Four conservatives to watch

Rod,

Thanks for drawing attention to these four. I saw Brad Wilcox on EWTN a few months and was impressed. He was the subject of a 30-minute interview on Colleen Carroll Campbell's outstanding program which is aired on EWTN, "Faith and Culture." Wilcox talked about some of his research findings and the inter-connections between faith, fatherhood and stable family life.

As for Luigi Zingales, I understand where he's coming from. The two most powerful politicians here in the NYC region are billionaires and former financiers who went into politics: NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg and NJ Governor Jon Corzine. Neither are conservatives. Corzine is a liberal Democrat; and, Bloomberg, a liberal with loyalty to no party. And then look at how so many of the Wall Street types contributed mightily to Obama or Clinton. Very few of the folks I know who work in any of the large Manhattan-based multinational corporations are dyed-in-the-wool Republicans and even fewer are orthodox cultural conservatives.

One taboo is dead and not going to be revived, and that is the divorce one. There is no social consequence to divorce and given its prevalence there is no way to recreate it.

Zingales:
2008-2009 Templeton Grant (2008-2009)

2006 - 2007 Templeton Grant (2006-2007)

(Please bear with me; this is a rather longish post, mostly because the ideas being treated with in this thread are by no means simple. Your indulgence, O readers, and Mr. Dreher, is gratefully appreciated.)

Thank you for the interesting post, Mr. Dreher, and for the attached links. The four newcomers you speak of sound intriguing. A critique, however, of both the philosophies of these newcomers and the strategic/tactical situations facing potential proponents of these ideas is, I believe, in order.

Luigi Zingales sounds promising. The State/Corporate alliance—that is, the cooperation between large forces in the economy and members of the upper levels of the political hierarchy, at the expense of or without regard for the interests of commoners---has been a signal part of virtually ALL Western or post-Western regimes for centuries. Historically speaking, Mr. Zingales is not proposing to cover any new conceptual ground.

As for Mr. Wilcox, what he is advocating is essentially the reconstitution of what used to be called the “bourgeoisie”; that is, families with actual economic and political authority over their offspring, along with the independence of means to enforce that authority. Reconstructing that will be difficult in the extreme, given the corporate sector’s ability to utilize mass media (including both broadcast, cable AND the Internet) to propagate its messages of individual behavioral license, as well as its ability to use State instrumentalities to inhibit, if not completely prevent, the formation of non-corporate pools of independent capital.

The major difficulty he will have in realizing his objectives is that what he advocates is essentially the repealing of the so-called “sexual revolution”. That change in social mores strikes directly at the heart of the SCA’s power, both economically and politically. Both the central government and its provincial subsidiaries have vested interests in inhibiting, if not outright preventing both family formation and independent family capital accumulation; remove the dependence fostered by entitlement programs (particularly SocSec and Medicare) and the concomitant seizure and usurpation of functions traditionally performed by families (provision of care for young and elderly dependent members), and large parts of the State’s apparatus become irrelevant.

Reinforcing the problem for those sharing Wilcox’s concerns is the fact that most Americans are fundamentally employees; the typical employee of a medium- or large-sized corporation does not have enough of a perspective on what the firm does to be able to develop a sense of control of, or even more than the sketchiest of knowledge of his own work. This, when combined with the expectations fostered in said individuals by the memetic matrices that permeate their lives (TV, entertainment media, etc.), produces more dependence. Essentially what we have seen in the USA over the last century or so has been the goaded production of a “middle class” that is really a proletariat, in a quasi- or neo-Marxist sense of the term; a propertyless class reliant on others for the means of survival.

From what I have seen and read of Mr. Salam, he is essentially advocating a policy of using State means towards traditionalist ends; specific government policies being redesigned to “benefit” American commoners. The primary problems I see with that are threefold: first, such a policy would do little, if anything, to actually restore family functions to the control of families. A subsidy or regulation giving support to commoner families at one time can be removed from families at another time by later State action. Second, the large corporations and their allies “got there first”, in terms of cementing their coalition with the State. Forcing the two groups apart is, in this social and political environment, virtually impossible, as more and more members of political-elite families are intermarrying with the families of economic elites. Finally, such a policy does not reflect underlying technological and mental realities in the target populations that, from where I sit, serve as part of the core problem, to wit: an excessive, pseudo-religious materialism conditioned by four generations of exposure to light-speed communications media of high “attractiveness” (radio and television) combined with a materialistic fascination with physical technology; the deliberate discouragement of independent thought (by those same media) in favor of a fluffy, non-sensical hypersentimentality and the encouragement of dependence on non-family institutions, particularly those that are relatively large in both size and scope.

In many respects, what the SCA is attempting to do (and, in no small part succeeded in doing) is create an arcology; an artificial environment, ostensibly made to remove all or almost all difficulties from the lives of the individuals living in it. (It is no accident, IMO, that the government part of the American SCA is trying to get more Americans to live in cities or urban environments, rather than in more rural locales where the SCA’s mechanisms of social control are less obvious and visible.) Such an environment, if perfected, would effectively render the Humans contained in it docile and easily (and permanently) controlled by the elites.

In the long term, however, it would also produce the collapse of that part of the Human race living within it. An environment that was such an effortless Arcadia would remove any need for the individuals residing in it to plan for the future and actuate it through the production and raising of children. Unless that arcology was truly world-wide in scope, population pressure from outside would overwhelm the regimes within each arcology within a few generations. We can see, for example, that this process is already well-advanced in America, Europe and Japan, where the native populations are either being displaced by new, unassimilated outsiders (Mexicans/Latin Americans in the USA, Muslims in Europe) or are simply dying off without anything replacing them (as in Japan).

It seems to me that we have a choice; either arrange matters to allow the re-emergence of a real, authentic bourgeoisie of functional families and intermediary institutions, with all the inequality, discrimination and suffering that would entail, or see what remains of our culture, if not the Human race as a whole, be displaced or die out outright. Our time for correcting the choice we seem to have already made is not of the longest, either.

I’d say that these “new conservative thinkers”, as well as those who are interested in supporting or emulating them, have their work cut out for them.

Your servant,

Lord Karth

Re: I guess I'll have to read him more before I can understand how you could have any kind of market without business.

Market =/= capitalism. Socialist Yugoslavia under Tito had a mostly market-based economy, with the means of production owned mostly be worker cooperatives as opposed to the state. That's an extreme example, of course, and I'm sure that isn't what Zingales advocates, but its important to realize that capitalism and the free market are two different things. One refers to who owns productive enterprises, and the other relates to such things as how wages and prices are set.

It's possible to have the market set prices, and also to have most enterprises owned by petty proprietors, by their employees, by cooperatives, by public institutions, or by a whole slew of other alternatives to private business.

Another vote for Zingales. I'm about to look for his book.

And Wilcox is promising, too. Although I don't have kids, I'm very much pro-family.

Not familiar with either of them.

Larison?

Karth Saith...:

Reinforcing the problem for those sharing Wilcox’s concerns is the fact that most Americans are fundamentally employees; the typical employee of a medium- or large-sized corporation does not have enough of a perspective on what the firm does to be able to develop a sense of control of, or even more than the sketchiest of knowledge of his own work. This, when combined with the expectations fostered in said individuals by the memetic matrices that permeate their lives (TV, entertainment media, etc.), produces more dependence.

I'm not in agreement with that at all. Well, I would agree that people who are cogs in a very large machine don't know the machine well, but it is a mistake to think that the vast majority of Americans are in that situation.

The emperical data suggets otherwise.

This data here:

http://www.census.gov/epcd/www/smallbus.html

Even at a cursory glance reveals a very large chunk of our population is either self employed, or works for companies with under 500 employees.

"The issue, as he sees it, is not a matter of preserving traditional moral values, but of insuring equality of opportunity... Marriage needs defending, in other words - not because of what it represents, but because of who it protects."

This writer can't even use "ensure" correctly, but as written he makes traditional moral values appear like something irrelevant to conservatism and to society. Representation is very important in all societies, so marriage can't be dismissed as "merely symbolic."

I doubt Wilcox is blind to this. I think he is on to something in his efforts to expand notional "family values" into actual "family policy." A sound family policy approach can help clear away the anti-family measures in welfare and tax policy, like the No Man in the House welfare rule. Family policy would show the concrete differences between liberationist and familial attitudes.

Unfortunately, the Dems are the only ones with a history of doing family policy, and that history has been crushed and demonized by feminists and other radicals who now dominate the party's mindset.

PNWCC @ 9:13 PM writes:

“Even at a cursory glance reveals a very large chunk of our population is either self employed, or works for companies with under 500 employees. “

I suspect that the loss-of-control/lack-of-perspective problem kicks in at between 100 and 250 workers per firm. I will also concede that that point is probably different for people in different fields. Construction work often involves a considerable level of control over how one does one’s appointed task, while line work in a factory does not. Even if it kicks in when the firm in question has 250 or more workers, that’s still perhaps 60 percent of all workers, according to the information in the link you posted (assuming I read it properly, of course). That is still a considerable percentage.

Your servant,

Lord Karth

What I don't see in any of these new voices is an understanding of the human condition. Absent that, they're just right-liberals hoping to re-engineer the world to their liking.

Old conservatives used to know that mankind was fallen, that given the opportunity even the best of us would lie, cheat and steal, and that absent governance we would devolve back to the brutes in the caves. No longer. Now the assumption is that we're on our way to perfection and the only question is what the best mechanism to perfection might be. The fundamental consideration is liberal, not conservative.

Most family values people are liberals, they wish not to govern what is but to engineer what is not. Most free-marketeers are liberals, they posit that a mechanism created by men is more pure than the men who created it.

So I look for a real conservative, someone who will say "This is how things are, and this is how we should keep them from wrecking havoc." not "This is how things should be, and this is how we should recreate humanity to get there."

One point on the size of firms: current domestic policies actually push people into working for larger firms and away from being entrepreneurs or working for small companies.

Case in point: health insurance. My rather large employer has generous benefits (including domestic partner benefits), which is a huge incentive to keep working for the same company. My partner, on the other hand, works for a small three-man operation where he gets nothing but a paycheck. Health insurance is simply far too expensive for his employer to provide (much as he'd like to).

Retirement benefits are a similar issue. I have access to a 401(k) with a match from my employer. Smaller companies tend not to offer such things, leaving their employees entirely responsible for their own retirement (aside from social security of course).

Lord Karth made the observation that what government giveth, government can take away. However I would say that, in a democracy, even an imperfect one, benefit programs that large segments of the population rely on tend to be very hard to alter (except to expand). In these cases, government is at the mercy of interest groups (like AARP) rather than the other way around.

Hence the ongoing difficulties with the reform of Social Security, which date back decades. Any reform we may see will happen around the margins.

Not sure why McArdle is included in this list. She's pro-same sex marriage, reluctantly pro-choice, not apparently religious, and calls herself a libertarian.

Observer: As an economist (originally) and a tax practitioner, I am well aware of the quirk in our tax codes that made health insurance an employer-funded responsibility. It dates back to World War 2 and a certain court decision that allowed health insurance to be paid by an employer and not treated as income.

One thing that both you and Steve miss, however, is that the health-care sector of our economy is already a largely central-government-run enterprise. Medicare and Medicaid in and of themselves probably account for more than half of all health-care spending.

The rest of that industry is so riddled with regulations on both the central- and provincial-government levels (provincial laws regarding mandated benefits in insurance plans, for example) that to say it has more than a passing and unintentional resemblance to a free-market system is to commit comedy.

Your servant,

Lord Karth

And speaking of children supporting their parents in old age, here's an article that ought to make conservatives jump for joy.

A brief summary:

A elderly woman racks up about $8000 in a nursing home.

She refuses to pay the bill despite have both a $1434 a month pension and social security.

Since pensions and social security cannot be garnished, her income is effectively off limits, so she gets off scot-free.

So the nursing home sues her estranged son (he was largely raised by his grandparents) under a law that obliges children to provide for their aged parents.

He just had been laid off, couldn't afford a lawyer to fight it and now is stuck with her $8000 bill. Which means he now has a lien on his home and a messed up credit rating.

And any slim chance at family reconciliation is pretty much shot.

***

Should she have been a better mother? We don't know her side of the story here, but probably. Might he have volunteered to help her if she needed the assistance, in a spirit of charity? Again, we don't know the full family history, but probably. In an ideal world, would this have worked out? Perhaps so.

But we don't live in an ideal world. Oblige children to support their parents and you're guaranteed to end up with situations like this.

Observer-Yes, I am a physician.

L. Karth- Medicare has all the old, sick people. Medicaid picks up long term care costs. They should cost more than the private insurance population to cover. Do you have any citations for these regulations the private insurance companies work under. When I talk with our insurance people they claim it has mostly to do with how they manage their money and keep up reserves. The areas where I know they have gotten specific mandates is in women's care, especially OB. After trying to limit women to one day in the hospital after a vaginal delivery, they got a lot of bad feedback. Some legislatures responded by requiring insurance companies pay for 2 or 3 days. I suspect this would still happen in a "perfect" free market system.

Do you have any free market models in health care you could point to which have successfully held down health care costs?

Steve

steve @ 1:36PM writes:

"Do you have any citations for these regulations the private insurance companies work under ?"

Since I live in New York, I will speak to New York rules. There are several sections of the New York Code of Rules and Regulations that apply. Google or Bing "new york health insurance law".

To summarize, New York law requires that private insurance companies provide a whole host of procedures. They also, if my memory serves, have a "community rating" rule; differentiation among ratepayers based on pre-existing conditions and such is not allowed. I found this out the hard way a few years back when I investigated the prospect of obtaining private coverage on my own. (I am self-employed.) There was only ONE firm providing coverage to people in my situation, and at a rate that was, frankly, outrageous.

Your servant,

Lord Karth

Re: The single person trying to get coverage for themselves has always been very expensive.

I'm not so sure about that. It depends on age and health. In 2002 my COBRA benefits ran out and I bought insurance on my own, from BCBS' Anthem. It was a good policy and included office visits and Rx coverage, for just $90 a month, half what I was paying for COBRA. I was in my mid-30s without much adverse health history.
(Once you hit 40 though the rates skyrocket.)