The A Yeoman Farmer Series Part III

Despite the promise that something fundamental is at stake, we get the warmed-over platitudes that have been presented at any number of elections for the past 50 years if not the past 100. These are not the fundamental questions that face America for they are the same questions we have faced and answered since the founding. Even if the conservatives are right they are not necessarily going over a cliff because they can be right in principle but not application. We can have immorality on a large scale and still have a decent society. As should be readily apparent to any political thinker all societies contain contradictions so that it is not an axiom that if the conservatives are right on their preferred areas that America is going over a cliff. The first problem is that conservatives cannot even agree if they are right about what they are proposing. Moreover, the different policies they propose often conflict with each other when they have to be applied. The author says that conservatives want better schools and they want a smaller government. At the same time, they want a strong defence and a smaller government. Yet, none of these are issues that have been resolved as they remain questions for each generation to answer. America’s strategic situation is not fixed as the threats it faces and the opportunities it seeks change. They are not what challenges America to its core nor are they *the* core question that the conservative movement faces. The cliff the conservatives face is not a policy mix or even the next election, but the author never explores that since he is only concerned with scoring political points and not stopping America from going off the cliff it was truly going over a cliff.

If America was really going over a cliff, it raises the question of when it started. Did America really start going over the cliff in 2008 when President Obama came into office? Did the issues that conservatives lament only begin then or did they begin in 2001 or did they begin sooner or have they always existed because they represent core questions about what it means to live as we do and cannot be resolved definitely?

Let’s look at the list of what the conservatives might be right about to indicate America is going over the cliff.

1. virtue, 
2. morality
3. religious faith, 
4. stability, 
5. character
6. if they are right about sexual morality or what came to be termed “family values”; 
7. if they are right about the importance of education to inculcate good character and to teach the fundamentals that have defined knowledge in the West for millennia;
8. if they are right about societal norms and public order;
9. if they are right about the centrality of initiative, enterprise, industry, and thrift to a sound economy and a healthy society;  
10. if they are right about the soul-sapping effects of paternalistic Big Government and its cannibalization of civil society and religious institutions;
11. if they are right about the necessity of a strong defense and prudent statesmanship in the international sphere

If they are right or wrong about these issues, they must convince the public that they are right and why the are right. In doing this, they must put together policy proposals that accord with the political institutions, the constitution, to ensure that any changes they propose are legitimate and sustainable. If they are truly about the common good, then they need to demonstrate or at least convince the public to vote for it locally, at a state level, and at a federal level.

If America is going over the cliff why are the conservatives, why is the author, apparently the only ones who can see it? It seems strange that the rest of the country is blind to this or unaware of it. 

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