Mark Blitz - Conserving Liberty

To Ellen and our Family

CONTENTS

by John Raisian

C H A P T E R O N E

C H A P T E R T W O

C H A P T E R T H R E E

C H A P T E R F O U R

FOREWORD

T he Hoover Institutions Boyd and Jill Smith Task Force on the Virtues of a Free Society aims to clarify the beliefs, practices, and institutions that play a crucial role in forming and sustaining liberty, and a distinctly American way of life. By examining the political thought and culture of the American founding, the historical evolution of government and society, and changing public opinion, the group will reflect on the fabric of our civil society. The membership of the task force includes cochairs Peter Berkowitz and David Brady, along with Gerard V. Bradley, James W. Ceaser, William Damon, Robert P. George, Tod Lindberg, Harvey C. Mansfield, Russell Muirhead, Clifford Orwin, and Diana Schaub.

Contributing to the task force efforts, Mark Blitz has written Conserving Liberty , which addresses the elements of individual liberty and freedom as the core of American conservatisms strength. In so doing, he focuses on preserving natural rights, on responsibility and other virtues, and on promoting individual excellence and self-government.

John Raisian

Tad and Dianne Taube Director

Hoover Institution, Stanford University

PREFACE

T he immediate impetus for this book was a series of discussions at the Hoover Institution in which I participated in 2009 and 2010. The discussions were held under the auspices of the Boyd and Jill Smith Task Force on Virtues of a Free Society. The other participants are welcome to take credit for whatever in the book seems reasonable to them. I also wish to thank my research assistants at Claremont McKenna Colleges Henry Salvatori Center for the Study of Individual Freedom, Aditya Bindal, Laura Sucheski, and Elizabeth Van Buskirk.

Mark Blitz
Claremont, California
April, 2011

INTRODUCTION:
THE IMPORTANCE OF
CONSERVATISM

I intend in this book to clarify and defend contemporary American conservatism. Conservatisms future is especially significant because it has become the name for the political views that support liberty, good character, strong families, the worth of religion, economic growth, limited government, and vigorous national defense. It is important to understand it correctly, therefore, not primarily as one movement vs. another conservatives vs. liberals but because (at its best) it seeks to conserve our countrys core principles, practices, and institutions.

These principles should be common ground on which both conservatives and liberals rest, not the monopoly of one. Indeed, the most common name for our core is not conservatism, but liberal democracy.[1] Nonetheless, todays liberals or progressives depart from liberal democratic standards more often, more broadly, and more profoundly than do todays conservatives.

It is foolish to expect our way of life to survive without strong action to defend it and good education to explain it. Political health is not automatic but requires judgment and choice. The passive and foolish are prey to the determined and clever. Although it is obvious that books do not act, they can help teach. I wish to contribute to our understanding by illuminating and in this way helping to conserve our principles. The prognosis is poor if we understand conservatism incorrectly. It is also poor unless liberalism reestablishes itself unashamedly on our countrys basic principles. I hope to contribute to this effort too.

Conservatism and the Fear of Decline

After conservatives lost the 2008 elections they worried that their ideas were no longer appealing. Events soon showed their political concern to be excessive, but their immediate fear was replaced by something deeper. Sensible people now worry about our countrys overall direction. What recently seemed to be merely a slow decline looks to some as a steady and even headlong slide. This sense of crisis is exacerbated for many by the Obama administrations actions, but is not simply caused by them. Extraordinary budget deficits and a sputtering economy, mandates to redistribute wealth and favor politically connected groups and companies, illegal and unmanaged immigration, declining rates of legitimate childbirths and expanding illegitimacy, increasing, unavoidable, vulgarity and decreasing intellectual and artistic seriousness, uncontrolled technology and unconstrained judges all this leads people to believe that we direct less and less of our lives. The legal, scientific, and cultural milieu of our actions seems to move dangerously and relentlessly beyond anyones control. More fundamentally, the love and understanding of freedom that shaped the country appear to motivate fewer and fewer Americans. Self-government seems more rhetoric than reality when we are urged to share every dollar, encouraged to watch every word, and expected to acknowledge every bureaucrats uncanny wisdom.