By Quin Hillyer on 9.19.07 @ 12:08AM
Conservatives have the answer.
In a free society, even TV news-talk hosts sometimes spout a
little wisdom.
The other day on MSNBC, the inimitable Tucker Carlson was being
berated by some guests who were incredulous that he could even
think to oppose the health-insurance mandates that are central to
the newest version of Hillarycare.
At first sounding almost apologetic, but by the last word
sounding more firm about it, Carlson mounted what actually is the
perfect defense. "Look," he said, "I just happen to believe in
freedom."
Ah, yes, freedom. At my Episcopal grade school, we were
accustomed to singing a guitar hymn in chapel whose refrain
included these lines: "The thought it was so dear to me, the daring
possibility, of freedom. (Oh, oh, freedom. Oh, oh, freedom. Oh, oh,
oh.)"
Conservatives would do well to remember that freedom is indeed a
daring possibility, and our best defense against almost every
big-government, nanny-state, Washington-knows-best scheme of the
left. In one sense, it is the answer to all questions, the solution
to almost all problems of statecraft, the ideal to which all other
civic ideals must bow.
All too often, we conservatives get lost in the weeds of complex
arguments and wonkish debates -- when all we really need to
remember, both to better ground ourselves philosophically and to
win political debates in the minds of the American voters, is that
the theme is freedom.
Happily, veteran conservative journalist M. Stanton Evans wrote
a gem of a book in 1994 by that very name: The Theme Is
Freedom. In 323 well-researched, indeed quite scholarly,
pages, Evans traced the development of the idea of political
freedom through the past several millennia, and convincingly
demonstrated three notions. First, freedom is the
quintessential American political value. (Not equality, not
diversity, and not any number of other trendy concepts.) Second,
freedom properly defined cannot exist without firm, and firmly
enforced, limitations on governmental power and scope. Third, and
most controversially, the American ideals of freedom not only are
not at odds with organized Judeo-Christian religion, but
actually sprang directly from those religious traditions and depend
on those traditions to survive and thrive.
(Before we continue, here's a caveat: The notion of freedom and
faith as mutually supportive rather than antagonistic is
"controversial" only in the sense that our major media mavens and
academicians are so convinced otherwise. The mutual supportiveness
of freedom and faith should not be at all controversial to
conservatives, however, but rather self-evident. As Evans put it,
"the oft-stated conflict between traditional values and libertarian
practice in our politics is... an illusion.")
Western faith put limits on the state by insisting that there is
a power higher than the state. The feudal lords (and bishops,
archbishops) who forced the king to agree to the Magna Carta
couched all that charter's rights in the language and traditions of
their faith. The Reformation Era debates between Martin Luther and
(for instance) Erasmus were all about the "Freedom of a Christian"
(to cite the name of one of Luther's most famous essays) -- not
whether a Christian enjoys freedom, by the grace of God,
but in what way that freedom should be understood.
As Evans traced the history of Western freedom as part and
parcel of the development of Western faith, he noted that "taken as
a whole, this history tracks a series of ever-narrowing and
more definite limits on the reach of secular power -- of which
the American Constitution is (or was) the ultimate expression."
The American people do not need a scholarly exposition of all
this to be able to feel, in their bones, that freedom is their most
valued heritage. If awakened from their torpor (and from their
consumerist mentality), the American people still will rally to
freedom's cause every time they are clearly asked to do so. They
merely need to be reminded from time to time that their freedom
becomes more limited every time the state expands. If freedom is to
be preserved, Evans reminds us, "whatever increases the size of the
Leviathan should be prevented."
As it so happened, Evans was writing the book just when Hillary
Rodham Clinton was trying to foist her first monstrous version of
"health care reform" onto the American public. As Evans wrote then:
"Connect the dots, and the resulting picture is quite familiar: we
are being asked to adopt the style of top-down rule that proved
calamitous for Eastern Europe." He also wrote that "zealots with
plans for making over the world by fiat are a deadly menace, and
should be resisted wherever they show themselves, on whatever
pretext....Problems are inherent in any collectivist regime. In
this respect at least it doesn't seem to matter whether the
planners are psychotic tyrants or mild-mannered civil servants; the
trouble is built into the nature of the system."
Stan Evans is right -- not just about Hillarycare (which this
essay isn't really about, except insofar as it provides a current
example of the battleground), but about the centrality of freedom
itself to our political heritage and mission. Freedom, ensured by
limits against government interference (including in economic
matters), must ever remain our byword and our guiding star. An
outgrowth of our historical religious faith, it is the prime
component of our civic faith as well.
That's why, whether we are pushing for proactive policies
(personal savings accounts, for instance) or defending against the
threatened encroachments of risky schemes such as Hillarycare, the
best answer isn't some defensive proclamation that we really aren't
bad guys; and it's not a long-winded discussion of the merits and
demerits of particular programs.
Instead, the best answer is the one Tucker Carlson stumbled on:
Our theme is freedom; we're on freedom's side; and freedom is the
side that is most practical, most moral, and most just.
topics:
Health Care, Religion, Constitution
