The L Word
[NRO Staff  03/02 12:14 PM]

From Rich Shipe:

I always read practically everything Jonah writes on NRO. He's a hilarious
and insightful conservative writer and I've especially enjoyed his past
sparring matches with libertarians (especially the crazys over at
lewrockwell.com! Go Jonah Go!). But based on today's critique of "Crunchy
Cons" I wonder if he might be coming out of the closet as a libertarian?
Jonah, don't give in to those guys! Please, you are one of our best
anti-libertarians. Ok, maybe he just has a special place in his heart for
libertarians and just dabbles from time to time?

Jonah does make some good points, particularly for me was his one about
Olasky's "Compassionate Conservatism." (Olasky would probably say that
while Bush vocalized support of the concept, the actual policy implemented
by the Bush Administration has been far from Compassionate Conservatism.)
I'd like to here Rod's answer to the Olasky point especially.

Anyway, if as a conservative you agree that greed can be a bad force on a
marketplace that doesn't make you a Marxist. Libertarians often slip into
the view that man is generally/naturally good and therefore will in a free
market always make the choice that is best for him and if everyone is
making the right choice for themselves the whole thing will be good.
Conservatives will say that man is not generally/naturally good and that
he's naturally evil. We quite frequently make decisions for ourselves that
are very bad for ourselves. (The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak)
Unlike in the animal kingdom where the carnivore eats just what he needs,
man naturally falls into gluttony and the general slavery of sin. The
libertarian doesn't acknowledge this problem or glosses over it. The
Marxist looks to the state to solve this problem. The conservative wants
the state to allow a free economic market but wants the
church/family/community to regulate the greed and selfishness of man in
the marketplace.

To me, the big theme of Rod's book is that conservatives do need to
revitalize government with conservative ideals, but that will fail if it
doesn't also happen at the family/community level. (Rod provided a great
quote from John Adams on this in chapter 1) For this to happen at the
family/community level conservatives need to shrug off the "me first"
approach of libertarianism. I'm sorry to take both barrels to libertarians
in this way but I think it is true and based on Jonah's past writings I
think he would agree. Go Jonah Go!