I would advise is sufficiently obvious that I won't be so forward as to make you read something that goes without saying. I will express, however, my analytical understanding that a political party will not win majority support based on civic preferences alone. Of itself, the statement "you should support small government" lacks a "because."

Most definitely, Republicans must decide what they believe in. Personally, I think social conservatives provide a supremely rich supply of compelling "becauses," if only libertarians and "moderates" would trace conservatives' reasoning back from our points of agreement. If the first two groups come to agree that the third group is correct on this or that issue, then we will jointly be able to articulate our platform in broader terms. If disagreement remains, then we will jointly be able to articulate why inclusion of arguable parts of our platform allows broader advancement.

But if Republicans' conclusion is that it is not politically expedient to support that which I actually do believe, on higher planes than politics and government mechanisms, then they cannot count me among their number.