Readers Respond: Defining FrumForum's Mission
Last week, I asked readers to help write a one-sentence description of a modernized conservatism. We received almost 200 suggestions.
On Friday, I posted a bleg asking readers of AndrewSullivan.com and FrumForum.com for help writing a one-sentence description of a modernized, reformed conservatism. We've had a stunning response: almost 200 suggestions, via email from AndrewSullivan readers and in the comments section at FrumForum. They are enormously helpful, and I am very grateful. Let me share some of these ideas, and then offer a response.
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By far the most frequent objection to my proposed mission statement however was to its inclusion of the phrase "peaceful American-led world order."
Plaintively in some cases, ferociously in others, people asked: why should American world leadership be a goal of any kind of conservative politics?
My answer: consider the alternatives. For 60 years, the democratic countries have known ever-rising levels of affluence and security. This benign system of collective security and free trade has extended outward to encompass more and more countries: beyond western Europe to include central and eastern Europe, beyond Japan to reach the small countries of the Pacific Rim. We have not done so well in Latin America and the Middle East, but Chile at least has joined the system and Brazil likely soon will.
This construct is the work of no one country, but it ultimately rests upon the reassuring fact of American power. As Murray Kempton said of Dwight Eisenhower, it is the great tortoise on whose broad shell the world sat in sublime disregard of the source of its peace and security.
Just as even the most self-equilibriating markets need a lender of last resort, so even the most stable international system needs a security guarantor of last resort. Some describe the post-1945 system as a "democratic peace." But democracy alone did not suffice to keep the peace after 1918. It's an American-sustained peace, and should the day come when America loses the power or will to sustain it, the international system that will follow will be not only more dangerous but also less hospitable to liberal values in the broadest sense of the word liberal.
If I am certain of any one belief, I am certain of that.
And with that credo, it's time to express my thanks for this week of hospitality at AndrewSullivan.com. First to Andrew himself, speaking of liberal in the broadest sense, for opening his floor to some very divergent perspectives indeed - although I realize now I never did around to posting those links to Zionist summer camps.
Next to Andrew's never-resting colleagues Patrick Appel and Chris Bodenner, who make the blogs run on time.
And finally to you, the thoughtful and challenging readers of this remarkable place in cyberspace. I hope we can extend these discussions in the weeks ahead at my usual lemonade stand, FrumForum.com.
Posted on July 17, 2010 at 8:05 pm
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Another fundamental objection to my proposed mission statement for conservative reform is that it is not libertarian enough. One reader offered this alternative statement:
Conservatives believe our central purpose is to promote freedom; we do this by promoting individual liberty, supporting the division of powers through Federalism, reducing government to the lowest level necessary, and supporting free markets while keeping taxes low.
No question: conservatives do believe those things. I believe them too, and they are at the core of my draft mission statement. But they cannot be all we believe, or else we end up turning our backs on questions of vital concern to fellow-citizens, from the environment to terrorism.
Two other things need to be considered as well:
1) In a globalizing economy, the free market distributes rewards increasingly unequally. I wrote about this in an article published two summers ago:
Inequality within nations is rising in large part because inequality is declining among nations. A generation ago, even a poor American was still better off than most people in China. Today the lifestyles of middle-class Chinese increasingly approximate those of middle-class Americans, while the lifestyles of upper and lower America increasingly diverge. Less-skilled Americans now face hundreds of millions of new wage competitors, while highly skilled Americans can sell their services in a worldwide market.
Those potential losers from a globalized free market are voters too. If they get the idea that freedom is not delivering for them, then freedom's political basis becomes shaky.
2) This divide between winners and losers may explain something otherwise baffling about the way conservatives talk about freedom. The United States is a vastly freer country in 2010 than it was a generation ago. Yet when you talk to libertarian-minded people, and with the rare exceptions of a Brink Lindsey or a Virginia Postrel, what you usually hear is a lament for a vanished better past.
You can argue that they are wrong, remind them that we used to have a draft and airline regulations and bans on private ownership of gold. Or you can listen for the truth underneath the mistake - and understand that while people want government limited, they also want society to work. And if they feel their society used to work better, it's cold consolation to tell them that at least the government now does less.
Posted on July 17, 2010 at 7:05pm
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As mentioned below, some readers raised more fundamental objections to my suggested mission statement for a reformed conservatism:
A reality-based, culturally modern, socially inclusive and environmentally responsible politics that supports free markets, limited government and a peaceful American-led world order.
The first of the fundamental objections bristled at the phrase "culturally modern." Was this code for jettisoning social conservatives from the Republican party?
Two answers.
First, "culturally modern" refers to a lot more than just the abortion/stem cells/same-sex marriage cluster of issues.
A culturally modern party is one comfortable with science and technology, with women's equality, and with a globalized economy. It's a party that regards New York City and Silicon Valley as just as much "real America" as Kentucky and South Dakota.
But as to those hot-button issues ... if the Democrats can accommodate both investment bankers and unionists, the GOP should be able to find room for differing views on issues pertaining to sexuality. We always say we're a "big tent." But when was the last time we allowed a pro-choice Republican a slot on a national ticket? 1976, that's when. One reason we got stuck with Sarah Palin for VP in 2008 was that when McCain (wisely) decided he wanted a woman running mate, he bumped into this constraint: all the other Republican female senators and governors were pro-choice, and therefore were excluded from consideration from the start.
Yet it is a fact that many Republicans and (yes!) many conservatives are prochoice. Many more favor stem-cell research. Many again were appalled by the Terri Schiavo episode. Younger Republicans and conservatives, like younger Americans generally, are moving to acceptance of same-sex marriage.
These Republicans and conservatives deserve better than to be dismissed as "Republicans in Name Only." They are not an after-thought within the party and the movement, to be accepted on sufferance so long as they defer to the leadership of others.
To be a patriot, we must love our country as it is, not as it was - or as we imagine it was. A wise conservatism does not resist change. Such a conservatism would be doomed before it started. A wise conservatism manages change.
That's the kind of conservatism I think we need more of - and that my phrase "culturally modern" attempts to describe.
Posted July 17, 2010 at 2:25pm
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Yesterday I posted a bleg asking readers of AndrewSullivan.com and FrumForum.com for help writing a one-sentence description of a modernized, reformed conservatism. We've had a stunning response: almost 200 suggestions, via email from AndrewSullivan readers and in the comments section at FrumForum. They are enormously helpful, and I am very grateful. Let me share some of these ideas, and then offer a response.
To remind: here is my first draft, for which I asked for improvements:
A reality-based, culturally modern, socially inclusive and environmentally responsible politics that supports free markets, limited government and a peaceful American-led world order.
Some readers offered alternatives that - while superbly concise - were just too general: they describe the professed world view of almost all American political groupings within the ultra-socialist and ultra-libertarian extremes:
Meritocracy tempered by compassion.
Free markets with a referee to ensure fair play.
Others focused too much on what we're trying to reject, not on what we're trying to accomplish.
Restoring sanity to the Republican party.
Some just made me laugh:
We want the country promised to us by our grade-school social studies textbooks.
Killing bad Muslims with upper-class tax cuts.
Not just for white people any more, we promise!
Some offered very helpful line-edits for greater precision.
My phrase "socially inclusive" is clumsy. I wanted to find a way to stress that Republicans and conservatives needed to pay more attention to the economic interests of the less affluent. But enough of you were baffled by the term that clearly some other phrasing is called for.
Two readers objected to the phrase "reality-based" as snarky. It was not intended as such, but I agree that "evidence-based" is better.
Some readers raised more fundamental criticisms. I'll turn to those in a second post.
Posted on July 17, 2010 at 12:45pm
Cross-posted at AndrewSullivan.com