Paleo myopia?

See: Douthat, Larison, Douthat, and Larison. (Will also blogged a few days ago about the essay that set all of this off.) I’d add a few thoughts:

First, while I do share the Larisonian skepticism of governmental meliorism, I agree with Ross that things like flat taxes (too regressive) or thorough and immediate bulldozings of the admittedly crumbling remains of the welfare state (too socially and politically disastrous) are not what conservatives should be aiming for, at least in the near term. And so to the extent that the Grand New Party agenda is aimed at eliminating the sort of dependence on governmental safety nets that make the centralized state seem so intractable, that sounds great to me – but even well-meaning governmental programs have a proud history of near-perpetual motion, and so there’s every reason to go in for some serious scrutiny as well.

Secondly, while I am similarly sympathetic to the corresponding Douthatian skepticism of the idea that a conservatism centered solely on apolitical calls for social and cultural reform – yes, even of the culinary sort – is going to be the thing to save America, that doesn’t mean that the conservative agenda can proceed forward in the absence of such elements, either. The relevant institutions and societal mores are in quite bad shape, and if all parties to the debate agree that they’re neither going to be recreated simply through creative economic and social policies nor spring up magically when the rug is pulled out from under the welfare state, then there ought to be a strong consensus that deliberate and concentrated “grassroots” attempts at bottom-up reforms should constitute an important part of the conservative project, too. I’m quite confident that Ross thinks this as well, and so that the disagreement here is primarily one of emphasis rather than substance – but it’s important to be clear that this can be a both/and, and not a simple either/or.

Thirdly and finally, I want to note that one thing that seems to be being largely passed over in this discussion is the ways in which our country’s domestic and foreign policies are almost essentially interwoven. An aggressively interventionist Fatherland Security state that spends huge amounts of money on tapping wires and waging wars national defense and international democracy promotion but still keeps taxes low and respects the civic autonomy of its little platoons may be a conceptual possibility, but it’s not at all clear that it can be anything more real than that. Hence Grand New Party’s decision to deal only with the domestic side of the equation may be more of a defect than Daniel indicated a while back: not because the GOP is an essentially “nationalistic” party that needs an appropriately structured foreign agenda, but rather because there’s good reason to think that the neoconservative agenda is in severe tension if not outright conflict with the traditionally conservative view of civil society and the state.

Like I said, a few thoughts. As anyone who reads this blog is well aware, the issues at stake here are ones about which I’m constantly debating with myself – hence the lack of cogency or any clear moral, for which I apologize. But they’re interesting and deeply important issues, and ones about which conservatives are bound to need to keep having conversations in the years and decades to come.

Filed under: conservatism, government/law, war