Giving Shape to Cultural Conservatism

...But we are united by what we have in common, not by how we differ...

...Actions: Teach all schoolchildren our history and see that they learn it...

...Heavy-duty atheists won't like cultural conservatism, but Weyrich himself writes that "the Religious Right . . . must accept the fact that some cultural conservatives may not be religious...

...But in our time these beliefs do require common acknowledgment, respect, nurture, and defense The vitality of on^s culture is a key factor in the success and durability of nations and peoples...

...Little League and libraries...

...The capacity to set limits for oneself, to defer gratification, to curb one's impulses, is not the mark of an ascetic but a signal that one is mature, civilized, and virtuous...

...It is to buttress the principles of decentralization, diversity, and choice in the upbringing of children in a society that also wants a "core curriculum" in its regular schools...

...The eleventh grade American history course ought not be the end of it...

...This is no static or exclusive culture, of course...

...Parents are children's first and most important teachers...

...The point is not to turn every child into an overscheduled dilettante...

...It must be assumed that liberalism will meticulously note, publicize, and exploit every crack, tension, and family quarrel within conservatism...

...But as we look to the future, it is altogether possible that conservatives (and the Republican party, now indisputably our party) will disintegrate into factions and fractions and internal interest groups...

...punishments with incentives, compulsion with motivation...

...This will happen as soon as the not-very-ideological suburbanite says to his neighbor: those guys (read conservatives, or Republicans) are just a bimch of politicians, always bickering and horsetrading, standing for nothing in particular, greedily parceling out the spoils among their various pressure groups and constituencies when they aren't busy clobbering one another...

...I think not...

...Immoral actions, like illegal actions, deserve public scorn as well as private guilt...

...For starters, we could at least agree that such a balance is what we seek...

...These will be lost if we abandon those values...

...Set our colleges and universities the task of deepening and broadening all their students' knowledge of Western civilization...

...7. Though the individual is the primary element of our political/governmental system, the family unit is the primary element of the social system and is ordinarily the most competent to arrange for such essentials as the nurture of children, the succor of the ill, and the well-being of the aged...

...That's ten...

...I've drawn the suggestions mainly from my own field of education, mindful that other domains would yield different examples but also aware that education isn't a bad launch pad for cultural conservatives: 1. Though many peoples, reUgions, and views can be found in the United States, and all are free to flourish here, as Americans we share a common culture...

...Lind thus attaches a few major muscle sets to the skeleton, but it's still too bony...

...Unexceptionable, no...

...Actions: Maintain public incentives for private philanthropy and voluntaryism, policies that favor pluralism over monopoly, and decentralized provisions for the common welfare even when, in the short run, these appear less "efficient...

...Then we can fuss about the details, weigh the trade-offs, and admit of some necessary compromises...

...how free societies also structure and regulate themselves through economic...

...Can the single phrase "cultural conservatism" furnish the basis for so ambitious a result...

...These values, which include dennitions of right and wrong and ways of thinking and living, have brought about the prosperity, liberty and opportunity for fulfillment that >^festem societies have offered their citizens...

...Actions: Make sure that tomorrow's parents don't complete their own schooling today without learning what they'll need to know to start their children down the path to virtue...

...The essential normative influence in education, looming even larger than the schools, is the family...

...Self-restraint is preferable to coercion, self-control to external control, voluntary adherence to police action...

...Chester E. Finn, Jr...

...Actions: Government policy should send the right "messages" and teach the proper "lessons" to the whole society, and especially to the young, about good behavior, sound habits, and acceptable practices...

...Actions: Firmly but fairly enforce discipline in the school and in the hpme, always seeking to replace external sanctions with internalized limits...

...But how far can we get with this list...

...As Judis aptly notes, "A movement's loss of a philosophical core is often the first sign of its decline...

...They also accused the neoconservatives of being welfare-state liberals and cultural modernists who had appropriated the term and spoils of conservatism for purely opportunistic ends...

...Expect of our teachers and professors exemplary conduct in the moral and ethical domains, conduct that we would be proud for their students to emulate...

...Have we the beginnings of a credo for cultural conservatism, a few ducts and arteries for its body...

...And heed the indictment of James H. Billington, director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, against "the decline in faculty and administrators who clearly and robustly affirm personal values in ways that enable them to act as role models for the young...

...is assistant secretary for research and improvement at the Department of Education...

...Encourage as well the provision of educational and social services by other agencies and private vendors: by tutoring clinics, after-school reUgion classes, scouting, YMCA's, music and dance teachers, museums and theaters...

...5. The foremost obligation of a democratic state is to ensure the safety and liberty of its citizens...

...8. Citizens reinforce their attachment to our shared culture through free association in common pursuits and through celebration of our heroes, holidays, legends, hymns, and symbols...

...There are plenty of such differences, though they aren't always on public display...

...3. At the core of our culture's ideas of political and social order is a belief in the sanctity of the individual, and a corresponding commitment to the principle of individual moral responsibility...

...That doesn't mean we never revel in life's pleasures, only that we also value the pleasures of the spirit and the mind...

...If we do not have a satisfactory level of civic involvement, democracy will wither...

...It is also the surest way to lose momentum, abdicate leadership, and surrender public approbation...

...If we do not have a commensurate dedication to its defense against external threat, democracy will in time be struck down...

...I will not here attempt a conservative taxonomy...

...Fortunate is the land whose culture opens the eyes and releases the mind, nurtures creativity and responsibility, sustains the soul in its adventures, and yet does not neglect the graces of this life...

...Readers already understand more or less how the "New Right" differs from the Old, what neoconservatives and paleoconservatives do and don't have in common, wherein libertarians can be distinguished from premodernists, and so forth...

...That alone would be reason to respect and defend its core beliefs...

...It can foster or frustrate human achievement...

...They study its history...

...Make sure they understand why we observe Independence Day, Memorial Day, Martin Luther King's Birthday, Easter...

...and have skirted a number of items that rank high on the "social" agenda of many conservatives...

...But if the general idea gets elaborated into a credo, a set of principles or body of doctrine to which most conservatives can subscribe, then perhaps it can supply some of the glue previously furnished by having a common opponent (McGovernism, Carterism, defeatism) and more recently by having a champion in the Oval Office...

...2. No individual need assent to all of the beliefs that form the heart of our common culture, many of which are religious...

...Action: Educators should stop scorning "beliefs" as if they were something to be held only in private or in church...

...But when differences are allowed to hang out, as at the recent, muchpublicized meeting of the Philadelphia Society, they turn out to be deepseated, even fierce...

...Its roots are in the Western civilization that began in Greece and Rome, and its ethical and moral foundations derive from the Greek and Judeo-Christian traditions...

...Every adult, induding but not limited to parents, teachers, and professors, should make moral development and character formation explicit goals for all children "^^and the basis for purposeful "rolemodeling" in all manner of institutional and informal settings...

...Billington writes: No one—least of all deans or chaplains— talks any more about self-discipline as everyone tries to be first in line in adjusting to and accepting the student's newfound right to do whatever he has just decided he wants...

...No one may invade another's rights but each of us is accountable for the consequences of his own actions...

...I've said virtually nothing about economic policy, have alluded only indirectly to environmental matters, haven't been at all specific about foreign and defense poUcy (what, no SDI...

...I don't know any conservative who yet foresees decline, but it's surely time to do what we can to strengthen the philosophical core, indeed to reformulate a core that most conservatives of various stripes can agree on...

...We don't submerge our individual or group distinctions...

...The citizens of a free society cherish both its principles and its traditions...

...It may also be an inspired strategy for sustaining what Ronald Reagan has begun, through unification of otherwise fractious conservatives around something more durable than shared contempt for a single opponent or mutual enthusiasm for the incumbent President...

...Herewith ten candidates for core tenets of cultural conservatism, each accompanied by a suggestion or two about what we might do differently if we were conducting ourselves according to these tenets...

...With no one publicly defining a norm, universities end up producing on the whole very lonely, self-centered people—held together, if at all, more by animal ritual than by any sense of higher human community...

...4. Democracy is the best form of government known to man, the only safe guardian of human rights and individual liberty...

...One of the functions of a culture—and of adults steeped in it—is to infuse the young and inexperienced with the distinctions we make between right and wrong, ethical and unethical, good and bad...

...key to fulfilling this obligation is a government limited in its powers (a rare cultural achievement) and governors constrained by the rule of law (an equally rare accompUshment...

...Actions: Empower parents to select the schools they favor for their children, without regard to family wealth or poverty...

...Actions: Expect of piu^ents, teachers, clergymen, the media, and pubUc officials that the concept of limited govenunent will be embraced as one of the fundamental values of the culture and that, within those limits, other core values will be fostered by all our major institutions including government...

...that society, including government, must play an active role in supporting traditional values...

...then hold them accountable for choosing wisely and for following through with the education of their sons and daughters...

...The author gratefully acknowledges the ideas, suggestions, comments, and criticisms of William J. Bennett, Patrick Pagan, William Kristol, William S. Lind, Bruno V. Manna and Paul Weyrich...

...Then unite around them...

...9. Cultural conservatism is compatible with, indeed is strengthened by, universal Uberal education, with standards and opportunities for all...

...The challenge here is to achieve the proper balance between Lind's assertion that government should be a positive force in support of traditional values and the general welfare, and our devotion to individual liberty and minimum government interference...

...Actions: Stop teaching that all political systems are equally legitimate, merely different...

...In one of several essays therein, John B. Judis recounted the Philadelphia Society events a few months earlier: "The traditionalists accused the neoconservatives of being social science technicians rather than philosophers, and of assisting in the very 'politicization' of society that conservatism had been pledged to resist...

...But we regard moral infractions as gravely as the material kind...

...and should quit treating beUefs based on reUgion as if they had no place in public discourse...

...Not by itself, of course...

...Someone else might make another list, would surely phrase items differently, would Ukely give alternate examples...

...But democracy will endure only so long as, and will flourish only to the degree that, its citizens are capable of informed participation in it and willing to defend it...

...We'll need vital organs, nerve cells, and skin, maybe even a little fat to fret about shedding...

...and, finally, that we must take the long view, "looking back over the centuries" to find wisdom and "asking what the actions proposed for tomorrow will mean to our children, their children, and their children's children...

...Inculcate instead in the young an understanding of why democracy is superior, how it is vulnerable, what is entailed in its defense, and why the participation of every citizen is important...

...Is cultural conservatism too fragile, transitory, and rootless an idea to unify a movement...

...It is distinguished by its ability to assimilate—and be changed and improved by—the customs, idioms, and enthusiasms of immigrants and refugees from around the world...

...But let's also consider the possibility that such admiration is justified, indeed that cultural conservatism may turn out to be more than an important idea...

...It is outside that core that schools should differ from one another...

...Sometimes they are masked for mutual advantage, sometimes cushioned by the convenient social reality that various conservative factions don't dine together all that often* indeed tend to assemble mainly when embarked upon a substantive project of mutual interest...

...But just the skeleton of a credo, not muscular enough or fleshy enough to rally round...

...cultural, social, religious, and familial arrangements...

...L et's try a rough sketch of what this half-formed figure might finally look like...

...Allow individual schools more institutional sovereignty than is customary today, at least in public education...

...This is important, not because of any animus against those who organize their lives around religious beUefs, but because a modern liberal democracy such as the United States cannot presuppose that everyone's life should be organized on a religious basis—no matter how much we wish to see religion respected and reUgious belief strong...

...That we enter into splendid debates and extended conversations about its tenets until we get them right...

...Following the principle of subsidiarity, it is preferable for communal functions to be carried out by the lowest and most decentralized levels in the structure of the common good that are capable of discharging them...

...There's plenty missing...

...Weyrich adviser William S. Lind, one of the leading theoreticians of cultural conservatism, adds four "themes": that traditional Western values are needed not only to create a free and prosperous society, but also forindividual fulfilhnent...

...6. The vitality of those institutions that mediate between the state and the individual—churches, the press, the neighborhood and community, voluntary associations of all sorts—is crucial for a free society and a vibrant culture...

...This began in the New Republic in midsummer, in an issue the cover of which trumpeted "The Conservative Mental Breakdown...

...instead share responsibility and authority...

...That, as liberals (and Democrats) have so clearly shown in the post-McGovern era, is a recipe for political disaster...

...Western culture is one of the few which, at its best, does all these things...

...Besides, it makes sense to allow responsibility to gravitate to places and persons capable of handling it rather than to assume that everything can be furnished by a single public institution...

...Weyrich characterized cultural conservatism in this way: We believe that there is an unbreakable link between traditional Western, JudeoChristian values and the secular success of Western societies...

...Such education, along with the sound habituation of youth, is what allows the enjoyment of freedom to become the pursuit of virtue...

...And see that the schools provide all children, regardless of background or socio-economic status, with a solid core of essential skills and knowledge...

...Action: Revise the curriculum of our schools, public and private alike, so that the transmission of "cultural literacy" ranks right up there with the "Three R's" among our teaching goals...

...But there is a further reason: the erosion, cheapening, or selfdoubt of our culture in today's world can only profit a ruthless totalitarian system, already installed on four continents, which is a veritable graveyard of all that we believe and cherish...

...The most desired (though not the only serviceable) form of family unit is a man and woman, married to each other, with children born of that marriage...

...That does not mean we cut off a hand for the first offense...

...Inasmuch as Weyrich and his colleagues at the Free Congress Research and Education Foundation appear to have coined the term "cultural conservatism," his-high regard for it is readily understood...

...that if traditional values and ways of living are . necessary for societal and individual well-being, then many current cultural trends are deeply disturbing...

...I'll wager a lot of other people will unite with us...

...The world has known numerous cultures but many of these have been inimical to freedom, hostile to creativity, restrictive of the mind, blind to beauty, and deaf to initiative...

...Encourage the professionals who work in them to distinguish one school from the next according to instructional styles and organizational arrangements...

...We don't assume everyone always behaves perfectly...

...Don't surrender control (and don't surrender an inch until the school is free of violence, drugs, and heu-assment...

...The Reagan phenomenon has tended to suppress those differences, as did the McGovern-Carter cycle that preceded it...

...Furthermore, it's in the interest of our society, of our culture, not to mention our children, that we try to make it work...

...and what is lost when government bursts its proper boundaries and seizes control of peoples' lives...

...Perhaps most significantly, while I've spoken of the need to honor the important role of religion in our cultural life and to recognize that Western culture has many of its roots firmly planted in reUgious belief and practice, I have said nothing that would oblige a bona fide cultural conservative to believe in God, much less to participate in any particular branch of organized religion...

...Ensure that school curricula make plain both why government is needed and why it should be limited...