“William Bennett”:http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/bennett200411031109.asp on the moral challenge facing America.
bq. Having restored decency to the White House, President Bush now has a mandate to affect policy that will promote a more decent society, through both politics and law. His supporters want that, and have given him a mandate in their popular and electoral votes to see to it. Now is the time to begin our long, national cultural renewal (“The Great Relearning,” as novelist Tom Wolfe calls it) — no less in legislation than in federal court appointments. It is, after all, the main reason George W. Bush was reelected.
Let’s leave Bennett’s well-known hypocrisy to one side – this proposal, (which I suspect has a lot of support among Bush supporters), tells us a lot about what’s wrong with modern US conservatives. Traditional conservatism (from Burke through Oakeshott) is deeply suspicious of projects that try to remake the values of a society, especially when their instruments are “politics and law.” It shares this bias with certain tendencies on the left (viz. James Scott’s Seeing Like a State). What Bennett and his cronies are proposing isn’t conservative in inspiration; it’s a radical experiment in social engineering. It doesn’t try to build on the values already present in a society, but instead to impose a set of mores by brute force. In short, it’s a cultural revolution. We already know that the new administration is likely to be bad news for “conscientious libertarians”:http://www.highclearing.com/archivesuo/week_2004_10_31.html#005610 – it may turn out that it’s going to be equally unpleasant for conservatives (as opposed to ‘conservatives’).
Via “Andrew Sullivan”:http://www.andrewsullivan.com/index.php?dish_inc=archives/2004_10_31_dish_archive.html#109950616544439177.
{ 31 comments }
Mrs Tilton 11.03.04 at 9:16 pm
It’s not an entirely new thing. IIRC correctly, George Will was getting all excited about this sort of ‘conservatism’ half a lifetime ago (if your lifetime has been as long as mine) in Statecraft as Soulcraft; Straussians would probably speak the same way (in exoteric mode; I don’t know that they’re really all that concerned about souls).
I suppose it can be traced back to America’s puritan roots; though to be fair to them, the puritans were anything but conservative by the standards of their day.
dsquared 11.03.04 at 9:18 pm
Yeh, but it ain’t going to happen. Republican nutters have been playing this tune every time they get in power in the last twenty years and what’s it achieved for them? “Queer Eye For The Straight Guy”, that’s what.
none 11.03.04 at 9:23 pm
The difference between this time and previous times is that the republican nutters control both the white house and Congress. As a matter of fact, they have enhanced and solidified their control over both these places.
They can ram through pretty much any legislation they want. And the supreme court appointments are theirs for the asking. I would say goodbye to things like Roe vs Wade .
Scott Martens 11.03.04 at 9:24 pm
America has a knack for resisting moral reform. Prohibition was the last real attempt, which shows the project is unlikely to succeed. However, the effort can be hugely damaging.
Henry 11.03.04 at 9:25 pm
Maybe it’s just that it’s different when you’re in the thick of it, but it feels real enough from here. I don’t think that the Republican nutters have ever _been_ in power in quite this way – House, Senate, Presidency, and soon enough, in all likelihood, a stacked Supreme Court (the betting here is that they’re going to press the nuclear button in the Senate to get their nominees through).
kevin donoghue 11.03.04 at 9:27 pm
If it helps, I am willing to add my support to this proposal which I noticed on Matt McGrattan’s blog: “a Bush victory will hopefully cause the US Liberals to either rent some cojones from someone or move en masse over here. The prospects for good conversation are thereby doubled either way. The greatest thing the European Union could do on the day after a Bush election win would be to declare free work visas for anyone who pledged to come over and stay for the course of the term. Someone should suggest it to Chirac.”
dsquared 11.03.04 at 9:36 pm
Henry, mate, remember you’re Irish. How many attempts did Bennett’s local equivalents make to resist Ireland’s progress into the twentieth century, and how much success did they have?
MS 11.03.04 at 9:36 pm
Actually, it would be interesting to see what would happen if they actually DID overturn Roe v. Wade. You’ve gotta figure if they resolved that issue, they’d deactivate a large chunk of their folks while mobilizing a huge number of ours.
In other words, I’m pretty sure that the GOP leadership would never want abortion to actually become illegal. Just keep it just over the horizon forever and ever. But it may well be out of their hands, in a sense, now…
kevin donoghue 11.03.04 at 9:48 pm
Incidentally the author of that suggestion reminds us that Savonorola, best known for attempting Bennet’s plan in Florence, was eventually burned at the stake.
So don’t despair.
http://benhammersley.com/weblog/
Bernard Yomtov 11.03.04 at 9:49 pm
Bush has “restored decency” to the White House????
Yeah. Sex is much worse than torture.
Bennett really is a total jerk.
Scott Martens 11.03.04 at 9:59 pm
Kevin, you should see the post I wrote but didn’t put up this morning. It was along similar lines to Matt McGrattan’s suggestion. Now that it’s written, I’m still not sure I want to put it up. It’s pretty shrill, even for me.
Over at AFOE, we’ve gotten a bunch of hits from US IP numbers doing searches for “immigration to Europe” or similar in the last day.
David 11.03.04 at 10:10 pm
Correct response to any assertion by Bennett is, of course,
“wanna bet?”
Henry 11.03.04 at 10:12 pm
bq. Henry, mate, remember you’re Irish. How many attempts did Bennett’s local equivalents make to resist Ireland’s progress into the twentieth century, and how much success did they have?
That’s not a reassuring comparison Dan – when I graduated from university in 1991, you still had to have a doctor’s prescription to buy a condom.
kevin donoghue 11.03.04 at 10:27 pm
Henry, when I left school you were expected to get a dispensation from the Bishop if you intended studying in Trinity College. Change may seem slow to you but imagine how the poor slobs who are fighting it feel.
kevin donoghue 11.03.04 at 10:29 pm
“It was along similar lines to Matt McGrattan’s suggestion.”
Scott, I tried to clarify the fact that the suggestion originally came from Ben Hammersley, but for some reason my second comment got stuck in the plumbing.
Be shrill – don’t hold back. While awaiting the result, James Walcott gave a nice preview of his planned response:
“Should Kerry win, I will post an important statement called “A Time for Healing,” or something equally noble-sounding. Should Bush win, I shall post a statement of philosophical resignation tentatively titled “Good, Go Ahead, America, Choke on Your Own Vomit, You Deserve to Die.” The latter will probably require a little more tweaking.”
My own feeling is that Bush is a disease which America is better off going through now while it is reasonably healthy.
Andrew 11.03.04 at 10:31 pm
Given that Bush and Kerry were not so far apart on the war I don’t understand how self-described “social moderates” (war liberals) like Michael Totten or Roger Simon or even Instapundit (who claims to be a moderate on social issues) can justify their vote for Bush. It seems to me that -if they are truly social moderates- the negatives of a Bush administration on social/cultural issues should far outweigh, in their thinking, any marginal benefit of having Bush lead the war on terror. They’ve unleashed a monster.
asg 11.03.04 at 10:42 pm
I have always been deeply suspicious of conservative social engineers. They don’t call themselves “Christian Reconstructionists” for nothing.
George 11.03.04 at 11:14 pm
George Will said something like “A reasonable summation of the aims of the conservative is to return America to the social norms of 1910.” Note that that’s before women got the vote.
That’s a bit extreme (nobody I know wants to revoke women’s suffrage), but American conservatives do have a tendency to think that the last few generations of social change can be undone — in particular the sexual revolution. It all comes down to the family for these guys; anything that threatens traditional family structure (abortion, the Pill, women working, high divorce rates, homosexuality) is the enemy.
I can sympathize with that, though I happen to think they’re wrong about many of these — true morality is expansive enough to accomodate everyone’s right to pursue happiness. Moreover, it’s not hard for well-intentioned social conservatives to veer into bigotry (as well as, of course, hypocrisy). But the point to be made here is that they’re not necessarily inconsistent with classic conservatism. They don’t think they’re trying to change human nature so much as bring everybody back to their senses. Problem is that in many cases they’re talking about their grandparents’ sensibilities.
Sam 11.03.04 at 11:21 pm
I have little sympathy with Bennett and his “morality project” (maybe it will be as successful as his War on Drugs, but I doubt it), but I think you over-estimate its radicalism.
Socially conservative values are widespread and deep-rooted in much of the USA (look at the margins by which the anti-gay-marriage amendments passed). Making the culture less hostile to those values may be possible. Making legal/regulatory regime as friendly to those values as it was in 1960 is not a radical notion. Realize that the legal and political system have spent the last 40 years actively trying to change the culture, and have done so quite successfully–and that this infuriates many Americans. It’s not just a fringe group of freaks; issues like prayer in schools, nativity displays on public property, opposition to abortion, and opposition to homosexuality are important to a majority of Americans in most states (they’re probably more important in the black community than in the white community).
If you think your opposition is on the lunatic fringe, when 40% of the electorate agrees with them, you will never figure out how to get that 40% of the electorate to take you seriously.
Uncle Kvetch 11.03.04 at 11:46 pm
It’s not just a fringe group of freaks; issues like prayer in schools, nativity displays on public property, opposition to abortion, and opposition to homosexuality are important to a majority of Americans in most states
Just wondering: Exactly what does “opposition to homosexuality” entail, in this context? Put another way, what specific laws & policies would people for whom “opposition to homosexuality” is “important” like to see enacted? Maybe they’ll be satisfied with making sure that my partner & I can’t get married, and leave it at that, but somehow I doubt it.
Henry 11.03.04 at 11:49 pm
bq. Socially conservative values are widespread and deep-rooted in much of the USA (look at the margins by which the anti-gay-marriage amendments passed). Making the culture less hostile to those values may be possible. Making legal/regulatory regime as friendly to those values as it was in 1960 is not a radical notion.
I’m quite happy with a society that’s friendly to people with traditional values, in the sense that it accommodates these communities, doesn’t try to force 24 hours a day pornography down their throats etc. I also find the exact contours of the division between secular and religious (no religion on school property etc) pretty weird – but then I’m not American. But I don’t see how trying to introduce legislation or reinterpret the constitution to ban abortion, bring back state level anti-sodomy laws etc is anything except radical – it’s at odds with the values of a very substantial majority of US citizens. Unless, that is, you don’t think that tolerance of difference is an important value.
burritoboy 11.04.04 at 1:26 am
“Making legal/regulatory regime as friendly to those values as it was in 1960 is not a radical notion”
Well, actually it is a radical notion. First, of course, we aren’t going to have an actual version of 1960 since we don’t really know what 1960 was like. We have ideal VERSIONS of what 1960 was like or what we might prefer 1960 to have been like. Idealized versions of the past are OK if you’re writing historical novels – it IS a radical notion to impose an idealized picture of a past society onto an actually functioning current society.
Secondly, many aspects of 1960 society are simply not going to fit well onto a 2004 society. Parts of that society included, for just one example, women working outside the home was frowned upon. However, that will simply not graph well onto a modern economy. Forcing women not to work would disrupt the economy, and, yes, one assumes that that process would at some point take the form of severe legal sanctions, physical force or severe social discrimination – i.e. social engineering.
The fact is is that Bennett or George Will would take their favored (and partially imaginary)elements of 1960 society and, yes, use social engineering to pressure people to adopt them. They will avoid the elements of 1960 society that disturb them, or that they don’t fully understand, or that run into opposition from powerful groups within our current society.
Think about how, in 1960, the paternalist model of the firm underlay much of the society of the time in numerous ways. But the firms of today are not going to be willing to adopt that model again, making many of the social structures of the time very impractical for 2004. Obviously, there will be no pressure for firms to re-adopt the paternalist model. Pressuring individuals (which our fine individualist Republicans so prefer to do) to function in social structures that depend on firms being paternalist is, of course, a form of social engineering.
Matt McIrvin 11.04.04 at 1:35 am
“Socially conservative values are widespread and deep-rooted in much of the USA (look at the margins by which the anti-gay-marriage amendments passed). Making the culture less hostile to those values may be possible. Making legal/regulatory regime as friendly to those values as it was in 1960 is not a radical notion.”
The problem is, they perceive friendliness to them as dependent on hostility to others. The maintenance of their comfort level consists entirely of externalities. If gays somewhere in the world aren’t being persecuted, that lack of persecution is perceived as positive persecution of conservative Christians, even if the gays are in Massachusetts and the conservative Christians are in Idaho. The gays are somehow tormenting them with Gay Rays just by roaming free.
If that’s a reasonable precedent, they could also proclaim that my freedom to not worship their God is somehow affronting them. And I’m sure some of them already do.
liberal 11.04.04 at 2:31 am
Sam wrote, Realize that the legal and political system have spent the last 40 years actively trying to change the culture…
Huh? The legal and political system has had almost nothing to do with it. Try (1) the birth control pill, which gives women control of their own fertility, (2) increasing economic well-being, which gives people free time and more money to pursue all sorts of pleasures they couldn’t before, (3) the free market system itself, a powerful evolutionary process for locating and amplifying perceived desires…
Tom T. 11.04.04 at 2:51 am
Henry, you’re overlooking the fact that the availability of abortion on the terms of Roe v. Wade is also at odds with the values of some significant group of US citizens (Depending on how the issue is presented, potentially a majority). They see Roe like Scott Martens sees Prohibition, as a large-scale attempt at moral reform through social engineering, and they see its repeal not as a radical act but as a return to normalcy.
And no, tolerance of difference is not an important value in this quest. That’s one reason that pro-lifers try to draw an analogy to slavery. Would you want to live in a society that was tolerant of a woman’s right to choose to own slaves? (Please don’t get after me about the analogy. Obviously, I realize that it doesn’t work if one doesn’t share the underlying assumptions. I’m just trying to explain why they use it).
I’m not arguing on behalf of pro-lifers or suggesting that you should accept their views. My only point is that radicalism is sometimes in the eye of the beholder.
Henry 11.04.04 at 4:04 am
Tom T. – I agree with your analysis of the pro-life viewpoint – but the fact that they can arrive at a self-justification in which they don’t see themselves as radical doesn’t mean that they _aren’t_ radical. Just as my ideas about what the basic minimum level of social provision (which seems entirely reasonable and commensensical to me) would make me a fire-breathing radical by US standards. As long as a substantial majority of US citizens favour abortion rights, and as long as US conservatives want to take this back from them, they’re pushing an agenda which is, by definition, radical – it proposes that a major set of rights, which are widely accepted in US society, be yanked up by the roots.
dsquared 11.04.04 at 11:42 am
Here’s a slogan for you “Lying Is A Moral Issue”.
liberal 11.04.04 at 11:46 am
dsquared wrote, Yeh, but it ain’t going to happen. Republican nutters have been playing this tune every time they get in power in the last twenty years and what’s it achieved for them? “Queer Eye For The Straight Guyâ€, that’s what.
That’s gotta be the funniest thing I’ve read about the election yet. Thanks for the mood lift, D^2!
Uncle Kvetch 11.04.04 at 2:00 pm
Lying Is A Moral Issue
Many of us thought torture was too, but apparently the good people of the heartland beg to differ.
rxb 11.04.04 at 4:44 pm
I really wish the Democrats had had a candidate who was willing to seriously rip into Bush for the Patriot Act, and the torture and disappearances, and telling lies all day every day about everything, and stealing the first election, and other *real* moral failings. Sometimes I think these red state folks get so worked up over homosexuality not because they really care about it (nobody is denouncing Dick Cheney for not renouncing his daughter) but because they want desperately to express the conviction that there is a place for morality in politics, and that politicians should be concerned with the state of the national soul. And those aren’t bad principles: it’s just that these folks are too disconnected from empirical reality to supply much content to them, so they fall for the Republicans’ air of moral certainty every time and whatever bogus ‘issues’ they propose. If the Democrats had really hit home on the genuine moral failings of the Republicans, as such, maybe they could have channelled a little of that traditional American moralistic spirit away from the vague hope that the President could stop people from being homosexual and towards stuff people actually have reason to care about (like telling lies in order to start wars). Anyway I predict the next Democratic president will be a real leap to the left — a Reagan figure who comes out swinging and says the whole spectrum is in the wrong place, and who channels a lot of anger, frustration and moral indignation that had previously been confused or unexpressed. I just hope I live to see it.
fub 11.05.04 at 4:54 am
burritoboy wrote:
>Well, actually it is a radical notion. First, of course, we aren’t going to have an actual version of 1960 since we don’t really know
>what 1960 was like. We have ideal VERSIONS of what 1960 was like or what we might prefer 1960 to have been like. Idealized
>versions of the past are OK if you’re writing historical novels – it IS a radical notion to impose an idealized picture of a past society
>onto an actually functioning current society.
Well, I know what 1960 was like. I was there. I’m Bill Bennett’s age.
So, let’s return to the golden days of yesteryear. Here’s some of cultural and legal milieu.
Your point of view on “morality issues” will determine what you think was good or bad.
In 1960:
Ike was president in his 2nd term. RMN was VP. JFK was about to run against RMN.
LSD was legal.
Abortion was illegal, but increasingly less prosecuted in some more liberal states. But Mexico was the usual option for most.
Asset forfeiture was not used in drug cases, and only rarely in any other cases.
You had to sign a “loyalty oath” to get some jobs, such as faculty at some universities.
You didn’t have to give your fingerprints to get a drivers license in most states.
Benzedrine inhalers were sold OTC. “Bennie” users could buy them and extract the contents.
“The Pill” didn’t yet exist as a widespread birth control method.
“Prophylactics” (condoms) were sold for $.50 in restroom vending machines “for prevention of disease only”.
De jure segregation no longer existed in schools, but integration was not complete either.
The Bible was not off limits in the classroom, but even in the south where I grew up, sane public school teachers didn’t preach about it.
Marijuana was so esoteric that mostly only big city police departments and Anslinger’s FBN knew anything much about it, so growing your own was not very risky if you were cool.
Interracial marriage (so called “miscegenation”) was illegal in several states, but legal in others. _Loving_v._Commonwealth_ was decided in 1967.
Rock ‘n Roll was everywhere, and some preachers were holding “record burnings”.
Pregnant teenage girls either had children out of wedlock and typically for adoption, had “shotgun” weddings, or went to Mexico for an abortion.
Bishop Fulton J. Sheen was on nationwide TV weekly.
Jimmy Swaggart was on local TV out of Shreveport, La.
Swaggart’s cousin, Jerry Lee Lewis, sometimes played piano for Swaggart’s TV ministry.
Jerry Lee Lewis had been married to his third wife, his cousin Myra Gale Brown for a couple years. She was 15.
Father Coughlin was still pastor at the Shrine of the Little Flower, but his radio days were long over.
Wolfman Jack still hadn’t hit the airwaves.
J.D. Salinger’s _Catcher_in_the_Rye_ was on every hip teen’s reading list.
Grace Metalious’ “scandalous” novel _Peyton_Place_ was already a hit movie.
“Miranda rights” didn’t yet exist.
Russia’s Sputnik had long been launched, and education in engineering had become well supported, so more college scholarships were becoming available than before.
The VietNam war hadn’t really started.
Bill Bennett was still just a punk-ass neighborhood bully.
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