Leftward, Ho!

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.