Conservative Soul Searching After The Debacle

A Recent Article

Post presidential election of 2012, conservatives of all persuasions are analyzing and debating. Most recently Mr. Peter Berkowitz in an Opinion page article titled “Conservative Survival in a Progressive Age” (unfortunately, subscription required) in the Wall Street Journal on 12/13/2012.

What’s In A Headline

The headline chosen by Mr. Berkowitz can easily make one cringe.

First, conservatives (Mr. Berkowitz means those advocating individual liberty and self-government) do not have to worry about survival. The general trend of all human history is and will likely continue to be towards more individual liberty.

Second, Mr. Berkowitz implies in his headline that we are living a “Progressive Age”. The Bible was already very progressive, I might say. Age of Reason or Enlightenment is perhaps too old fashioned. For a fellow of the Hoover Institution to allude that conservatives maybe dispensable in a progressive age is a poor judgment of conservatism.

Berkowitz Advocates Limited Big Government

To quote Berkowitz: “The first entrenched reality is that big government is her to stay. Instead [conservatives] should think and speak in terms of limited [big] government.”. How awful is that for a conservative? To accept big government as an eternal reality is to have it backwards. A big mistake of analysis and judgment. There is no compelling reason why government has to be big in a sense that it significantly affects or controls all aspects of each citizen’s life.

Worse, Mr. Berkowitz contradicts himself since he defines conservatism as individual liberty and self-government. Well, if all people would exercise responsible self-government we would barely or rarely need a government. Thus, good limited government helps people to become more responsible for themselves and improves self-government of the people.

The Sexual Revolution Perhaps The Greatest Social Revolution

To quote Berkowitz: “The second entrenched reality, this one testing social conservatives, is the sexual revolution, perhaps the greatest social revolution in human history. The invention… of the birth control pill meant for the first time … women could … reliably control reproduction. … to enter the workforce and pursue careers.”. Mr. Berkowitz spends about a third of his article to argue that “… social conservatives should refrain from attempting to use the federal government to enforce the traditional understanding of sex, marriage and the family”. I think, he gives way too much weight to the influence of so called social conservatives.

Without the Age of Reason/Enlightenment and Capitalism, the birth control pill would probably still not be invented. The Agriculture or the Bible was already a social revolution.