I am a civic conservative, a “civ-con.”
At the level of highest principle civic conservatism emphasizes the Unum in E Pluribus Unum and puts American national cohesion over any group interest. The intellectual origins of civic conservatism can be traced to George Washington’s Farewell Address.Citizens by birth or choice, of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections. The name American, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of Patriotism, more than any appellation derived from local discriminations.
As Washington scholar Matthew Spalding of the Heritage Foundation puts it: “Above all, the Farewell Address directs the American regime toward Union, or unity, rather than diversity. America must be something more than a league of states or regions, a collection of various groups and interests.”
In terms of contemporary policy, civic conservatism emphasizes the following principles: the equality of American citizenship; the learning of America’s history and values, properly understood; the imperative of assimilating immigrants patriotically into the American way of life (what we proudly used to call Americanization); and the indivisibility of American sovereignty.
The leaders of a serious civic conservatism would not simply rely upon “feel-good” personal stories or platitudes about “common values” and “living the American dream” as substitutes for policy. Instead, they would directly challenge the anti-assimilationist agenda of the past thirty years with the ultimate objective of “roll-back,” to borrow from the successful Jim Burnham-Bill Buckley-Ronald Reagan Cold War strategy. Like the old evil empire, the multicultural-“diversity”-PC machine is based on lies and riddled with “internal contradictions.” It, too, might crumble when confronted with real resistance…
Among the broad population, many so-called Reagan Democrats, as well as most average Republican voters, possess instinctive civ-con tendencies….Civic conservative issues are strongly supported by the general public, although often resisted by elites and special interests. They are an untapped source of strength for an articulate candidate who would internalize them and make them his own.
I think a lot of Americans long for a day when we’re just, ya know, Americans and everyone can embrace a shared national culture and heritage. And by the way, that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for other group-based cultures, etc., it just means that those with a cultural heritage from other countries or groups should also embrace American culture as their own. An important and basic requisite for maintaining a strong nation is that it’s people identify with a shared national culture and heritage. In short, that they “buy into it.” If people continue to view America as only a place to make a buck and disregard the civic obligations that go with the financial (and civic) benefits, then America may indeed go the way of Rome.
[Open full post]I know. I’m not supposed to be posting anything on the 2008 Presidential campaign before June. However, I’m adding a codicil to my New Year’s resolution: I can make an exception when able to present primary-source material about a Presidential candidate (or someone with a Presidential exploratory committee) that adds to a discussion area already active here at Anchor Rising.
At the National Review Institute’s (direct quote from NRO-Editor-at-Large Jonah Goldberg: “Whatever that is”) Conservative Summit held this past weekend in Washington D.C., Presidential Candidate and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney gave a substantive address on his philosophy concerning the major issues in American politics — limited and fiscally conservative government, healthcare, foreign policy, and social and life issues. Here’s what Governor Romney had to say about gay marriage, abortion and stem-cell research…
Governor Mitt Romney: When I ran [for Governor of Massachusetts], there were a couple of social issues that were part of that debate. You probably know what some of them were.
One was gay marriage. I opposed then and do now oppose gay marriage and civil unions.
One was related to abortion. My opponent was in favor of lowering the age where a young woman could get an abortion without parental consent from 18 to 16…I, of course, opposed changing the law in that regard.
Another issue was the death penalty, I was for, [my opponent] was against.
Another was English immersion. For a long time, our state had bilingual education, where the schools or the parents get to choose what language their child is taught in. I said that’s just not right. If kids want to be successful in America, they have to learn the language of America. We fought for that, and by the way, I won that one, my opponent did not.
Now, as you know, after I got elected, Massachusetts became sort of the center stage for a number of very important social issues, one of them being gay marriage. I am proud of the fact that I and my team did everything within our power and within the law to stand up for traditional marriage. This is not, in my view and the view of my team, a matter of adult rights. We respect the rights of gay citizens to live as they wish and to have tolerance and respect and not be discriminated against. I feel that very deeply. At the same time, we believe that marriage is not primarily about adults. In a society, marriage is primarily about the development and nurturing of children. A child’s development, I believe, is enhanced by access to a mom and a dad. I believe in every child’s right to a mom and a dad.
Now, there’s one key social issue where I did not run as a social conservative, at least one. That was with regards to abortion. I said I would protect a woman’s right to choose an abortion. I’ve changed my view on that, as you probably know.
Let me tell you the history about that. Some years ago, when I was at the Olympics, I met a guy named Mark Lewis. He was head of our marketing there. He told me that he was a finalist for a Rhodes scholarship. I don’t know how far he got. His final interview was with a German interviewer and the interviewer said to him “Mr. Lewis, who is one of your political heroes?” and he said Ronald Reagan. The German had the predictable response — *GASP*. He said how in the world can you square that statement with what Churchill said, which is that “a young person who is not a liberal has no heart?” Mark responded by repeating the last portion of that Churchillian comment, that “an older person who was not a conservative had no brain” and adding “I, Herr Doctor, simply matured early”.
On abortion, I wasn’t always a Ronald Reagan conservative. Neither was Ronald Regan, by the way. But like him, I learned with experience.
In my case, the point where that experience came most to bear was with regards to learning about stem-cell research. Let me tell you, there are so many different ways of getting stem cells. I was delving into that because my legislature was proposing new legislation that re-defined when life began. I think it’s interesting that the legislature thinks it has the capacity to make that determination. Our state had always said that life began at conception, but they were going to re-define when life began, so I spent some time learning (with, by the way, a number of people in this room who helped) about all of the different types and sources of stem-cells, not only adult stem cells and umbilical stem cells and stem cells from existing lines, but also surplus embryos from in-vitro fertilization. I supported all of those.
But for me, there was a bright-line when you started creating new life for the purposes of destruction and experimentation. That was somatic-cell nuclear transfer (or cloning) and also what’s known as embryo farming. At one point, I was sitting down with the head of the stem-cell research department at Harvard and the provost of Harvard University, and they were explaining these techniques to me. I imagined in my mind this embryo farming. Embryo farming is taking donor sperm and donor eggs and putting them together in the laboratory and creating a new embryo. If that’s not creating new life, then I don’t know what is. I imagined row after row after row of racks of these, created either by the cloning process or the farming process. At that point, one of the two gentleman said, “Governor, there’s really not a moral issue at stake here, because we destroy the embryos at 14 days”. I have to tell you, that comment and that perspective hit me very hard. As he left the room with his colleague, I turned to Beth Myers, my chief of staff, and said I want to make it real clear: we have so cheapened the value and sanctity of human life in our society that someone can think there’s not a moral issue because we kill embryos at 14 days.
Shortly thereafter, I announced I was firmly pro-life.
Now, you don’t have to take my word for it, by the way. The nice thing about being able to watch governors is you don’t have to look just at what they say, you can look at what they’ve done. Over my term, I had 4 or 5 different measures that came to my desk [concerning life issues] and on every single one I came down on the side of respecting human life. That didn’t make me real popular in the state. Remember, in Massachusetts, Ted Kennedy is considered a moderate….
In the next few days, I’ll have more from Mitt Romney on other issues, excerpts from Newt Gingrich and Jeb Bush on the meaning and future direction of conservatism and from Tony Snow on the Iraq Surge and the President’s new healthcare proposal, plus a whole lot of insights and opinions that I heard discussed at the conference that will bring you up-to-date on the state of conservatism…
WASHINGTON D.C — I am attending the National Review Institute’s Conservative Summit this weekend, and will post some of the interesting views I am hearing at the beginning of next week.
However, I want to mention one item right away. In between panel sessions, I ran into Time Magazine columnist Joe Klein and had the chance to ask him if he meant to imply that 401(k)’s should be abolished or scaled back when he wrote in a Swampland blog-post from January 22 that “all benefits received from employers should be included in salary totals”. Mr. Klein answered that he was not suggesting that 401(k)’s should be scaled back, but that there were other benefits that should be included as taxable salary to make the tax-code more progressive.
Economist Larry Kudlow sites a story from the NY Times, which includes this bit:
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Thursday that union membership fell by 326,000 in 2006, to 15.4 million workers, bringing the percentage of employees in unions to 12 percent, down from 12.5 percent in 2005. Those figures are down from 20 percent in 1983 and from 35 percent in the 1950s…
Kudlow then observes:
Take a look at the high union states vs. the low union states.
The high union states—New York, New Jersey, Washington, etc—also happen to be high tax, slow growth, population losing, states.
On the other hand, the low union states—places like Utah, Virginia, and both Carolinas—are low tax, pro business, population growing states, with strong economic growth.
It tells you something, doesn’t it?
For more on the “population losing” part, check out this regional analysis by Michael Barone (and he really digs deep in this breakdown). Barone notes:
[Open full post]As for internal migration, people are voting with their feet against the East and California in droves. Here are the states with the biggest negative net internal migration:
Calif. 287,684
La. 241,201
N.Y. 225,766
N.J. 72,547
Ill. 68,661
Mich. 65,123
Mass. 49,528
Ohio 48,153
These tend to be states with high tax rates, high housing costs and aging industrial bases.
Here are the states with the biggest positive net internal migration:
Texas 218,745
Fla. 165,757
Ariz. 129,987
Ga. 120,953
N.C. 104,133
Nev. 53,105
Tenn. 50,383
S.C. 47,950
These tend to be low tax states, with booming economies. And mostly southern: the only western states are Arizona and Nevada. Indeed, the net internal in-migration into the Rocky Mountain states (268,607) is lower than the net internal out-migration from California (287,684).
We’ve talked A LOT about the direction of the RI GOP around here (scroll down to the bottom and start reading). Now State Rep. John Loughlin is wading in with his two cents. First, he thinks that everyone is spending too much time worrying about party structure and political tactics and “ignoring the fundamental question: What does it mean to be a Republican in Rhode Island?” His answer:
I believe that, simply put, Rhode Island Republicans share a set of core principles that deserve to be articulated in public discourse. While there are many differences on the specifics of policy, Republicanism, I believe, shares the following things, among others, that differentiate us from our Democratic colleagues.
Rhode Island Republicans believe in a limited government grounded in constitutional principles. We believe in the free-enterprise system and the encouragement of individual initiative. We hold dear the principles embodied in the U.S. Constitution, that the powers of government are derived from the consent of the governed, and the rule of law.
In Rhode Island, this means we stand in opposition to the expansion of government, and more importantly, in opposition to the growing burdens on individual prosperity cause by excessive taxation. That would put us squarely in opposition to the expansion of public-sector unions, and the creation of ever more publicly-funded “programs.” We believe that it is only through the expansion of economic opportunity in Rhode Island that all of us will enjoy greater prosperity.
So far, so good, and after a bit about the “ever-escalating tax burden and its ringleader, the real-estate property tax,” he continues with his list:
Next, Republicans support the protection of individual liberty. In Abraham Lincoln’s day, that meant opposition to slavery. Rhode Island Republicans to this day continue to work for the equality, opportunity and rights of all citizens. This manifests itself in our opposition to special insider deals designed to enrich special interests.
Lastly, Rhode Island Republicans believe in protecting our environment. In the Ocean State that means an unbending commitment to preserving our surroundings. We know that a healthy environment and a sound economy are both essential to our state’s prosperity. We believe that by working together, we can preserve both our environment and our economy for current and future generations of Rhode Islanders. In Rhode Island we enjoy a very special and fragile beauty in our environment. We support the various land trusts and private-public partnerships whose mission is to encourage the protection and preservation of open space.
That’s about right and probably a solid set of core values on which the RI GOP can rebuild. In fact, it’s essentially what’s been talked about around here for a couple months now (I guess Rep. Loughlin doesn’t read blogs). For instance, after the election, I wrote a whole series on the question of rebuilding the RI GOP, which included both philosophical and tactical points and which received heavy, and fruitful, commentary.
One final note: I did notice that Rep. Loughlin clearly stayed away from including any position on social issues in his laundry list. Both Justin and I have written about this rhetorical hole before (Justin does it better, by the way) so I want belabor it. So, insofar as Rep. Loughlin is attempting to define those basic ideas on which a RI GOP coalition–made up of libertarians, moderates and conservatives–can agree (something Jon Scott has also done, incidentally), I would say he has made a good start. We’ll see what happens in the coming months.
Even days later, I find Klaus’s comments to my recent post dizzying. Sometimes — I’d suggest — the fact that every bit of evidence points to your conclusion, even those bits that are contradictory, is above all evidence that your conclusion is a priori.
In one breath, industrial manufacturing companies have it all over modern high-tech companies because they spread wealth more broadly:
And, did you realize that, at it’s peak, GM alone employed almost a million people? And each well-paid GM worker could support another 5-10 others (merchants, bankers, dentists, etc.) And there were how many large industrial employers like that? That’s a lot of $$ to spread around an economy.
Microsoft, OTOH, employs 40,000? Which situation creates more wealth for the whole economy?
In another breath, unions are the best thing since a hammer and sickle specifically for the reason that they enable workers’ children to exchange their blue collars for white:
Another reason union membership peaked in the 50s, and wages continued to increase is that the economy was transitioning from a manufacturing-base to a service-sector based economy. Those blue-collar kids who grew up on the Mickey Mouse Club didn’t go work in the factory like dad; they became white-collar workers.
In one breath, putting money in the hands of the government is a positive good:
Odd, though: there was a period in which the stagnation in wages was arrested and even reversed. During the Clinton presidency. You know, all those high taxes? But ol’ George W comes along and cuts them taxes and the median wage starting going right back down again. And, btw, gov’t revenues dropped. GWB is the only president who did not collect more in taxes than his predecessor.
In another breath, the unfair distribution of government largesse is mindblowing:
And the people looking for handouts could just as easily be corporations. Ever read the tax code? One hand-out after another. Ever hear of the sugar subsidy? Or the last agriculture bill? A $200B handout. It blows my mind that you quibble over a couple of bucks and swallow the billions given to corporations every year.
What’s missing from all of this recitation of factoids is any sense of practicality — of functionality. Give the government $200 billion, and those who run the government will hand it out to the powerful, not the downtrodden. Mandate that it be given to the downtrodden and observe as a new species of elite parasites creates an unnecessary industry of middlemen.
The entire point of my previous post was to address such declarations as this, from Klaus:
A better solution is to raise the wages of the taxpayers. And that means their wages.
How do Klausians propose to do that? (Please reread the previous post before you answer, if need be.) This is the question that they will not answer any differently than would a clueless emperor: “Just make it so.”
Klaus makes much of his comparison with the economic regime of the 1890s, but although I would never gainsay the importance of learning from history, such comparisons apply an antiquated lesson. For one thing, technology has vastly improved the ability of the working class to communicate, organize, and attract attention to their plight. For another, the equation of Microsoft with the industrial behemoths of the 19th century leaves me cold. As far as I’ve seen, nobody has suggested that Microsoft’s position has given it leeway to force employees into inhumane circumstances. If we’re talking human exploitation, I would have us keep a view of the fundamental differences between building a railroad and building the Internet.
But if we’re talking strategies to leverage our representative democracy to distribute wealth more fairly, then I’d have us ponder the forces — much greater than government economic policy — that created the different monopolies. The nineteenth century in the United States was in many ways a giant push for geographic expansion and industrial advancement. To put it in ugly terms, it was in the public interest to consolidate resources and exploit workers who facilitated those ends.
As I’ve said, the Microsoft-style monopoly isn’t remotely as oppressive, but the existence of underlying drivers beyond government policy still holds. Consider your own experience: why did you buy a Windows operating system (or Apple’s version for elites)? The dominant reasons can be summed up as standardization and reliability. The functionality and compatibility of a Microsoft operating system is the same on the home PC as on the office workstation, and both have been through decades of public development.
To translate this observation into the socio-economic discussion at hand, the most beneficial area of focus for folks who’d like to leverage our shared government to blow the IT windfall more expansively should be on the causes of the market forces that have led to the current situation — standardization and reliability — not on demands that we pour more resources, directly and indirectly, into the public finance shell game.
P.S., Klaus, if you’re measuring “full time” as 40 hours per week when you ask whether I’m “OK with the idea that someone can work full-time and not make enough to live on,” then I’d reply that I have no choice but to be OK with it. My standard week is, by that measure, full-time and a half, but the weeks that I can earn what I need — with a mixture of white and blue collar work — are those during which I work double time. That is the reality of heading a five-person (plus dog) household in a state in which the rich who dominate the power structure exorcise their guilt by legislating handouts rather than handing out from their own stockpiles.
Let’s boil it down, shall we? Isn’t the liberal/progressive prescription for inequities pretty explicitly universal dependency?
Dale Light offers a concise (and good) summary of the developing pan-Middle East political situation:
Already I am seeing analyses that say that the new middle-east lineup of Sunni states against Iran is vastly preferable to what existed before the Iraq invasion {for instance, here – MAC}. Suddenly the Sunni regimes are scared and need us to protect them from Iran. Our influence with them has never been greater. The New Republic thinks Bush just blundered into this favorable outcome, but others think that our diplomacy in the region has been aimed all along at dividing the region along sectarian and ethnic lines. Such a division undercuts pan-Islamist movements like al-Qaeda and the Iranian mullahs’ offensive, takes pressure off Israel, creates a broad Arab alliance supporting Lebanese independence, insures that OPEC won’t be agreeing on much of anything in the near future, counters Iran’s attempts to build an anti-American network of oil-producers, and gives the US [as opposed to the EU or China, neither of which can project a credible military force into the region] unprecedented leverage to influence regional development for decades to come. And don’t forget, Iraq will not be much of a threat to anyone anytime soon.
If we think of Iran, not al Qaeda, as the biggest regional threat in the future, and remember that ever since 1978 the “Islamic Republic” has been trying to forge an Islamist, anti-western, regional bloc that can use oil as an economic weapon, then the Iraq adventure makes one hell of a lot of sense. It is time to stop thinking about Iraq as a “war” to be “won” or “lost” and instead recognize that it is an essential part of a broader effort to remake the political, military, and economic map of the Middle East. It is this broader initiative, not the immediate military situation in Iraq, that really matters.
As Light further explains, this was the “neocon” vision all along and even some in the press and (sigh) the State Department are finally waking up to the realization that the Iraq War, ya know, really is just part of a bigger conflict. Read on for more.
[Open full post]Nathan Smith at TCS daily offers this contrast between how President Bush and Sen. Jim Webb view the poverty question:
President Bush has proposed an array of policies that confront different aspects of real deprivation as experienced by the poor here and abroad: bad education, lack of legal status and fear of deportation, lack of health care and disease. Of course, also critical to poverty alleviation is the ongoing success of the US economy, which, as the president mentioned, has created 7.2 million jobs since the beginning of the current expansion. Jobs are both the best way out of poverty and, as presidential aspirant John Edwards has said, a source of “dignity and self-respect.” By calling for a balanced budget in five years, without raising taxes, President Bush made a bid to preserve a business climate in which prosperity will continue.
While the president is interested in dealing with specific aspects of poverty and deprivation, he is not interested in the position of poor people relative to others. Senator Webb is. “When I graduated from college,” remarks Senator Webb, “the average corporate CEO made 20 times what the average worker did; today, it¹s nearly 400 times.” Or again, “Wages and salaries for our workers are at all-time lows as a percentage of national wealth.” In each case, the statistic he cites is a ratio: the average worker’s wages compared to those of the CEO; wages and salaries compared to national wealth. That the average worker is much wealthier in absolute terms than he was thirty years ago does not seem to interest Webb much: what matters is that his relative wealth has decreased.
In short, it’s the rhetoric of class warfare and “envy” (Webb) versus the rhetoric of “altruism” (Bush). Read the whole thing for a further explanation.
[Open full post]The Rhode Island legislature has picked up right where it left off last session on the issue of eminent domain reform, with Representative Charlene Lima’s (D-Cranston) not-very-good bill as the leading candidate in the House. Here’s the main body of her proposed “reform” (H5079)…
37-6-13.2. Limitations on acquisition of land. – (a) Notwithstanding any provision of law to the contrary, no public corporation, municipality, quasi-state agency, state agency, or any political subdivision thereof, shall exercise their power of eminent domain to acquire private property for the purpose of conferring a private benefit or use for a particular private entity…It is difficult to say that this law would mean anything at all, for two reasons…
- If the government declares that raising the tax-value of a property is the “purpose” of a taking, and that conferring a private benefit is just an means to an end, is that allowed or not?
- The inclusion of the “particular” modifier, as Representative Nick Gorham pointed out last session, does nothing but add confusion. Suppose the government takes a neighborhood by eminent domain, then splits the land between two condo developers. Or how about giving it to just one condo developer, whose project will eventually be purchased by multiple owners? Because benefits will eventually go to more than one “particular private entity”, is the taking allowed or not?
President Bush outlined a serious healthcare reform plan in last night’s State of the Union. The President’s plan is to replace the existing tax-exemption that applies only to money spent on employer-sponsored health insurance with a standard deduction that can be taken by any individual who purchases health insurance, regardless of employer or employment status.
1. Assuming the size of the deductions is reasonable, opposing this plan tantamount to saying “I oppose tax-breaks for individuals; tax-breaks should only be given to big corporations”. And yet we will surely see this reaction from the usually anti-business left. In fact, we already do.
If libs can get past their knee-jerk “if Bush is for it, I’m against it” response to the entire universe, they will see that this plan addresses many of their complaints about Wal-Mart not providing insurance to enough of its employees. Under the Bush plan, for example, companies lose financial incentive to hire lots of part-time workers to avoid paying health benefits.
Arnold Kling of the Cato Institute systematically sums up and counters liberal reactions he has observed to the President’s plan (h/t Instapundit)…
Since the President’s plan was leaked, I have seen three complaints from the left.2. However, the biggest challenge to the President’s proposal may not come from organized liberal shrieking, but from misunderstanding at America’s apolitical center. Under the current system, employers do little more than choose the health plans that their employees will be allowed to spend their own salaries on. In spite of this, many individuals enrolled in employer-sponsored health plans are convinced that their employers are “giving” them something for nothing. When they hear about tax-code changes that will end the special status of employer based coverage, they will feel that the government is trying to take something away from them — even though most will be able to to purchase same amount coverage with the same amount of money via an individual plan. Overcoming this perception will be one of the toughest challenges faced by Bush plan supporters.In my view (2) and (3) are positive developments….As for (1), I fail to see the cause for alarm. Consider the status quo. An economist on the faculty at Princeton who receives generous health benefits from the University is able to enjoy them tax-free. So can the professor’s secretary. But, as with all tax breaks, there is a vertical inequity — the professor derives more benefit from the tax break than does the secretary. But today there is a horizontal inequity as well. A self-employed economist and a self-employed secretary get no tax break for obtaining comprehensive health insurance.
- The tax break benefits the rich more than the poor.
- The tax break encourages people to leave employer-provided health plans and instead get health insurance on their own.
- The proposals encourage catastrophic health insurance rather than insulation.
Now, if the President’s proposal is enacted, the self-employed economist and the self-employed secretary will get a tax break….
My sense is that the hard left is going to dig in against the President’s proposals. Too bad for the millions of people for whom health insurance is more expensive simply because where they work falls outside the corporate umbrella.
3. To really make the Bush plan work, people must be allowed to buy insurance across state lines. Today’s OpinionJournal article on the President’s plan mentions that “the average employer-sponsored family plan runs about $11,500 annually”. Even for someone in the top tax-bracket, a $15,000 deduction would pay for less than half of a $11,500 plan. But the $11,500 figure averages together nsurance costs in high-regulation, high-cost states (like Rhode Island) with insurance costs in low-regulation, low-cost states (like Idaho).
I poked around the “ehealthinsurance” website (as suggested by Anchor Rising commenter Emily Harding) and found that in some states, high-deductible insurance plans are available for a family of four in the range of $2,500 – $4,000. If people are given the freedom to escape from legislative mandates that drive the cost of insurance up, they should be able to find affordable coverage with the numbers the President is using.
4. Barack Obama was wrong in his post-SOTU interview with Charlie Gibson of ABC when he said there are no cost-controls in the President’s plan (no link available). The cost-controls come from introducing transparency and choice into medical care, both of which are currently lacking in a system where an employer hands you a very complex health plan and tells you to “take it or leave it”. Could Obama be confusing “cost controls” with “price controls”?
5. ‘Tis not all praise I have for President Bush for proposing this plan. Here’s my criticism: Why didn’t he propose something like this when his party controlled both houses of Congress? [Open full post]
