The Fundamental Contradiction of Conservativism
Hardcore Social Conservativism Requires Big Government And a Strong Welfare State
The great leftist law professor Duncan Kennedy loves to talk about what he calls the “fundamental contradiction”. Here’s how he expresses it: “Most participants in American legal culture believe that the goal of individual freedom is at the same time dependent on and incompatible with the communal coercive action that is necessary to achieve it.” In layman’s terms- the contradiction inherent in liberalism is that people need each other, but they can’t stand each other and want the freedom to isolate themselves from other people.
There is an equally fundamental contradiction that attends conservativism, however, and recent events have underscored it more and more. And that is— social conservativism, the view that people should be pushed to adhere to longstanding social traditions and that radical changes to society should be treated with skepticism and enacted with great caution, is incompatible with conservatives’ idealized small, decentralized government.
Here’s an example: social conservatives are extremely concerned about the number of people transitioning their gender, and especially concerned about youth transition. So they are attempting to ban or restrict youth transition in states whose governments they control. But nobody really thinks this will actually prevent or arrest the trends in youth transition. Why? Because in other states, such as California (where I live), gender affirming treatments are not only widely available but heavily subsidized.
But imagine a different world in which Congress had passed Bernie Sanders’ dream health care bill, and we had a single payer system with very little private insurance available. In that world, it would be quite easy for social conservatives to enact a regulation prohibiting coverage of youth transition when they controlled the presidency, and if they won big in an election they could even push a statutory ban through Congress that would be difficult for Democrats to repeal. And that hypothetical regulation or statute would be devastatingly effective: it would force youth transition onto the fee for service medical market alongside such things as breast implants, and price them outside the reach of the poor, working, and even middle classes.
Mind you, I’m not writing this to advocate that position. My views on youth transition are extremely complex and nuanced. But I am saying, if you actually want to enact socially conservative policies, you need a big government to really do it.
There are similar points to be made about other aspects of health care. For instance, that same hypothetical single payer could impose serious restrictions on doctor-assisted suicide, and since most doctors would be unable to give up on taking patients who are insured by the single payer, they would have to abide by the restrictions. Similarly, one could imagine social conservatives imposing restrictions on other things they don’t like, such as in vitro fertilization.
Now, to be clear, they probably couldn’t do everything they wanted to do. Most notably, things that are cheap and/or widely in demand could not be stopped through a single payer system. Abortion clinics would simply not take government money, someone not taking single payer insurance would sell contraceptives, and elective cosmetic surgeons performing breast augmentations would continue to exist in the fee-for-service medical world while not taking government money. But nonetheless, one could imagine a right wing government being able to impose a substantial amount of social control if it controlled a single payer health insurance system.
Similarly, consider the various “anti-woke” things Governor Ron DeSantis is doing in Florida. So many of them are premised on his government’s control of the public school system there. If Florida had a pure, well funded school voucher system (as many conservative reformers have long wanted, to funnel government money to the religious private schools they prefer), or a strong system of public charter schools, the State of Florida would have a lot less control over the curriculum, and DeSantis would have a lot less ability to ensure students are not taught about things that offend social conservatives. In California, for instance, there are a ton of liberal charter schools alongside the conservative ones, and the liberal charter schools teach many of the things that DeSantis instills moral panic over.
So much social conservative advocacy concerns things hosted or funded through the very arms of government that their movement has long sought to cut. Drag Queen Story Hours? They aren’t going after them at Barnes & Noble bookstores— they can’t, because a private bookstore has a First Amendment right to host them if it wishes to. They go after DQSH at public libraries, which control a very small segment of book distribution in part due to cuts in public services urged over many years by the conservative movements.
Or how about blasphemous art? Again, the target is the small segment of the art world that consists of publicly funded museums under the auspices of the National Endowment for the Arts, which again conservatives have pushed to cut every chance they get. But as museums and galleries become more and more privately funded, the government can do nothing to stop you from viewing or displaying blasphemous art in such spaces.
The fact of the matter is that a country full of decentralized and privatized institutions is one that will see both robust First Amendment protections and the incentive to respond to the incentives of the market. And as there is plenty of market demand for things conservatives dislike, from IVF to abortion to drag queens, attempts to localize and privatize prevent social conservatives from enacting the reforms they would wish to enact. This is the fundamental contradiction.
But it is even worse than that for social conservatives. Because it is only big government that can provide poor and working class people with the financial wherewithal to be socially conservative on their own.
The most obvious example of this is the social safety net for parents. Put simply, one big reason women get abortions is financial— they simply cannot afford to bear the child. But conservative politicians expend a ton of energy opposing policies such as the Refundable Child Tax Credit, which would put money in the pockets of poorer mothers and would thus make childbearing more financially viable. The Catholic Church pointed this out long ago— they opposed Bill Clinton’s and Newt Gingrich’s welfare reform bill because they thought it would lead to more abortions. But Republicans, who subordinate almost all goals to the Holy Grail of cutting taxes for rich people, have routinely opposed such spending.
One can make similar comments about a number of other family friendly policies, from parental leave regulations to subsidized pre-school and daycare. In each case, a generous social safety net will probably have at least a marginal and perhaps significant effect in lowering the abortion rate. And a movement that constantly likens abortion to murder ought to be concerned about that. If social conservatives really want to change the public’s approach to abortion and discourage it, part of the answer lies in big government.
Examples of this phenomenon abound. For instance, those same cash welfare programs make stay-at-home mothering and homeschooling more viable for more mothers, things that social conservatives would presumably cheer. A single payer health insurance system would make entrepreneurship more viable— one reason talented people don’t take the risk of starting a small business is because they don’t want to give up the generous healthcare that their current job provides. More controversially, if conservatives are right that gender transition is in part a social, peer-influenced phenomenon, government funded mental health care could possibly reduce the rate of people transitioning gender, presumably a goal of social conservatives, because there’s at least some evidence that a lot of people are being placed on medications and placed on the road towards transition with very little mental health screening. There’s a huge shortage of psychiatrists and counselors, and it’s often cheaper for insurance companies to just prescribe medications. (To be clear, this last point is more speculative and again, I’m not advocating it. I am simply saying that it’s not implausible that a Big Government mental health benefit might have that effect.) And even if it didn’t have that effect, more government funded mental health care might reduce the suicide rate, which, again, is something social conservatives claim to be interested in.
The point is, social conservativism is something of a luxury. We actually can see this in all sorts of statistics that show that wealthy liberals are more likely to be in stable marriages with children born in wedlock than poor people in Red States. You can live a more socially conservative life if you can afford it, and Big Government can make such a life more affordable for more people.
So social conservatives, if they really want their ideas to take hold, have to Stop Worrying And Learn To Love Big Government. The political coalition they have chosen is what prevents them from doing so. But until they do, their movement will be marked by repeated, continued failures in the wider culture.