Month: May 2010

Is abortion the seed or the flower of Culture Wars?

The buzz about the new book Red Families, Blue Families continues with a conservative columnist I greatly respect, Maggie Gallagher.

Maggie, author of The Abolition of Marriage and a tireless advocate of traditional western marriage, thinks the culture wars start with different views about abortion and those different views ramify in earlier marriage versus later, out-of-wedlock birth rates, etc., rather than the latter ending in controversy over abortion (the quintessential Culture War issue).

It would be interesting in this regard to test how much the “red state, blue state” differences were shaping up before Roe v. Wade, and (if reliable data is available – very unlikely), how the blue states and red states stacked up on abortion rates, legal and illegal, before the Supreme Court basically gave us one, utterly permissive national abortion law.

May a Republican cross the aisle for a Heimlich Maneuver?

My friend Doug Masson blogs that yesterday proved the Tea Party toothless. I’m not so sure. There was an overabundance of candidates in key open races, so name recognition won the day — and incumbency gives name recognition along with the other perks that inadvertently invariably accompany campaign reform (Coats has some of that name recognition still).

It’s hard for a conservative to disagree with the Tea Party’s “free-market principles, limited government and individual liberty” mantra, but its attitude that every issue is non-negotiable is making it look obstructionist, and may kill it or kill a more pragmatic conservatism. This is my take-away from Kathleen Parker’s column at WaPo today (Parker was, as I recall, one of the first conservatives to point out that Empress Palin has no clothes):

What non-ideologues may see as cooperation, however, is viewed by true believers as weakness. Any attempt at compromise is viewed as surrendering principle. Under the new order, a Good Conservative wouldn’t cross the aisle to perform a Heimlich maneuver.

(Gotta love that last phrase.) Michael Gerson frets that such an attitude threatens genuine innovative conservatives (is that an oxymoron? Must we use yesterday’s nostrums to address today’s problems?) like Governor Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, a red governor of a blue state who may have gotten there partly by being genial rather than harsh.

(Trivia question: can you think of any other breakthrough candidates whose outward niceness hid his inner ideologue? Hint: Are the initials “B.O.” familiar?)

Another attitude that makes conservatism unattractive to the “reality-based community” (a liberal neologism with some valence when many conservatives are unhinged — and the press makes sure we know it) is that tax cuts are the no-fail Miracle Gro of revenue generation so we can go on having our tasty slop from the government trough. Ross Douthat at NYT

suggested recently that “conservative domestic policy would be in better shape if conservative magazines and conservative columnists were more willing to call out Republican politicians (and, to a lesser extent, conservative entertainers)” for advancing bad ideas and bogus arguments,

hoping thereby to elicit things like

Kevin Williamson’s fine piece on supply-side economics from the last National Review, in which he goes after the panglossian misinterpretation of supply-side theory that’s become dogma among too many Republican politicians and activists — namely, that tax cuts generate so much economic growth (and with it, increased government revenue) that they more than pay for themselves. As Williamson notes, the most prominent supply-side theorists themselves don’t believe this ….

What may save conservatism is things like the Florida’s Marco Rubio (okay, Marco is a person, not a thing, and his website reflects the “no Heimlich Maneuver for liberals” attitude as I post this), a Latino in the broad sense, and the Frederick Douglas Foundation, which are giving the GOP a welcome — ahem! — suntan. No longer need blacks or Latinos be simply contrary to declare themselves conservative and, yes, even Republican.

Globalization + the Pill = Culture Wars

A very interesting post at FPR clued me in to a Jonathan Rauch article in National Journal, which in turn discusses a new book that essentially publishes a Grand Unification Theory of the origins of “Red” and “Blue” America.

I hesitate to summarize. Read either the Front Porch Republic piece or Rauch’s for a summary instead.

What this leaves me with is a couple of intuitions, none of which I’m remotely prepared to defend to the death:

  1. I have taken some solace that “Red America” is growing demographically while “Blue America” is at NPG. This new theory makes me think that teeming Red America will continue to work for Blue America and will continue to be relatively ineffectual in carrying out any red agenda.
  2. Any red agenda is already in trouble. Red America, relatively speaking, tramples on the values they profess and which, in their pulpits, they literally preach. Why? They’re spitting into a very, very strong headwind of sexuality and lower wages, and their early marriages, plus the newish necessity of both parents working, make musical beds a far more popular game in Red American than in Blue.
  3. What happens when the Trillion Dollar Ponzi Scheme collapses? Red America knows more about the practical arts like gardening, homebuilding, etc. than Blue America knows. Will Blue America be picking Red America’s asparagus in a few Springs?


Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived In That House

I have written before of the very, very serious business of glamor and glamorization. After its blog feed seemingly went dead for a while (it may have been my error – who knows?), Virginia Postrel is back online and, today, on dead tree with a Wall Street Journal review of “Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived In That House,” by Meghan Daum, who has followed the maxim “write what you know” in this book that, as Postrel notes, needs no subtitle.

Postrel helpfully introduces her WSJ essay at her blog as well. Here are the key links:

Watchers of HGTV, Food Channel and such take note.

Hostettler for Senate

I longish essay at Front Porch Republic yesterday wonders “what if William Jennings Bryant …?” The whole thing is worth reading if you’re contrary like me, but knowing that few will, I’ll quote the very, very contemporary Indiana implications — contemporary like Tuesday, May 4:

This brings us to contemporary political application.  History can be interesting but so what?  Are there any modern-day Bryans?  Can we find any candidates who exemplify FPR values?  Yes we can.  …

John Hostettler of Indiana could be a Feingold counterpart across the aisle if he’s elected to the Senate this year.  A genuine Republican maverick, Hostettler is a former six-term member of the U.S. House of Representatives.  Like Ron Paul, Hostettler is a constitutionalist on domestic issues and a noninterventionist (anti-imperialist) in foreign affairs.  He opposed Clinton’s wars in the Balkans.  In 2002, he was one of only six Republican members of the House and one of only three conservative members to vote against the resolution endorsing Bush’s desire to preemptively wage war on Iraq.  At the time, he said the intelligence backing the claim of WMDs was “tenuous at best.”

Following his defeat for reelection, in 2006, Congressman Hostettler self-published Nothing for the Nation: Who Got What Out of Iraq.  The book is endorsed by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, who writes, “We waged war because the president wanted to do so for his own reasons. . . . Congress made an unconstitutional delegation of authority to the president and it was the most tragic such delegation ever made.  Had we listened to Hostettler at the time, we would not have done it.  If we listen to him now, we might save ourselves the pain, regret, and shame from doing it again. For years I have known I was wrong.  Now I know why I was wrong. I’m sorry so many had to pay such a dear price for me to learn what I should have known before I took that office.”

Hostettler is a populist who has never taken PAC money, which is quite a contrast with his main opponent in the senatorial primary, former Senator Dan Coats.  Coats left the Senate in 1999, was an ambassador for a while, and then cashed in on his “public service” by becoming a lobbyist.  He worked for Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Chrysler, and other big corporations in their successful efforts to feed at the public trough.  Now he has moved back to Indiana in an effort to regain his Senate seat.  Dan Coats is a typical corporate-centrist-establishment Republican à la Bob Dole.

John Hostettler is something quite different.  He voted for Chuck Baldwin of the Constitution Party for president in 2008, not John McCain.  There are mavericks and then there are mavericks.  If Feingold’s blind spots on some social issues, notably his support for legalized abortion and same-sex “marriage” are too off-putting to overlook, then maybe Hostettler is your man.  He is a Bible-believing Christian who is conservative on social morality.  He supports traditional marriage and the rights of unborn children.  He was the lead sponsor of the Marriage Protection Act that passed the House in 2004 but died in the Senate.  Invoking a power of Congress granted by the Constitution, the MPA would have stripped the federal courts of jurisdiction to rule on the Defense of Marriage Act.  He opposes illegal immigration.  He supports Second Amendment rights.  He has championed First Amendment religious freedom.  He voted against NCLB on federalism grounds.  These stances have earned him the support of conservatives like Bay Buchanan, Tom Tancredo, and some portions of the Tea Party movement.

The Republican senatorial primary that pits Hostettler against Coats, and a few other contenders, takes place THIS TUESDAY, May 4.  He could use some money now.  Hopefully, he will win the primary and be the odds-on favorite to win in November.

I would note that Dan Coats, the slight favorite Tuesday, is a Wheaton College graduate. The last time he ran, that meant something to me. I learned more at Wheaton with a 2.5 GPA than I learned elsewhere with a 3.5+. But evangelicalism is culturally captive, I now see, and I fear that lobbyist Coats is no exception. So come Tuesday, I’m not voting for him, or Marlin Stutzman, but John Hostettler.