This is my latest column in Christian Courier, published 10 September. Please subscribe today.
Once upon a time the Democratic and Republican Parties were big-tent organizations, trying to appeal to as wide a swath of public opinion as they could manage. Although the Republicans were generally conservative and the Democrats generally liberal, there was a huge area of overlap between them. They were divided, not so much by governing philosophies, as by somewhat divergent interest groups along with their pet issues. Big business tended to support the Republicans, while big labour was onside of the Democrats.
In those days there were conservative Democrats, many from the south, who championed the rights of the states over what they saw as an excessively intrusive federal government. Senator Strom Thurmond and Alabama Governor George Wallace exemplified this group. There were also liberal Republicans, such as the late Illinois Senator Charles Percy, who introduced legislation to encourage the building of affordable housing for low-income families. After the US Supreme Court legalized abortion on demand in 1973, the two parties were internally divided on the issue, with pro-choice Republicans and pro-life Democrats sharing the political landscape with pro-life Republicans and pro-choice Democrats. Even Senator Edward Kennedy initially considered himself pro-life.
When I started teaching a quarter of a century ago, this was still largely the lay of the land, but no longer. In recent years the two parties have become increasingly polarized. Although there is still a dwindling number of pro-life Democrats, the party leadership has deliberately marginalized them. Those who persist in maintaining their convictions on this issue find themselves unable to advance within its ranks. Even Democrats for Life America is compelled to pose this question on its website: “Can you be pro-life in a pro-choice party?” Although Catholics and Southern Baptists were once integral components of the Democratic coalition, the current secularizing leadership has pulled the party in a direction that would have been unthinkable to Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy.
Sensing that the Democratic Party was moving away from the American mainstream, the Republican Party successfully reached out to these two core groups in the 1980s, thereby adding the so-called “Reagan Democrats” to its own support base. The Republicans looked set to establish their own dynasty for years to come, capitalizing on the missteps of the opposition. With the current administration’s attack on the religious freedom of faith-based organizations, this should be the Republicans’ year. But things may not turn out that way.
Although the libertarian component had always been part of the Republican coalition, it has gained more visibility with the Tea Party in recent years. As Mitt Romney was poised to become his party’s standard bearer last month, he chose as his vice-presidential candidate Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, who has Tea Party support. Ryan once professed to be heavily influenced by Russian-American author Ayn Rand, who wrote a book called The Virtue of Selfishness. An atheist and avowed opponent of altruism, she championed the individual over the community, as seen in her novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, which have a cult following amongst North American libertarians. Rand’s preferred social ethic would see a minimal state at best, along with a strict laissez-faire economy. From her perspective, the welfare state is not just ineffective and expensive; it is immoral.
Sad to say, polarization has brought out the worst elements in both parties. The Democrats seem to be controlled by those who misunderstand the comprehensive claims of religious faith, narrowing freedom of religion to a mere freedom of worship. The Republicans appear to be flirting with social Darwinists who believe in survival of the fittest. Not a pretty picture.
Yet there is more here than meets the eye. Both parties accept the historic liberal preference for individualism and voluntarism. One defends the right of individuals to follow their own personal and sexual preferences, even at the expense of institutions with stricter internal membership standards. The other believes the individual should pursue his or her own economic goals, even at the expense of the commons. If Democrats and Republicans are indeed polarized, it is not, after all, over basic principles; it is over who has rightful title to those principles.
I will not presume to predict a winner in November, but I will predict that there will be no happily ever after.
September 10th, 2012 | 12:09 pm | #1
Ryan has described his connection with Rand as a boyhood dalliance, which he moved beyond. He’s more influenced by Catholic theologians like Aquinas than her:
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/297023/ryan-shrugged-robert-costa
Thus it would appear to be a mistake to impute Rand’s ur-libertarianism and social Darwinism to him.
Moreover, he has shown some tendencies toward pragmatism rather than Randian idelaism in working with Dems on, e.g., Ryan-Wyden bill for Medicare reform.
September 10th, 2012 | 3:28 pm | #2
“…but I will predict that there will be no happily ever after.”
Agreed. Although I will stay firm in my prediction that Obama has it locked.
September 11th, 2012 | 11:04 am | #3
“The other believes the individual should pursue his or her own economic goals, even at the expense of the commons.”
I’m sorry, but this author clearly does not understand economics. Adam Smith first showed us how the market benefits the “commons”, when he wrote “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest.”
The only time a free market does not direct personal acquisitiveness to the benefit of the commons, is when the vendor sells vice-and that is something the left enthusiastically supports.
To assume that the state is the omniscient and incorrupt custodian of the common good is foolishness.
September 13th, 2012 | 12:00 pm | #4
I do not deny that the market benefits the commons. Nongovernmental agents, whether individual or communal, contribute to the commons by pursuing their own legitimate goods. But, like all good things, there are limits to what the market can be expected to do, especially when other than strictly economic norms enter the picture. This is where the various institutions of civil society, along with government, have a legitimate role to play. Protection of the physical environment, which belongs to all, is one good calling for something more than individual choice registered in the market. Even Aristotle understood the principle of the mixed economy, thereby displaying a sounder understanding of reality than the likes of an Ayn Rand.
September 15th, 2012 | 1:17 am | #5
“I do not deny that the market benefits the commons.”
Interesting declaration, but one that does not square with your previous statement: “The other believes the individual should pursue his or her own economic goals, even at the expense of the commons.”
The problem is that it is almost impossible to make a durable pursuit of one’s economic goals at the expense of the “commons”, but it is incredibly easy in the “mixed economy”, hence we have a myriad of crony capitalist scandals (Solyndra, GM, TARP, etc)
Your excursion into Rand is telling, but tedious and irrelevant. Rand is far less an influence on the Tea Party than Acton. There’s no doubt that Rand was given to excess, but most intellectuals display this tendency. You would do well to read Paul Johnson’s “Intellectuals”.
Her brand of misanthropy, however regrettable, wouldn’t offer the intellectual justification for state sponsored mass murder that Marx provided or the financial shenanigans that invoke Keynesian sorceries.
That having been said, I have worked in government for the better part of a decade, in multiple agencies, including having audited Medicaid/Medicare. I have direct experience that leads me to reason that the proposition that “the welfare state is not just ineffective and expensive; it is immoral” is true. Worse, it is designed to entrap people into dependency and partisan loyalty.
Look, I get it. You are completely at ease with syncretism (describing yourself as a “byzantinecalvinist”. You are by professional inclination, completely at ease with the state and fearful of the market. Most members of the professoriate are statists and agoraphobes.
The problem is, your response has done nothing to dispel my suspicion that you lack a fundamental understanding of basic economics, the division of labor, the exchange function and the irresolvable epistemic diseconomies of centralization. You are quick to asserting that there should be limits on the market, but not on government-no doubt in small part because you fancy yourself an expert on government.
September 20th, 2012 | 4:41 pm | #6
Mr. Pecuniary (or Pecniary) Matters:
You appear to be an expert at reading between the lines and drawing conclusions therefrom as to what I must believe and must not believe. You have discovered my tongue-in-cheek Byzantine-Rite Calvinist moniker, but not much else about me or my writings, judging from what you’ve written immediately above. Feel free to think me guilty until proven innocent, if you’d like, but you should not expect a fruitful exchange to come out of it. Have a good day.
September 20th, 2012 | 4:55 pm | #7
What you wrote above was informative and sufficient enough to disclose the nature and depth of your economic and political views.
I bid you the same.
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