I’m confused.
What better place to start than with an admission like that?
Thinking over a comment I left last night, along with earlier related posts, and something really basic began to not compute at a definitional level.
There is an argument going around, which is being widely repeated and embellished upon by ever more articulate proponents of it, that it is impossible to be an economic conservative without being a social conservative. I’ve been frustrated trying to understand it, and here’s what I said last night:
only social conservatives can be fiscal conservatives
I keep reading this too, yet the proponents do not explain how it works; they just keep repeating it.
I might as well try to figure it out.
The logic seems to be that if you have immoral or unapproved sex, you lose the ability to save money or live within your means. Perhaps it’s a sort of Neo-Freudian view that sex is akin to money, and that looseness with one equals looseness with the other.
Moral bankruptcy (sexual spending) means economic bankruptcy (wasting money).
Years ago, masturbation was thought of as akin to asset wasting, so in a way I can understand the argument. Looseness with sex = looseness with money! Depletion of sperm = depletion of the money supply!
Is it that simple?
Who knew?
I admit, I was being a little silly, especially with the sperm depletion analogy.
Nick Gillespie does a better job of trying to take the argument seriously, and he even addresses the idea that promoting gay tolerance in the GOP is part of a Communist plot:
Magill goes on to accuse GOProud and Norquist of pursuing a Gramscian “long march through the institutions,” all to the greater gloryhole of that dastardly “homosexual agenda” that in this iteration at least requires nothing more of government than it treat all citizens equally. That is, let them marry and serve in the military. Yikes. I give Magill and his group credit for showing up CPAC and trying to keep some control over the conservative label that means so much to him. That’s far more respectable than the shrinking violets in the con movement who are afraid of catching cooties from using the same bathrooms as homosexuals.
As a libertarian, I’m in no way tied to CPAC (did speak there a couple of years ago and have attended from time to time), but it’s fascinating to me that the conservative movement can’t recognize some elemental facts. First and foremost that the world they’re trying to create, especially when it comes to intolerance of alternative lifestyles, is never going to happen. And that by insisting, as Sen. James DeMint and Rep. Jim Jordan have, that you can’t be a fiscal conservative without being a social conservative, you’re alienating all those independents who just might give the GOP a second chance at running the federal budget. And you’re in open denial of reality: A person’s choice of sexual partner in no way means he or she can’t be in favor of less spending on farm subsidies. There’s a stunning knot of bull-dinkey at the heart of the argument that tolerance equals uncritical embrace. Do conservatives, of all people, think that the state allowing all religions to practice means official endorsement?
The more I think about this, the more I wonder whether the argument that you can’t be a fiscal conservative without being a social conservative contains within it an unstated premise — that the economic conservatism they’re talking about involves something less than the full embrace of free markets. That’s because freedom by its nature allows the taking of risks, and economic freedom by definition means allowing what many would call economic hedonism. Is the argument an attempt to rhetorically link economic hedonism with social, or sexual hedonism?
Did society’s tolerance for such things as homosexuality lead to the wild economic risk-taking that caused the economic crash?
I don’t think it did, mind you. But I am trying to get to the bottom of the unstated premises in this argument so that I can better understand it.
While thinking this over, I remembered something I wrote a couple of years ago on the road, while still in shock over Obama’s recent victory:
…if there is one lesson I have learned from freedom, it’s that there are risks and downsides, and you have to take the good and the bad.
Economies do not always thrive. The American people are acting like a bunch of babies. (Or whiners as Phil Gramm said). Like gays clamoring to shut down the bathhouses once they got AIDS (which some did).
Hedonism, the irresponsible fast lane of freedom, is a high risk activity — whether economic, sexual, or chemical. You cannot have freedom without allowing it, and people are going to get hurt. Ditto, legal guns.
The problem is, no one wants to hear this.
Beyond that, the more the government intervenes (as they did in this economy), the greater the demand for more intervention when intervention fails, which it inevitably will.
True conservatism (at least, the old fashioned kind) involved allowing freedom and encouraging — not mandating — responsibility. It’s AYOR (at your own risk) stuff, and it’s not for children.
In a post a few days later, I asked whether Barack Obama might have been perceived as more economically “conservative” than McCain, by voters who saw him as more opposed to economic hedonism:
The current economic downturn really was spun as economic hedonism for the voters. While Obama didn’t use those precise words, he made clear that the economy was ruined by greedy economic hedonists run amok. The clucking eerily resembled the puritanical shamings and scoldings of the sort that are routinely directed at sexual hedonists, and it would not surprise me at all if many puritan-minded folk think that the greedy Wall Street capitalists and all of “us” who went along with it were (to borrow the AIDS/venereal disease terminology) “were asking for it” and “had it coming.”
While McCain was at first only too glad to echo the theme, Barack Obama was able to better play the role of Mr. Clean — the guy who would apply the brakes and put a stop to all the wild hedonism, and redeem this country.
So naturally, I’m wondering about something. Slowing hedonism down, applying the brakes, restraints, even crackdowns — what image might all of this have evoked among an electorate which is supposed to be centrist to conservative?
Is it possible that (at least in economic terms) Obama was seen as the more conservative of the two candidates?
I realize how awful that looks, because Obama is anything but conservative. Still,it gave me the willies on the road, because we’re not talking about conventional political litmus tests here, but emotions of ordinary voters who are not political junkies.
If Obama is a conservative, call me a hedonist.
I am still an advocate of tolerance for economic hedonism and social hedonism, even though in my personal life I am a penny pincher and a square.
But what, then, is “economic conservatism”? Does it mean belt-tightening, crackdowns on irresponsibility, living within one’s means, and neither a borrower nor a lender be? Does economic conservatism countenance allowing risk-taking behavior and even irresponsibility? Was Milton Friedman an economic conservative?
One thing stands out among the arguments which insist on linking sexual and economic hedonism.
Not much use is made of the term “free markets,” and that worries me.
In any case, if it can be shown that the gays crashed the economy, then they’re a far more powerful force than anyone realized.
Perhaps they could be utilized against our enemies.
Especially if “economic conservatism” means vast cuts in military spending….
Comments
12 responses to “Did the homos crash the economy?”
I don’t think you want to understand the concept, I think you just want to mock it.
Nature will right itself. All it needs is time. When artificial conditions have run their course, reality will reassert its presence.
Eric,
I think it’s all in the name of the greater cause “giving Obama a second term.” I.e. I think that leftist elements — probably paid — are actively sowing dissenssion amid so cons and libertarians. An effort I think our friend DL — the condescension troll — above is part of and, given his prolific activity here (I mean, we’re NOT PJM or something), they must have very deep pockets. I hate conspiracy theories, but such efforts, in the past, started with an s…
We can, of course, fall for the interracine war and bite back at the misguided elements of the right that are attacking us.
But think for a moment — wouldn’t it be more fun to set the artsy-fartsy and the Stalinist elements of the “progressives” at war with each other?
I’ll start: You can’t be a real progressive unless you bow every morning before a picture of Uncle Joe. New Agers aren’t really progressives! They believe in various divinities! Oh, yeah, and stalinists? They don’t believe that “Art creates community!”
DL,
Which reality do you mean? The reality in which animals engage in homosexual behavior for a variety of reasons including pleasure and long term mating? The reality in which you (implied) get to dictate what other people can do.
Let’s make this quite clear. I have no right to make you do anything. Correct?
Eric has no right to make you do anything. Correct?
So, for you to assert that you have the right to force me or Eric to act and speak according to your edicts, you must believe that you are in some way superior or that you will be part of the new dictatorship you are so assiduously working to produce.
I hate to disabuse you, but historically everyone who’s helped to bring in a new dictatorship ends up on the block. Often before the actual “enemy” – since no smart dictator will trust someone who can profess loyalty to a cause while actively working against it (If you need evidence, I suggest the history around the French Revolution, the rise of the Soviet Union, Pol Pot’s Cambodia and most of the other recent revolutions followed by dictatorship.)
There used to be an important concept that seems to have evaporated.
I think Mom called it “priorities” and the concept might come up in a conversation like this:
Mom: Put down what you are doing and clean this mess of yours up and put all of this away where it belongs.
Me: But MaaaaaaAAAM, this is my *homework*!
Mom: I understand. You convinced me a while ago that you could not proceed with that until we can go to the library.
Me: Well, [my brother] has got a big mess in the [someplace out of the way]!
Mom: I know, but that is not something on your list of what needs doing, and this mess is MY top priority at the moment.
People have all sorts of disgusting, immoral, illegal, …. habits and proclivities.
Most of them do not affect me in any but an intellectual or emotional way. As long as they are not in a position to force me to do it–I don’t really care.
I can use all the help I can get to get the government off my back, and as long as I don’t have to do anything I think is wrong, I welcome the help.
So CPAC needs to decide who it is
And the nonsense of “different kinds” of “conservative” is has to be eliminated from the discussion. Now.
But [that] is illegal! So is speeding and parking in front of fire plugs. Is [that] the highest priority? Or can we work on that when it is?
But [that] is immoral! How about we just start at the beginning of Leviticus (when [that] is the most important thing for us to work on) and do something about everything in there–no more cafeteria-style morality.
But abortion kills people! Indeed it does. so our highest priority is to get control of the government, so we can do something about that.
Larry,
Priorities is a good place to start. The next is to acknowledge that government is probably the worst way to propagate morality – the closest a government can get is removing the provenly harmful from everyone else for a period of time (or permanently).
Morality is best enforced by the combination of the old-fashioned method of community disapproval and the even more old-fashioned method of raising children to clean up their own messes and not cause harm to others.
I’m confused. Why do so many obviously smart people seem not to understand, (A) what “conservation” means, and (B) that values are not not mutable?
To be “conservative” means that one is in favor of, and attempts to, conserve something. Sociopolitically, this something is a pre-existing social system. To be conservative means one is against changing the present sociopolitical order. Am I wrong here? Isn’t this the definition of “conservative”? I think perhaps there are those who use the term “conservative” when in fact they mean something else.
The sociopolitical order is a holistic system. One cannot separate out bits and pieces and call this “conserving”. If you take a coat and cut the arms off, you have not “conserved” your coat – you have made a new vest. It is made out of the cloth of the coat but it it is not the coat. It may be a nice vest but to say you have “conserved” the coat by creating it is insane.
Thus, yes. It is not possible to separate fiscal conservativism from social conservativism because they are part of the same cloth. You cannot cut the cloth in half and call yourself “conservative”. You cannot, for example, separate the economics of human action from the people who engage in those actions, and from all of the other actions in which they engage. The very word “economics” originated in a set of rules prescribing how a family household may be run to best material effect, in the opinion of its author. How do you keep the rules but get rid of the family? You cannot. These things are all interconnected and to remove one piece is to change the whole. We might successfully remove pieces which we no longer desire and thus rearrange the remainder to a better and more fruitful balance. Maybe that will lead to a better, happier, fuller sociopolitical order. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with this – but it’s not conservatism.
The term “free markets” is widely overused; the concept is idiotic. There is no such thing as a free market. Trade may be free, and we may speak truthfully of “free trade”. Markets require restriction, inhibition, rules, for their very existence; in fact markets exist only because of such rules. These rules may not require the involvement of a ‘state’ government but still, only in a disciplined, orderly market can “free trade” exist.
Chevalier I disagree that the concept of free markets is idiotic. Government should stay the hell out. If as you suggest, “conservatism” means government regulation of the market, then I am against what you call conservatism.
I tend to agree with Milton Friedman on the following:
“Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.”
“the only way that has ever been discovered to have a lot of people cooperate together voluntarily is through the free market. And that’s why it’s so essential to preserving individual freedom.”
But DL it is so exquisitely mockable.
Eric,
Thanks!
Chev,
You cannot cut the cloth in half and call yourself “conservative”.
I’m a libertarian. I believe in economic liberty and personal liberty. Thus not a “true” conservative. Fine with me. I never called myself a Conservative.
I look forward to the day when we get the economics on the right track and I can ally myself with the left on social issues.
I intend to destroy both parties as they currently exist. “First Hitler then Stalin” is my motto.
=====
BTW Gramsci depended on the revulsion for certain kinds of behavior to destroy what he wished to destroy.
The only effective counter to that is to give up revulsion through familiarity. It will take time.
“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” – Max Planck
“If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals — if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.” – Ronald Reagan Reason Magazine July 1975
I guess True Conservatives™ aren’t real Conservatives after all. At least not Reagan Conservatives.
Chevalier,
May I say that I’ve never heard a socon friend claim those opinions? The only time I’ve heard them is from the Christian left (Yeah, guys they exist. There used to be groups like Christian Workers who viewed Christ as first socialist. They are still there. Trust me, I know a few.)
Sigh — again, everyone, from the top — the best way to start a war between the enemies you’re afraid of is to join their armies and start shooting at their allies.
Hey, Here we Go! The very sort of thing Eric said previously was silly and wasn’t going to happen is happening.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/02/the_polygamists_make_their_mov.html
Yeah, you guys are so smart. 🙂