Call for renewed social conservative emphasis

Fred Barnes wrote a piece in the Weekly Standard the end of May on the fledgling effort of Robert George, a professor of political science at Princeton, to form an organization to renew and invigorate conservatism in general, and the conservative foundation of the Republican Party.

Working formally through a new organization entitled The American Principles Project, Barnes writes that, "George wants to bring intellectual vigor to the Republican party and the conservative movement, especially on social issues like pornography and marriage. 'We need to connect our intellectuals with our activists,' he says."

Part of the effort will be to bring social research showing evidence that conservative principles are the correct ones on a varietyof social issues, from divorce, to the nature of marriage, to personal responsibility, and the life.

All well and good. If professor George wants to interject scholarly findings into a public debate which show the supremacy of conservative values, great. But if he proposes that social conservatism be the cornerstone of a renewed political conservatism, I think he's living in the 1980s.

If conservatism is to make a rebound in both the GOP and in national politics, it needs to emphasize liberty -- economic liberty, liberty of thought, liberty of association -- and take on the main threat to liberty, which is expanded government.

The problem with making social conservatism the cornerstone of a revived conservatism is that the culture has changed since 1980. Professor George doesn't seem to understand that the culture is now permeated with post-modernist attitudes, which makes absolute truth claims about values virtually irrelevant in the political arena. Whereas social conservatism was still the consensus when Ronald Reagan was elected, it's now prominent only in isolated islands. Granted, some of those islands are large, taking up whole regions of the country, but the consensus on these issues hasshrunk, and shrunk quickly, particularly in places like California.

I'm glad for the recent Calif. Supreme Court decision upholding Prop 8 on the civil definition of marriage, but it's a temporary victory. Gay marriage activists will continue to come back to the ballot box, and eventually they will win. This is the problem with trying to hold the line on social issuesby putting all our eggs into a political basket -- the politics have shifted.

What social conservatives need to understand is that in our increasingly secularized society, the state has become a false god, politics (both left and right) have become a false religion, and the media is a false prophet. The problems we face in our culture are not political, but spiritual -- they go to the core of who people are, and are reflected out into the culture.

Conservative Christians, by fighting battles in the political arena, have neglected God's resources. What's needed isn't arenewed political effort on these issues, but general revival. When I get a sense that Christians are spending more time in prayer discerning God's will than they are listening to talk radio and on the political battlefields, then I'll have reason for hope.

The issues can be debated, that's fine. But our politics and government are going to reflect the culture. Politics and government policies are not going to impact the culture. I fear that Prof. George may be 30 years behind the curve if that's his intent.