The Four Pillars of Conservatism

Author’s note: This is an update of a post I published last winter on several blogs (now closed) that I was maintaining in support of Fred Thompson’s candidacy for the GOP Presidential nomination.

Mitt Romney, in his speech to the Family Research Council’s Values Voters summit last October, told the assembled faithful:

I want to build a stronger military, a stronger economy, and stronger families. I call these the three legs of the Republican stool. These three unite the coalition of conservatives that Ronald Reagan championed—defense conservatives, economic conservatives, and social conservatives.

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We won’t win the White House with only 2 out of 3 or 1 out of 3. Republicans win the White House by motivating all 3 parts of our coalition to carry us to victory.

Close, Guv’nor, but no cigar. The cigar goes to Fred Thompson. Buy him a box of  La Gloria Cubanas. The three-legged stool is an unfortunate choice of metaphor for conservatives. It tips and falls over when its occupant leans too far in any one direction. That’s why the great majority of stools, chairs, tables, etc. have four legs, not three. It makes for a more stable platform. The three-legged stool also becomes much more unsteady if one of the legs is cut even a little shorter than the other two. This renders it just about useless.

In Mitt’s defense, he’s not the only one who doesn’t understand the underpinnings of conservatism. After Ronald Reagan, many conservatives thought that there were indeed only three legs underneath their movement, but along came the big government, big-spending “conservatives” who had lost their sense of balance somewhere along the way. At first they cut just a little off of the economic leg of the stool. Then they cut a little more, until the stool was left so tilted that it could no longer support anything of substance. The two pieces that were sawed off of the fiscal leg were lower spending and smaller government. Virtually all that remains of that orginal economic leg is lower taxes. What are conservatives to do about this? Should we try to pick up the pieces and glue them back on the leg?

Perhaps it would be a better not to use the milking stool as an allegory for the principles underlying conservatism. I prefer the sumbolism of a solid building built on a strong foundation of four substantial pillars, not three. The fiscal column which helps support the edifice needs to be the same length as the others, with more emphasis on lower spending. And we can invite libertarian conservatives back into the fold to help us raise the fourth buttress. Call it federalism, small government or whatever you want to, but it’s an underpinning which is about more than just fiscal matters and should not be lumped in with economic issues. Libertarian conservatives and federalists have for too long been given the short leg of the old three-legged Republican stool, and the coalition needs both of these essential parts to strengthen the whole.

Big government and big spending in the guise of conservatism and a myopic focus on social concerns have made a mess out of Ronald Reagan’s coalition of conservatives. By focusing only on narrow views of what conservatism should mean, some erstwhile conservatives have failed to show due respect for the other essential parts of the coalition. Big governmentalism has done this by attempting to redefine economic conservatism, ignoring the need to reduce government spending at the federal level. Some interpretations of social conservatism have led to the snubbing of economic and small government conservatives altogether. The emphasis on social conservatism at the expense of other essential conservative principles has chased away many of the libertarian conservatives, while federalists have, since Reagan’s death, been put away in the attic like some crazy aunt or uncle.

Ronald Wilson Reagan considered federalism to be a bedrock “first principle”, and he committed himself to revitalizing that principle:

Of all his accomplishments, perhaps the most profound part of the Reagan legacy — and we hope the most enduring — was President Reagan’s commitment to our nation’s Constitution and its explication of federalism, though that foundation had been neglected for most of the 20th century. With the constitutional aberrations of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society well-embedded in the nation’s collective consciousness, Reagan’s commitment to constitutionally limited government and the pre-eminence of the states in the American system envisioned by the Founders came as a much-needed shock to the system.

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Issued on 26 October 1987, President Reagan’s Executive Order 12612 on federalism speaks directly to the point. Indicating federalism’s “fundamental principles,” Reagan wrote as crisply and cogently as Madison, Hamilton or Jay ever did: “Federalism is rooted in the knowledge that our political liberties are best assured by limiting the size and scope of the national government. … The people of the States created the national government when they delegated to it those enumerated governmental powers relating to matters beyond the competence of the individual States. … All other sovereign powers, save those expressly prohibited the States by the Constitution, are reserved to the States or to the people.”

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Unlike many of his political contemporaries, Reagan understood that the fundamental premise of American society, and that society’s greatness, did not reside in, nor was it regulated by, Washington. Instead, he understood that “The people of the States are free, subject only to restrictions in the Constitution itself or in constitutionally authorized Acts of Congress, to define the moral, political, and legal character of their lives.”

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Likewise, the President wrote, “In most areas of governmental concern, the States uniquely possess the constitutional authority, the resources, and the competence to discern the sentiments of the people and to govern accordingly.” Quoting Thomas Jefferson, Reagan added that the States are “the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against antirepublican tendencies.”

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Never known for his integrity, constitutional or otherwise, Bill Clinton revoked EO 12612 in 1998 and replaced it with EO 13083, which largely re-justified the excessive unconstitutional role the federal government has assumed since the time of Franklin Roosevelt.

Although Reagan’s executive order was re-established under the Bush administration, the President has mostly ignored it, allowing the federal leviathan to grow even larger than it did under Clinton.

Conservatives need to honor President Reagan by putting federalism back on the front burner. It should be one of our first principles, just as it was for Reagan.

Though his presidential campaign started late and never caught up, It was Fred Thompson who offered the best balance for movement conservatives. On economic and small government issues, he is still regarded favorably. Like John McCain amd most of his former rivals for the GOP presidential nomination, Fred’s strong on security matters. On social issues he’s pro-life, but his prosposal for a consitutional amendment to prevent state judges from altering the definition of marriage without the direction of their states’ legislatures falls short of the federal amendment banning gay marriage that most social conservatives favor.

Fred’s federalist principles have clearly put him at odds with many social conservatives on this one issue. Which begs the question of which tradeoffs are some social conservatives willing to cointinue to make? Was rejecting Thompson on this one issue a matter of cutting off noses to spite faces? The bar for getting any amendment incorporated into our constitution was intentionally set very high by the founders, who were so dedicated to the constitution they bequeathed us that they wanted us to think long and hard before we attempt to change it. If conservatives sacrifice security in exchange for promises of a federal amendment banning gay marriage, we could be making a deal which may not deliver the goods and could weaken our nation, especially at its borders. If we trade federalist principles for the same promises, there’s still have no guarantee of getting such an amendment, and the federal government will keep on growing, perhaps to the point where it can’t be stopped.

In addition, we will betray one of those first principles which Ronald Reagan stood for. As J.B. Williams has pointed out:

Reagan was most conservative in the arena of national security and firm foreign policy. Reagan understood that America was the only nation in the world with the power and moral authority to defend freedom and liberty around the globe, in defense of freedom and liberty here. Reagan commanded respect across the political aisle at home and abroad and remains one of the most loved US Presidents in US history even today.

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But he was somewhat liberal on social issues. Or, like Thompson, he was at least an anti-federalist who sought to return private assets and personal liberty to the states and the people at every chance.

Some conservatives need to sit down and think carefully about how John McCain came to be the 2008 nominee of the Republican Party. There’s a lesson all conservatives should take to heart. We need leadership which can bring economic, security and small government conservatives together with social conservatives to defeat the Democrats, dust off Ronald Reagan’s blueprints and rebuild the Republican party and the nation. Fred Thompson is no longer a presidential candidate for 2008, but he is a leader who can teach us a few things about balancing our conservative principles.

And who knows? Some conservatives are already drawing up their checklists for 2012.

- JP