Individualism v. Community: The false debate at the core of this election.

This column originally appeared at Big Jolly Politics:

I’ll return to my series on Texas Education soon, but I want to share some thoughts after digesting the rhetoric from both national political conventions.

My first and over-riding thought was how baffled Adam Smith and William Jennings Bryan would be if they had somehow been able to return to this world for the last two weeks and had attended these conventions.  Neither would understand the split that has occurred in American politics over issues they studied and championed, and both would be shocked at how misunderstood and misapplied their ideas have become.  

Smith, the Scottish professor of Moral Philosophy, built his ideas about economics and government in his Wealth of Nations on the foundation of his description of the inherent moral nature of man in The Theory of Moral Sentiments.  For the last 250 years, both proponents and opponents of the system of capitalism and free markets that evolved from Smith’s writings based their viewpoints on an analysis of economic behavior that was independent of the morality so central to Smith’s theories.  Smith would not have understood either Marx or Rand.  To him, the individual pursuing his or her self-interest did so within a context of morality and responsibility.  Smith’s total view, in turn, was consistent with the type of system that developed during the 18^th and 19^th Centuries in the United States—the one de Tocqueville observed and explained in his Democracy In America.

But today, we are more the children of Marx and Rand, than of Smith.  So, we see the answers to our problems solely through the lens of rugged individualism, or social-justice collectivism, when both individualism and community are needed for a society of free people to thrive using capitalism and free markets.  In essence, our misreading of Smith has set up a false choice between individualism and community that de Tocqueville believed we had avoided. 

As a self-proclaimed answer to this false choice, William Jennings Bryan emerged as a political force of nature in the 1890s.  Arguably, as one of the early proponents of a form of Progressivism, he was the most influential politician from the 1890s to the 1920s who never became President—though he tried four times.  He set out to impose community on rugged individualists through his “applied Christianity,” which was derisively called “Bryanism.”   Bryanism called for the federal government to become the source of social justice through interventionist and redistributionist economic policies, and by enforcing a common standard for public and private moral behavior.  Between the 1930s and the 1960s, the Democratic Party abandoned the social conservatism of Bryanism, while fully embracing the economic portion of his social justice views.   

Meanwhile, in the late 1970s, the social-conservative heirs to the morality of Bryanism turned to the Republican Party to promote their agenda, and they joined economic conservatives to support Ronald Reagan’s “New Republican Party” plan to re-establish a modern society upon the Smith/de Tocqueville model of society.  In fact, what Reagan understood was that the real choice for sustaining and improving our free society is not between individualism and community, but between the role of individual morality and responsibility and government regulations and programs in creating and maintaining community among free people.  The Smith/de Tocqueville model that Reagan tried to reinvigorate provided the right answer for that real choice. 

But instead of disappearing into history, the remnants of Bryanism are alive and well.  They are divided into two warring camps still trying to resolve the false choice between individualism and community with wrong or incomplete answers that depend on the exercise of federal government action, and that create strange fissures within both Progressivism and Conservatism in this country.

President Obama’s acceptance speech doubled-down on the economic social-justice model of Bryanism.  He recognized that our society is built on both the freedom of the individual and the interdependence of communities, but he embraced the false choice between the two.  Then, he sought to answer the false choice by providing community artificially through more government interventions, while rejecting any role for private, individual, moral character and responsibility in shaping and preserving a community.  Such an approach provides a wrong answer to the false choice, which will worsen all of the social pathologies that have arisen over the last century, and further isolate neighbors as autonomous wards of one or more federal government programs. 

Where are the Republicans in this debate?  Unfortunately, we are still arguing between the social conservatism of Bryanism and the economic conservatism of traditional and libertarian Republicans, when Smith, de Tocqueville and Reagan would have told us the choice we are arguing about is false, too.  Both are needed for our model of government to work, and we need to stop fighting among ourselves over this fundamental point. 

Instead, we need to come together and seize the opportunity we’ve been given to change the debate in this election.  By shaping the debate around “community” and the social-justice model, Obama has handed us a rare opportunity to break out of the old paradigms and to reveal the false choice between individualism and community that we have been given over the last century.  As we reveal the false choice, we must argue for our Smith/de Tocqueville/Reagan model of a free society and government—an argument we have not made coherently for at least a generation because of our own internal arguments.  We need to take the “You did build that” theme, and expand on it with our ageless ideas of creating and maintaining “community” through individual, private, and local action; by showing that the individualism of moral people creates community among neighbors, and that such communities are protected and promoted by local private and public entities, rather than by a federal bureaucracy.

All of the groups we need to persuade to vote for our ticket need to hear the falsity of the choice and answer the Democrats have long promoted, and hear the real argument for the Smith/de Tocqueville/Reagan model that made us exceptional:  Latinos and other new immigrant groups who have come to this country to build a better life; African-Americans who have been abandoned to under-education, under-employment and over-incarceration; and women and young people, whose prosperity depends on the economic growth and support that strong neighborhoods provide.   

Unless some whiz kid around Romney and Ryan figures out how to make this argument effectively, Obama’s argument will win by default because the false choice has become engrained in our national thinking, and the mood of the country is looking for answers.  They’ll embrace even wrong answers to false choices if we don’t show them the choice is false and the answer is wrong, and what is really the right path.  We won’t just win this election by doubling-down on social conservatism or rugged individualism, nor do I now think we can limp into the election just focusing on jobs, the budget and government reform.  Instead, we need to show why our answers to jobs, the budget and government reform will improve the condition of this country, and to do that we need to address the interrelationship between basic morality, individualism, and strong communities for the success of our model of society and economic growth—an interrelationship that our founders, Smith and de Tocqueville understood and promoted.  Then, we need to challenge our neighbors to rebuild this model of society with us.  

If Romney articulates the Smith/de Tocqueville/Reagan model effectively, shows why it is relevant to the problems we face, shows how it can work, shows how it will improve lives in the 21^st Century, and challenges us to embrace it, he’ll win in a landslide.  If not, the public may decide to let their money ride on the wrong bet they made four years ago.

The Fist of the Obama Administration Must Not be Re-Elected

This column originally appeared at Big Jolly Politics:

My father liked to tinker with writing simple poetry—the type of “greeting card” poetry that can be very touching or funny, or simply lame.  I recently have been reminded of the following part of a funny poem he wrote for me when I graduated from law school, which he entitled “Lawyer to Client”:

You say you hit the other guy,
Broke his nose and blackened his eye,
Split his lip and damaged his face.
I think you’ve got an excellent case.

The man is daft and obviously
Was in a place he never should be.
With devious means and grievous twist
He put his face in front of your fist. …

As I’ve followed the debate over the “Obama mandate” for insurance coverage that narrows the conscience exception that had protected religious institutions for many years, I feel as though we conservatives have once again put our face in front of the left’s fist on this issue.  Normally, I would advocate just licking our wounds and changing the subject back to the economic issues facing the country.  But, the problem is that what underlies the thinking of the left on this issue is what also is strangling the long-term neck of our economy.

Before we go further with that point, we first need to understand how our face found its way into the left’s fist. Back in January (it seems like years ago), during one of the many GOP debates over the last few months, George Stephanopoulos asked the candidates about their view of a half-century old Supreme Court ruling that constitutionally prohibited states from banning the sale or use of contraceptives.  Virtually everyone on the stage, and in the auditorium, was shocked by the question because it seemed to come out of left field.  The candidates all answered in one way or another that the issue was irrelevant and no one is advocating banning contraceptives, and Stephanopoulos looked really silly and petty as he continued to press for an answer from the candidates—but the key is that he continued to press for an answer.  Why?  It made no sense—at the time.

Then, not long after that debate, Secretary Sebelius announced that the Obama Administration would mandate that all employers would have to provide contraceptive coverage as part of their insurance plans, including religiously-affiliated hospitals, schools, and charities.  The “conscience exception” that had previously exempted such institutions from such mandates was to be narrowed to just the direct employees of the houses of worship of such religious institutions.

The negative reaction was stunning and swift, but it was not about women’s health or access to contraceptives—which must have further surprised the likes of Stephanopoulos and Sebelius.  Instead, it was about the use of the governmental fist in violation of the First Amendment to force churches to act at variance with their beliefs, or get fined—the type of direct assault on religious liberty that the U.S. Supreme Court had just told the Obama Administration it could not do as the court struck down another attempted regulatory invasion into the operation of a religious school. Hoping to find a compromise, people of goodwill from all over the political spectrum called on the Obama Administration to reconsider and re-embrace the full conscience exception that both political parties previously had honored, and that had provided a federal safe-harbor from mandates at the state level, while exploring other constitutional ways to maximize women’s access to medical treatments and prescriptions.  Instead of such a compromise, Obama announced a unilateral “compromise” with himself, which—of course—was no compromise at all.  It, instead, was a new fiat that was even more extraordinary for its hubris—mandating that insurers pay for, but not charge for, providing contraceptives to employees of religiously-affiliated hospitals, schools and charities.  Incredible!

Why was the second fiat incredible?  Let’s look closer at Obama’s magnanimous act of self-compromise for a moment:

• it ignores the fact that, in order to take advantage of the historical safe-harbor provided by the federal conscience exception, many religious institutions became self-insured, and those plans cover both the employees of the churches as well as the affiliated entities;

• it ignores one of the most basic facts of economics—there is no free lunch.  Regardless as to whether we are talking about free-market or government-planned economies, goods and services (including contraceptives, and the doctor visit and prescription needed to obtain the contraceptives) cost money; and, in this instance, those costs will be paid either directly by the employer or self-insurer, by all the insureds of the insurance company (including the religious institutions and their employees) through higher premiums, or by taxpayers through higher taxes or more public debt;

• it continues to ignore that these religiously-affiliated institutions only exist in order to fulfill the mission of the church in the community, so that they are an important part of the practice of religious faith  by the ministry of the church, regardless of whether the church employs or serves persons of other faiths (or of no faith) in the performance of such practices; and

• in making all these mistakes, it shows that Obama refuses to acknowledge and abide by the limitations on governmental power, and the exercise of that power, that our Founder’s enshrined in our Constitution, including the preservation of a separate church and the importance of its separate institutional role in our society.

So, the Obama fist came in a second swing toward the face of those of us who still believe in those limitations on government power, and in religious liberty.  But this time, like on so many other occasions over the last two generations, it is our face that was now alleged to be the aggressor, rather than the victim.  Those on the left who initially had called for Obama to re-consider his decision miraculously found this new fiat to be a welcome compromise, and then fell back in line as the lemmings that they are.  And, of course, their fellow travelers in the media lauded the magnanimity and wisdom of Obama’s act of self-compromise, and fell in line, too.  Then, returning full circle to the Stephanopoulos question, they found further criticism of the second swing of Obama’s fist to be a new assault on women’s health by the face of conservatives—an assault so grave that it could not be tolerated.  Unfortunately, some of our candidates and pundits played into this narrative, by allowing themselves to be drawn into debates about specific religious views of contraception, rather than keeping their focus on the fundamental flaws with Obama’s aggressive mandate.  As a result, in the latest twist in this story, the U.S. Senate could not muster the votes to return federal policy to the full conscience exception, and the left walked away from the debate claiming their fist had been assaulted by our face.

I want to be clear about some things.  I am not a Catholic, though I have great respect for the Catholic Church. I am a father of three girls, and I’m a grandfather.  I care very much about the health of my wife and daughters, and their access to the care they believe they need.  Finally, I see no societal, economic or political benefit to, or wisdom in, re-visiting the legal issue of medical privacy related to the sale and use of contraceptives, which was decided a half-century ago.  Contraception should not be, and really never was the issue in this political debate—we must remember that point as we move forward from here.

Now, back to my the point I started to make.  The shear arrogance of a political leader of this nation who would so cavalierly ignore basic economic principles, ignore basic constitutional rights, and ignore the basic limitations of governmental power that allow us to practice our constitutional rights, in order to advance an agenda to regulate by fiat an industry that represents at least 17% of our economy, and, in the process, create a new entitlement scheme, has not earned our trust and must not be re-elected.  We will never recover our economic vitality as a nation, let alone our full individual freedoms and responsibilities, if we re-elect this arrogance and give it four more years at the helm of our country.

To those of you who are involved in GOP campaigns this year, I remind you of the seriousness of the mission we have this fall, and ask you to keep your focus on that mission and what the real issues are.  Don’t get sidetracked into the left’s narrative—don’t stick your face into the left’s fist.  Simply fight back based on our narrative of liberty, personal responsibility, limited government and economic opportunity.  As Reagan once told us a generation ago, “there is no substitute for victory.”

Some Perspective about Electability and Consistency

This column originally appeared at Big Jolly Politics:

Well, we now are getting mercifully closer to the beginning of the voting in the Republican caucuses and primaries to choose our next Presidential Nominee. As I pointed out in a recent post about a focus-group we conducted at the last meeting of the Clear Lake Area Republicans, we Republicans share a lot of anxiety about this approaching election, because we sense that we are at a real tipping point in our history for many reasons. For this reason, we all are concerned about choosing the right candidate who will not only win in 2012, but who will lead a transformation of our political system based on conservative principles to fix the mess we face.

So, the concern of the moment, as Newt Gingrich sustains his improbable rise to the summit of the polls, is whether Newt can sustain the discipline he is showing, and whether he will be accepted by enough independent voters if he wins the GOP nomination to beat Obama and sweep other Republicans into Washington with him. With each passing day, we are being told that he can’t—by the media, by pollsters, by Democrats, and by virtually every Republican who considers themselves to be a leader within our party—while he keeps surging in the polls of GOP primary voters. Two recent images emerged from columns by Jonah Goldberg which aptly portray the anxiety many Republican leaders feel, when he described Newt as both a wild beast re-introduced to his natural habitat, and the re-incarnation of Godzilla (“Newtzilla”). It is this image of Newtzilla that is driving some pundits to start to encourage consideration of a third-party candidacy for Ron Paul, that is driving other pundits to beg voters to take a second look at Rick Perry and the rest of the field, and that is driving fundraisers to shovel money to Mitt Romney. “Newt hysteria” is the psychosis of the season for the Republican establishment.

With all this hyperventilation going on around us, it’s hard to maintain some perspective. But, with just a few weeks remaining before the voting begins, it’s time for all of us to take a deep breath for a moment, and then to remember that many of us have seen and heard all of this at least once before—and, when the dust settled that time, conservatism not only survived, it thrived for a generation.

As I wrote in my last post, it’s so hard now to objectively recall how Reagan was perceived at the end of 1979. When he gave the closing speech of the 1976 Republican Convention, most Republican leaders believed that they had finally vanquished the idea of a Reagan Presidency, and of a conservative ascendency within the party. Although Reagan’s ideas for a “New” Republican Party in 1977 were tolerated as they helped to mobilize conservatives for the mid-term elections, the party establishment believed he could be managed as an elder statesman. Even when he announced that he would seek the Presidency again in 1980, the party establishment did not take him seriously.

I encountered this attitude first-hand during my senior year of college in Rockford, Illinois. John Anderson was the local Congressman, and he had announced that he would run for the Republican nomination. At that time one of my mentors was the co-chair of John Anderson’s Presidential campaign, and he asked me to join the campaign to manage the national recruitment of college-student voters. I’ll never forget the reaction I got when, at the end of a meeting to discuss the offer, I told him and the others in attendance that I could not accept the position because I didn’t agree with Anderson and I was supporting Reagan. The incredulous, smug, and derisive reaction was something I will never forget, and not only my relationship with my mentor soon ended, but not long after that meeting I was asked to stop my work for Lynn Martin’s campaign to succeed Anderson in Congress (Martin later became Secretary of Labor under George H.W. Bush).

In the meantime, I recruited a handful of classmates to block-walk for Reagan, and to work for Reagan at polling places on the day of the Illinois primary in 1980. I’ll never forget one afternoon when I was at a grocery store wearing a Reagan pin, and one of the cashiers—a middle-aged woman—asked if I would wait a minute. She then gathered several of her co-workers and asked if I had more buttons, which I did, and I handed them out. She said her manager said it was “ok” to wear them, and they all put them on the lapels of their uniforms. As I left the store, she thanked me, and said they were praying that now was finally the time for Reagan. I knew that day that something extraordinary might happen that fall.

And, my gut was right—something extraordinary did happen that fall, as Reagan swept the nomination, swept the election, and swept in a Republican Senate for the first time since the Eisenhower years. But that process was not easy or pre-ordained. As much as no one wanted Carter re-elected—even Democrats—there was a lot of apprehension about Reagan until the very last week of the campaign when he debated Carter on national TV. It is hard to remember this now, but Ted Kennedy was leading all candidates of both parties in the polls at this time in 1979. The polls throughout 1980 would reflect a dissatisfaction with Carter, but a real apprehension of Reagan—which fueled Anderson’s ego enough to get him to run as an Independent. The following editorial cartoon reflects the mood and viewpoint of the country toward both Carter and Reagan as the election approached:

Look familiar? Today, in place of the Frankenstein image of Reagan from a generation ago, we are given the images of a wild beast and Godzilla from a fellow conservative to portray the current GOP frontrunner in an election cycle where most voters don’t want to re-elect the incumbent Democrat.

So, before we work ourselves into a frenzy of fear and anxiety, let’s step back. I don’t know if Newt will, or even should be, our nominee, but I don’t fear his candidacy. Nor will I allow myself to be torn with anxiety as the polls move all over the place next year. If he wins this nomination, he has a very realistic chance to win the race as the electorate evaluates his candidacy throughout the next year—even up to the eve of the election. I believe that we will not lose this election if Newt is nominated, but we will lose this election if we let the establishment’s concern over his electability pre-ordain the outcome. We didn’t let that happen in 1980, and we can’t let that happen now.

That reflection leads me to address my final point for this post—the current attack on Newt’s alleged failure to be a “consistent” conservative. The new label of “consistent conservative” is nothing more than a new version of the tired old label of “true conservative,” which typically is trotted out in a final, desperate attempt to differentiate a candidate from his or her opponent when all substantive arguments have failed, and to set the opponent up for the final Scarlett Letter of “RINO” or “moderate.” The use of the label is intended to foreclose serious thought and discussion, and to trigger a Pavlovian response of support for the candidate who invokes it to describe herself and of revulsion toward the opponent. Using labels like “consistent” or “true” underscores a triumph of ideology over principle in conservative debate.

As I tried to subtly point out in another recent post, the battle between libertarians and religious conservatives over the extreme ideological future of conservatism is really hurting this party. This battle focuses on the worst of both extremes—a misreading and misapplication of Adam Smith, and an over-application of the literal Word to secular politics. Russell Kirk, Bill Buckley, Whitaker Chambers, Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan roll in their graves as this battle intensifies.

Framing the debate within the Republican field as being about who is the “consistent conservative” necessarily judges conservatism ideologically, which is the antithesis of Kirk's view that conservatism is based on principles, not ideology. It reminds me of Reagan’s favorite philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous discussion about the problem with “consistency” in his essay on self-reliance. In that essay, Emerson observed that the consistency that matters is that of character, and that character only reveals itself over time from the cumulative evaluation of actions and statements, not from a foolish adherence to rigidity of action and thought moment by moment, day by day:

• The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them. …


• … A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. … To be great is to be misunderstood.


• I suppose no man can violate his nature. … A character is like an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza; — read it forward, backward, or across, it still spells the same thing. In this pleasing, contrite wood-life which God allows me, let me record day by day my honest thought without prospect or retrospect, and, I cannot doubt, it will be found symmetrical, though I mean it not, and see it not. My book should smell of pines and resound with the hum of insects. … Character teaches above our wills. Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment.


• … The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency. Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. Act singly, and what you have already done singly will justify you now. Greatness appeals to the future. If I can be firm enough to-day to do right, and scorn eyes, I must have done so much right before as to defend me now. Be it how it will, do right now. Always scorn appearances, and you always may. The force of character is cumulative. All the foregone days of virtue work their health into this. What makes the majesty of the heroes of the senate and the field, which so fills the imagination? The consciousness of a train of great days and victories behind. They shed an united light on the advancing actor.

Are we going to continue to live in a time dominated by “foolish consistency”? Are we going to continue to vote for men and women who choose to be “little statesmen” in order to satisfy the test of consistency driven by the 24/7 news cycle, the “Meet the Press” gotcha quotes, and the Internet. In such a world nothing fades into the haze of memory in order to give us the breathing room to think deeply, evaluate our positions based on new facts and information, and apply our principles with imagination over time.

In such a world, men and women like Gingrich, who have served in the Arena over decades, and who have had to think about many issues and ideas over many years as data and circumstances have changed, would naturally be foreclosed from higher office because considerations they discussed 20 years ago no longer meet the test of consistency. If that is to be our world, then our politics will be dominated by those who either have never thought about or discussed the pressing issues of the day, have been too timid to ever deviate from orthodoxy in their consideration of what is the best course of action based on enduring principles, or have been in the Arena too short a time to ever have had to consider the impact of new data or circumstances on the application of conservative principles.

In thinking about this issue, I found the most revealing moment from last Saturday night’s debate on ABC to be when Rick Santorum—a very self-professed “consistent” conservative—said it was Newt’s GOPAC CDs on conservatism that attracted him to politics. Does Santorum really think that the Newt he admired no longer exists? Isn’t it more appropriate to reflect on how Newt has tried to think about and apply conservative principles to the issues he has faced over 40 years, and how he has matured through that process, than to judge him based on whether he said the same thing over and over again for 40 years no matter what the issue was or what experience had taught him?

Say what you will about Newt’s flaws, he’s closer to the Emerson ideal of a leader whose “[g]reatness appeals to the future” than most of the others up on that stage last Saturday night. I don’t know about you, but I’m looking for a leader in 2012, not someone who is trapped by his or her own “foolish consistency”.