Over at the conservative Catholic journal First Things, law professor and Jesuit priest Edward Oakes bemoans the “liberal creep” taking over society. Oakes, judging from this piece, is a rare breed—a true conservative. Not “conservative” like John McCain, or even like George W. Bush, but “conservative” in the original sense. He’s an Old World conservative, a believer in tradition, hierarchy, and mother church.
Oakes writes that liberalism has swallowed our political system whole. There’s no more diversity of thought. There are no radicals and conservatives anymore, just Conservative Liberals, Radical Liberals, and countless Liberal Liberals. He says:
With the exception of libertarian candidate Ron Paul and the radical-liberal Dennis Kucinich, all the candidates ran on the “Liberal Liberal” platform. This became glaringly obvious to me last September when the Republicans in Congress, after initially balking at the bailout package for the nation’s financial system, soon signed on to it, at least in enough numbers to ensure its passage.
But his real concern isn’t economics. Like any good conservative, he’s worried more about America’s soul than its pocketbook. If “liberal creep” continues, he argues, America will be headed to Hell in the mother of all handbaskets. Traditional values will erode, dissolved in the acid sea of modernity. Gay marriage and abortion are only the first step. Who knows what comes next?
I sympathize with Oakes—a little. Socially, America has been lurching leftward. Toleration for gay marriage would have been unthinkable two decades ago. Remember what happened to Clinton after “don’t ask, don’t tell?” If you don’t, let me fill you in: he took a thumpin’ in the 1994 midterm elections. And support for gay marriage will likely increase as the younger, more tolerant generation grows up.
But is this really “liberal creep”? I see it instead as a sign of American pragmatism. We’ve never been an ideological country. America has never embraced radical liberalism, libertarianism, utilitarianism, or any other –ism. We’ve always believed in live and let in, in doing your own thing, in different strokes for different folks. Accepting gay marriage is just the latest expression of our hands-off philosophy.
I’d like to ask Oakes: if you want “real conservatism” in America, where is going to come from? The Roman Catholic Church? Not when Catholics sit right in the middle of the political spectrum. Evangelical churches? Maybe, if they could ever agree on anything. A new American aristocracy? I don’t think we’ll be getting dukes and duchesses any time soon.
I think I’d be a little more open to Oakes’s arguments if he wasn’t so quick to cast all his opponents as damnable heretics. Even Reagan isn’t pure enough:
Not only did he not abolish the Department of Education, as he promised on the campaign trail, he also ran up budget deficits of $1.5 trillion over eight years.
Wow. You’re not a real conservative if you can’t eliminate the Department of Education? Those are pretty harsh standards. Oakes would sentence every Republican president since…Coolidge, I guess, to the lowest level of conservative hell, where there’s nothing to read but Noam Chomsky and nothing to listen to but Barbra Streisand.
Still, though, it’s worth hearing him out. It’s a nice reminder that America isn’t politically homogenous. There are a few minority thinkers out there, including old-fashioned conservatives like Oakes. And if we really are a pluralist, pragmatist society, we’ll listen to them now and then. Even when they think we’re on the highway to hell.
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2 comments:
I guess I'm more replying to the article itself than you, but, in any case, I agree with you. I just think you should've put this guy more in his place.
It seems like anytime there is a shift in American politics to the left or the right (or even from one or the other towards the middle), the crazies come out of the woodwork and start going Chicken Little all over the place. I can't think of any concrete examples off the top of my head (it is midnight, after all), but I know this has happened in the past. And it isn't just limited to people on the right-side of the political spectrum; everyone does it, at least from what I've read (I promise, these articles exist, I am just lazy. Again--midnight). And then after maybe... a decade tops, it usually shifts back the other way. I remember learning in some Politics class, maybe Poli. 101, that the history of the ideology of the US has followed the path of a pendulum, swinging back and forth throughout the years. At least, I think that was politics. It might've been physics. It's midni--...nevermind.
This guy's beliefs seem to jump all over the place. He dislikes Reagan because he didn't get rid of the Dept. of Education... and yet also dislikes Ron Paul, who advocated for getting rid of anything that even had a hint of government taint (I’m looking at you, commemorative Indian $5 coin infomercial).
I was reading through the history of his blog and he actually didn't seem to come across quite as crazy as he does in this article. But I'll give him the detriment of the doubt. No, that is not a saying. Yes, I made it up.
I don’t believe I’ve ever come across someone more conservative than Ed Oakes here. It’s interesting he considers the United States to be so liberal; when presently compared with Canada and most European countries, the U.S. is deemed quite conservative. We have the death penalty, our military budget dwarfs that of the world’s other military powers, and we swear an oath on the bible when testifying in court. There must be more discretion in what is being labeled as a conservative or liberal policy but according to popular sentiment, these are considered conservative policies.
I think you are on point when describing this “liberal creep” as a sign of American pragmatism. Our policies are a response to the changing tides and needs of society. Single mothers and children make up the majority of Americans in poverty, how much larger would their percentage be if abortion was illegal, or we didn’t have Medicaid? The U.S. as a whole doesn’t embrace ideologies but some minority groups do, like the conservatism Oakes adheres to. There can be an ideal of a perfect society, but we’re not in the Garden of Eden. Societies are dynamic; they present new problems and situations that the government and its people must respond to; budding generations grow up with new ideas, tolerances, and values. Philosophies on morals can’t run our country. We can’t operate with “naked reason” here. If liberalism means changing and adapting, then not many functioning societies could be called conservative. Someone should put Ed Oakes in a time machine back to 1600s where he can hang witches with the other “true” conservatives of America.
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