STFU: Thoughts On Social Conservatism

With Rick Santorum's surge in the Republican Presidential race (hopefully nicely dented by his somewhat lackluster, 'I'm going to inexplicably defend Congress, the most unpopular institution in America and their earmarks' performance in last night's debate) there's been a lot of commentary swirling on the interwebs about Santorum, what he's said and some interesting thoughts about just what makes social conservatism so attractive to so many people in the first place.

There has been reams of commentary written about this subject- whole books, in fact, most of which I'm not going to touch on here- what does make this a debate worth weighing in on, for me personally anyway is my stone cold, visceral dislike for social conservatism. I view it as the poison pen in the side of the conservative movement and our political discourse as a whole, one that taints a lot of somewhat sensible things that Conservatives advocate for with a stench of hypocrisy that makes it impossible for me to support most, if not all Republican candidates. You cannot look me in the eye and say you want to shrink the size of government while advocating policies that call for intrusion of government into the most personal aspects of our lives.

Yet there are commentators out there that view social conservatism as something of an inevitability, which is what I find fascinating, because having read a few of these pieces I find myself reluctantly agreeing with some of the analysis presented.

We begin with Andrew Klavan's piece, The Tyranny of Hip. Written (as a lot of these pieces are) in reaction to a NY Times review of a forthcoming book on (what I'm assuming) is the collapse of the American family structure as we know it by Conservative Sociologist Charles Murray. When even the New York Times is forced to concede that the declining rates of marriage are having a deliterious affect on families, then one could assume that the dire warnings posited by social conservatives about the collapse of family values, family morals, etc, etc, etc might have something of a salient point behind it. Murray's overall point is that married folk tend to be better educated, work harder and overall are more economically prosperous that single folk- and that the cultural shifts away from the apparently antiquated notions of marriage, family, etc, etc, are responsible for a lot of societal dislocation we see going on these days. Murray's money graph:

The best thing that the new upper class can do… is to drop its condescending “non-judgmentalism.” Married, educated people who work hard and conscientiously raise their kids shouldn’t hesitate to voice their disapproval of those who defy these norms. When it comes to marriage and the work ethic, the new upper class must start preaching what it practices.

This is a strange point to make, because it simultaneously makes a certain amount of sense to me, while rubbing me entirely the wrong way. Being married and employed certainly has it's benefits at least from where I'm sitting, but arguing that it's the best solution for everyone? Preaching the 'gospel' of marriage and showing up to work on time? Marriage is not for everyone (really, it's not) and people shouldn't have to be preached at about it's virtues and showing up for work on time and doing the best you can at your job, however unimportant or shitty it may be just seems like common sense 101 to me.

But flip that on it's head: my attitude, however rooted in 'leave everybody the fuck alone' it might be means that if I'm not going to get judgey with my single friends then it would be hypocritical of me to get judgey with helicopter parents (the biggest threat to my generation) or any of the assorted purveyors of bullshit out there. It's troublesome. And it's annoying- because I hate thinking that these people might actually have a tiny, salient point to make. Klavan takes Murray's notion and goes on step further though- his money graph(s):

This is so clearly true that the only real question is: why don’t they? If marriage and religion give smart people joy and improve their living standards, why don’t they spread the word?

I believe one reason is the Tyranny of Hip: the unwillingness of grownups to be thought of as uncool. We seem to have a horror of shedding the mantles of the heroes of romance in order to take on the roles of the crusty but wise chaperones. Even when Red State’s Erick Erickson and cultural blogger Dr. Melissa Clouthier among others courageously grasped the nettle recently and took the girls and boys of CPAC to task for dressing like hookers and acting like johns, they were at pains to explain that they were talking about time and place appropriateness not morals — which still didn’t protect them from the usual hail of superior-sounding irony that followed.

OK now this is some truth-telling I can get behind, because the fear of being uncool is exactly the kind of silly-ass bullshit a lot of Baby Boomer/Gen X Parents will preach. They want to be cool... they want to be liked... when, just once every so often, a kid needs a foot broken off in his or her behind. That happened to me when it was necessary and I'm the better for it. This is the kind of bullshit that people should be speaking up about- not necessarily the virtues of marriage or getting all judgey about the lifestyles people choose to live. I honestly believe that individuals know what works best for them. It's not up to me to tell them otherwise- but as a society I think we do need to start calling bullshit on some of this stuff, because it's ridiculous and it's threatening to deliver a generation of half-formed suburban juveniles into the centers of power in this country and that's a truly scary notion.

James Taranto takes a different tack in his piece, Mystification and Triumphalism- taking on the Left's quest to rationalize the seemingly irrational behavior of voters who continually vote against what the Left percieves to be their best interests a la Thomas Frank's What's The Matter With Kansas? (A fascinating book- well worth a read.) While the Left rationalizes and attempts to declare victory in the Culture Wars, Taranto points out (in one of his money 'graphs):

In other words, less affluent Americans are socially conservative because they bear the brunt of the social policies and cultural attitudes that prevail among affluent liberal elites. You can see why it would be difficult for Krugman and Alter, who doubtless pride themselves on their compassion and moral rectitude, to acknowledge or even consider this explanation. They need to be obtuse as a psychological defense.

Oddly enough, this is another point that makes a certain amount of sense to me. Culture, such as it is, is by and large shaped and driven by the presence of media elites on either Coast. These coasts by and large tend to be more liberal and more affluent and their experience is far different than ours here in the so-called 'flyover states.' The magnitude of the problem is immense: our media, business and political elites all live in Ivory Towers on the Coasts and wonder why they're so hated by so many swathes of the country. The rest of the country, in turn, watches these elites preaching their ideals (seemingly of European Social Democracy, though God knows why- that's not working too well either these days) and view their ideals as nothing less than an attack on their primarily Protestant-driven values of family, faith and hard work. That titanic misunderstanding and the arrogant belief on the part of our elites that if they just talk loudly enough the rest of the country will go along with them is, to me, the driving force of the tiresome, never-ending culture wars in this country.

Taranto loses some ground in the back half of his piece, launching into the usual Conservative chestnuts of throwing heat towards the Feminist Movement of the late 60s and early 70s. While I won't deny his basic premise that feminism caused a certain amount of social 'dislocation' as he calls it, I would take the stance that it was for the best and probably something of a historical inevitability. His second money 'graph:

The social dislocation caused by feminism and the sexual revolution demands a political response, and so far the left has nothing to offer apart from bankrupting the country with more entitlements. It's encouraging to see a youngish left-wing feminist like Rosin have an inkling that there's a problem, but until the left starts thinking creatively about solutions, which will require a reconsideration of orthodoxies that date back to the 1960s and '70s, the social right will be the only game in town.

Having the Left start to think at all would be a damn good thing in my book- but the whole point these commentators are trying to make is that the proverbial writing appears to be on the wall: married people have more money and are more prosperous than non-married people. How do you square that with a generation of 'women need men like fish need bicycles' thinking? I believe in sexual equality, I really do- but where I jumped off the Feminist bandwagon (and I sat through a couple of Women's Studies classes just to be sure I had something of a clue as to what I was talking about) is the collectivization of guilt that's thrown in the face of men. That's no way to break down an entrenched hierarchy and I know damn well most men aren't going to respond well to that- so it's not going to get a lot of mileage breaking down patriarchy either.

I don't rape women. I reluctantly share the same biological charateristics as the scum-sucking assholes that do rape women, but I'm not going to lower my gender or my identity as a male by calling them men. Real Men don't rape. Real Men don't hit women and Real Men that do neither of those things shouldn't have to feel like they should apologize for the scum-sucking assholes that do. You can't lump us all in the same boat- and that's what feminism does a lot of the time. (The other thing is this odd notion that women feel somehow stifled by men and can't 'speak freely' around them. What an utter load of shit. I freely admit that I'm an opinionated bugger a lot of the time and if you think I'm throwing down a fresh line of bullshit, then I expect you to damn well say so, man or woman. I can't grow as an individual unless my assumptions are challenged- plus having my face rubbed in the fact that I'm wrong from time to time is honestly good for the soul, I think.)

Bringing us back to Klavan's piece, he hits the nail on the head with this:

No one wants to turn into the old man waving his cane from the porch rocking chair shouting at the young folks to stop all their goldarned canoodling and quit parading around with their hoo-has and what-nots hanging out, for the love of Mike.

And yet the nation hungers for just such behavior. Witness the recent YouTube video of a father punishing his spoiled daughter for a snarky Facebook post by plugging her laptop with a .45. The thing went viral to the tune of tens of millions of viewers. Why? Because it was wonderful to see someone finally step up and be Daddy.

And the Anchoress weighs in with this depressing capstone to the entire debate:

The government, the media and academia are all in the clutches of perpetual 14 year-olds forever chasing times and trends to maintain the aura of hipness that keeps them sitting at the lunch table with the “cool” kids. The spoiled cool kids who think they’re just entitled to everything. Which is generally what 14 year-olds do think

So basically, I think the argument I'm hearing (Taranto's critique of feminism aside) is that social conservatism emerges as a force in our society because people want someone to just stand up and call 'bullshit' on a lot of things in our society? Or is it because we've never really left high school behind as a nation and we're all locked in some nightmarish clique factory, trying desperately to be cool...

It's not quite that any of those things- because it's certainly a discussion worth having. I was named after St. Thomas Aquinas, a deep thinker who didn't say too much until he started writing incomprehensible theological tracts- and that's really how I practice my faith. I believe in God. I believe in a higher power and I pray- probably less than I should, but I do pray. I struggle with it sometimes and I know my faith is far from perfect, which is why it frustrate me when these issues get so tied up in religion. I don't want people getting faith forced down their throats- such actions, whether explicit or implicit will not produce the result a lot of Conservatives search for. Jesus isn't the answer, Jesus is the question- as in, Jesus, what are we going to do with this mess?

So am I a social conservative? Not really. Not in the sense any of these people are describing. I'm not built to be a reactionary. I didn't live the past therefore I have no particular connection to it- I'm built for radicalism, plain and simple. But underlying all of this is the one, salient point I can get behind: there's an awful lot of bullshit being thrown around in our culture and our society and more people need to stand up and call it just that. Whether it's helicopter parenting or the idea that traditional marriage is some sort of societal evil to be opposed (it's not, but it's not for everyone either) or just the sheer amount of drivel that gets shown to kids on television, people need to stand up. We may be locked into this cultural hell of a nationwide high school, but I think these commentators are right: it's graduation day and the country is ready to stand up and say 'shut the fuck up.'