And here I was thinking that the Christian Democratic Party had
already existed in America, thriving until
destroyed, ironically, by a sea change in social order brought
about during the administration of the first Catholic
President.
Alas the New Deal coalition -- now the Old Deal -- cannot rise
again, certainly not without some equally comprehensive and
multi-generational national calamity. If anything has been proven a
fraud when coming from the GOP post-Roosevelt, it's
"big-government conservatism," which, in a
social sense, has been the only thing to keep Democrats nationally
electable in districts with a lot of elderly people.
One could argue that big government itself tends to erode the classical conservative fiber
of a free people, but the more compelling observation, I think, is
that big government conservatism drives a nauseous reaction among
large portions of free people such that "Establishment" culture and
"Establishment" bureaucracy are understood to be conjoined twins.
Which turns out to be fatal to the authoritative culture, because
throwing a social revolution is so easy and painless nowadays
relative to throwing a genuinely political revolution that it's
virtually been institutionalized -- largely owing to the success of
neocapitalism, I might add. But what is "neocapitalism" other than
the idea that things once held sacred or private are to be made
into new public commodities?
The faith in authority, secular and otherwise, that has passed
out of the mass public consciousness, with regard to politics and
culture, is a necessary precondition of Christian Democracy, and
probably even moreso Christian Socialism. I'd say: don't hold your
breath. Who wants to go back to the days of Adlai Stevenson anyhow?
That faith crumbled for deeper reasons than the incredible
persuasiveness of the Beat movement.
topics:
Socialism, Conservatism
About the Author
James Poulos is a doctoral student at Georgetown and the former Political Editor of Culture11. His writing has been published by The American Conservative, The National Interest, The New Atlantis, Partnership for a Secure America, and The Weekly Standard. In addition to AmSpecBlog, he has blogged at The American Scene, Doublethink, and Postmodern Conservative, which he founded. With degrees in political science and law from Duke and USC, he is currently at work on a dissertation about life after Napoleon. In his spare time he anti-blogs at Pish Tosh.
