The Next Conservatism: Readers’ Responses

By Paul M. Weyrich
October 12, 2005

In this column and the next, I would like to discuss some of the responses I have received from readers of this series on the next conservatism. Let me start by saying how grateful I am to the many readers who have told me they have found my columns stimulating. My main purpose in writing is to get conservatives thinking, whether they agree with me on everything or not. I don’t have all the answers, or even all the questions. We all need to think creatively about what the next conservative agenda should be.

That said, let’s look at some specific observations readers have sent me in response to what I have written. Joe wrote,

I just read the one about returning to the agrarian nature of yesteryear. Amen. . .

I have only one question/thought regarding your premise: It seems to me one of the problems the conservative movement had in a major way in the past, and to some extent now, is the fact that by our nature, conservatives are busy doing their work (pursuing their vocations).

Because we are consumed, rightly so, with our families, farms/shop, etc., it left the city works/government/etc. open to the manipulation of the left/liberals . . .

How do we protect against this old problem and maintain the necessary eternal vigilance?

Joe is correct. As conservatives, we don’t want to live politicized lives (radicals do). This faces us with something of a dilemma. If we make everything political, the radicals have won. But if we try to keep politics out of something like family life, the left takes it over. The best answer, I think, is that conservatives need to be involved in politics to keep government out of as much of life as possible. Here is where the next conservatism and the old conservatism are in agreement.

Dan writes,

Your article brought back some nice memories. I grew up on a farm. . .

It was a great life, but it’s gone now. The farm has been subdivided and sold off, the victim of taxes that gradually drained it and finally forced its sale to pay inheritance taxes . . .

If we want to bring back the family farm, we’ll have to stop taxing capital, eliminate inheritance taxes and change the tax code to accommodate people who don’t get a weekly paycheck.

Amen, Dan. The left portrays measures such as eliminating inheritance taxes as just benefitting the rich, but that isn’t true. Tax cuts and tax reform also benefit people who have a lot of capital but not much income, like many farmers.

Paul has this to say:

While nodding in agreement with your article, I got to thinking whether or not culture and politics were that dissimilar. I don’t think they are. Both involve the ways men relate to men and how to govern their behavior. Culture is governed by the law of unwritten customs; politics prefers judicial fiat, statute and regulation. . . We retook the government believing that doing so would better preserve our liberties and the defense of our nation. Were we naïve to believe that government was the problem as far as the culture was concerned? Did we conservatives miss the boat by thinking that a strong culture could be ensured by government in our image?

Well, Paul, you’ve hit on another difference between conservatives and the left. They want a culture that is controlled by government. We don’t. We believe that culture should be shaped by customs, habits and traditions, not state power. Legitimate laws reflect customs rather than replace them. Customs are not threats to liberty, because people don’t get sent to jail for departing from them. A culture controlled by the state becomes totalitarian.

My colleague Bill Lind makes the observation that in Tolkien’s trilogy, The Lord of the Rings, the ring of power (“one ring to rule them all and in the darkness bind them”) is power itself. As conservatives, we distrust power. That probably puts us at a disadvantage politically compared to the left. But we cannot accept their view of power without becoming them, which is Tolkien’s point.

Marc wrote that

I am sorry to inform Mr. Weyrich that the Patriot Act is not the worst of our worries here in America. The type of “wide-ranging legislation that endangers our liberties” discussed by Mr. Weyrich is already in place and has been for many years. It is the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) . . .

Congress is at present in the process of considering renewal of the VAWA, and the behavior of our elected officials (both Republican and Democrat) has been nothing short of shameful. The Senate Judiciary Committee, despite receiving an outpouring of opposition to VAWA from the public, decided that it would refuse to allow opposition witnesses to testify at its July 19th hearing on the renewal legislation. . .

What you are seeing here, Marc, is something that too few conservatives outside Washington perceive. With relatively few exceptions, Senators and Congressmen from both parties are afraid to confront political correctness. In this case, they fear that if they even allow opponents to be heard, the radical Feminists and the culturally Marxist press will say they “favor violence against women,” which is of course nonsense.

To be blunt about it, too many Washington Republicans lack moral courage. They would rather hide under a rock than be called a “racist” or a sexist” by the cultural Marxists. One thing the next conservatism needs to do, in my opinion, is make people like that pay a political price for their moral cowardice. Until we do, they will continue to sell us out.

Paul M. Weyrich is Chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation.