Coats of Many Colors
BROOKS, DAVID
Coats of Many Colors by David Brooks The Republican Party may not be as libertarian as it seemed a few months ago. Just after the November election, sweeping anti-government rhetoric was the order...
...This conservative vs...
...The flat tax is based on the idea of stripping tax incentives from the code and leaving the government strictly neutral about how people spend their money...
...At root, this is an argument about the underclass and its persistence, generation after generation...
...The big provision is a $500 tax credit ($1,000 for couples) for donations to charities doing poverty-related work...
...Coats and others argue that the underclass is by now a byproduct of cultural decay...
...Different parts of the Coats package have been endorsed by leaders of this strain: David Blankenhorn, Diane Ravitch, Marvin Olasky, Father Robert Sirico, and Bennett...
...This balance will be influenced by two strains of conservative thought...
...The tax credit could be used to fund anti-poverty work sponsored by the Baptists, Scientologists, or the American Council of Nymphomaniacs...
...The libertarians argue that the perverse economic incentives of the welfare state reward illegitimacy and joblessness...
...But the hottest conservative theory right now centers around the idea of restoring the "civil society," an America guided by institutions that are neither market-based nor government-run...
...Coats has won some nice praise from liberals such as Daniel Patrick Moynihan for his Project for American Renewal...
...Mark Souder, a former Coats aide who supports limited social engineering of the right, is promoting a flat-tax proposal that encourages home ownership and charitable giving...
...The free market strain has long demonstrated that when government tries to influence private decisions, the effects are usually perverse...
...Together the bills involve the federal government in the intimate details of life-sex, divorce, maternity...
...But a balance will have to be struck between those who want to minimize the government's influence, on the one hand, and those who generally want to reduce government but also want to use it in limited ways to influence the culture...
...Anybody who is flexible and who has to get elected in today's system, who doesn't have his district nailed down the way Armey does, is going to be flexible on this," he says...
...Bad social policies may pollute communities, but you can't just drain off the policies and expect the communities to thrive...
...Just after the November election, sweeping anti-government rhetoric was the order of the day, and controversial libertarian ideas went unchallenged...
...America is not a libertarian country...
...Government should not be libertarian or neutral...
...Among these was the idea that if government would just get out of the way, America could solve its problems...
...Another would provide $50 million in vouchers that pregnant women could use at private or religious group homes...
...Other measures are unapologetically activist...
...Coats notes that the current GOP welfare reforms force people to sink or swim, and that government has to do something for the people who, especially in the short term, are going to sink...
...One would encourage states to implement waiting periods and counseling for couples intending to divorce...
...They maintain, as Charles Krauthammer does in the current Public Interest, that social disintegration is not a reversible chemical reaction...
...There would be grants to encourage school districts to set up single sex schools...
...It's already clear that there is little support for the pure libertarian-neutralist position-"stay flat or die," as its chief supporter, House Majority Leader Dick Armey, puts it...
...In the heat of an issue frenzy, Republicans will probably opt for activist measures that they might frown on in their cooler flat-tax moments...
...Freshman Rep...
...Dan Coats of Indiana has introduced a package of 18 bills, collectively called the "Project for American Renewal," that represent the most ambitious attempt to use government power to pursue conservative ends...
...Coats enlisted William Bennett to help present the package, and at the unveiling on September 6, Bennett declared, "If the liberal fallacy is an abiding faith in the all-sufficiency of government, the conservative fallacy could easily become an abiding faith in the all-sufficiency of non-government...
...But this is really a debate within conservatism...
...When problems arise, people look to government...
...Newt Gingrich said last winter that the worst thing the new Congress could do was to replace social engineering of the left with social engineering of the right...
...He's edging toward a government that takes sides, that tries to use political power to influence cultural attitudes...
...The balance will also be influenced by pure politics...
...Public policy ought to favor the time-honored institutions-family, community, private charity," he says...
...Democrats respond to these cries with big programs (national health insurance), and Republicans respond by adjusting the tax code (medical savings accounts...
...It's a friction that most conservatives feel within themselves...
...It's hardly a mad rush towards theocracy...
...conservative disagreement will really get interesting when the Coatsian impulse to use government to fortify institutions meets the flat tax...
...And the struggle between the free market and the civil society is not so much a struggle between conservative factions...
...The so-called "mediating institutions"-charities, churches, families-can, with government assistance, help fill the void...
...One bill would require that every federal dollar spent on family planning be matched by another dollar spent on abstinence education and adoption services...
...The Oklahoma City bombing cooled the anti-government rhetoric, and now, six months later, many conservatives are saying it's not enough for government simply to withdraw...
Vol. 1 • October 1995 • No. 6
