Stand Up, Conservatives!

Last winter, David Limbaugh told conservatives to quit apologizing for capitalism.

"It's a testament to the power of propaganda and the appeal of emotion over reason that a system that has produced the greatest prosperity in world history is castigated on moral grounds," wrote Limbaugh, "while those systems that have proliferated abject misery, poverty, tyranny and subjugation are hailed as morally superior."

More recently Texas Governor Rick Perry challenged conservatives to "stop apologizing" for taking conservative positions on social and fiscal issues. "Our loudest opponents on the left are never going to like us, so let's quit trying to curry favor with them."

Perry's speech resonated. "All he did was recite his record and restate Reaganesque values," editorialized Investor's Business Daily.  Yet "in a single speech, Perry made all the hand-wringing and soul-searching among fellow members of his party look childish and self-absorbed."

Then [Perry] turned to his own record. He boasted of Texas' "unmatched job creation" in which the state takes credit for "47.8% of all jobs created in American in the last two years." The recipe for that success is not complicated.


"I've distilled my economic agenda to what I consider to be some pretty simple guiding principles," Perry said. "Number one is don't spend all the money. Number two is keep the taxes low and under control. Three is have regulations that are fair and predictable so that business owners know what to expect from one quarter to the next. And number four is reform the legal system so that frivolous lawsuits don't paralyze employers that are trying to create real wealth."

Pajamas Media's Roger Kimball called Perry's remarks refreshingly "adult" for "the spirit of disabused independence they communicated."

It is a curious fact, well worth pondering ... conservatives do not win elections by pretending to be liberals, but liberals often win elections by pretending to be conservatives.

Kimble reasons it is because modern liberalism's Rousseauvian philosophy doesn't enjoy broad appeal among the citizenry. Not its "abstract utopianism" that flatters the individual while simultaneously discarding him. Not its "quick embrace of coercion as an element of policy." And not its "certain presumption of virtue" -- a strange mixture of "entitlement, on the one hand, and paranoia, on the other."

Rousseau was always going on about “forcing” people to be free and bringing mere individual wills into line with something he called “the General Will.” So it is that modern liberals clothe their meddlesomeness with the cloak of sanctimony: it’s for your own good, you see, that we’re telling you how to live your life, conduct your business, what car to drive, what food to eat, etc., etc.


My point here is to highlight to what extent Governor Perry's advice departs from the Rousseauvian narrative. Stand up. Challenge the "entitlement mindset." Stop trying to curry favor with those who view of the role of government as fundamentally different from your own. These are open-air, adult, contra-Rousseauvian prescriptions.

To IBD's editors, Perry delivered a simple, compelling message. To Kimball, Perry's challenge clearly articulates the fork in the road ahead: one leading "further into the mirrored hall of Rousseau's sweaty dreams;" the other leading back to "individual freedom, responsibility, and national greatness."


To conservatives, Limbaugh's and Perry's challenges are simply good advice, and good advice is always worth repeating.