Community Conservatives & the Future: Secret to Winning the Hearts & Minds of the Next Conservative Generation

2013

Chapter 1

Ronald Reagan as a

Generational Touchstone:

Why We Must Stop Talking about Him

I was a teenager and stumbling about that time of life called adolescence. My high school was an all-boys school run by the priests of the Order of St. Augustine. There was an all-girls school a couple miles up the road run by an order of nuns, and once you became a junior you could enroll in what we called ‘consortium’ where your first class of the day was up at the girls’ school. They could do the same and come down to our campus for first period. What a great deal!

At 15 as a junior (my birthday falls in November so I started each school year on the younger side) I took the opportunity to enroll in journalism class at the girls’ school. We had an award-winning joint student newspaper called The Oracle, and it was then I discovered a love for writing. My senior year I became the Editor-in-Chief, and since we were all on the cusp of being able to vote and Ronald Reagan was running for re-election, I asked for permission to miss a class or two so I could go hear him speak at the San Diego County Administration building. This was one of his last stops and it was something like late October or early November.

I brought my Canon SLR with a 135mm fixed zoom. I had some black and white film I had actually rolled myself¹ and a couple rolls of ASA 100 color slide film. I was bummed, though, because it was looking like I would not be able to get a good spot for decent photos. All of the major media were up on a platform, but they all had those long expensive telephoto lenses, so they were set.

Then I saw a reporter in another press area with whom I had spoken a month or so ago when her station was covering something which involved our school. I called out to her, she waved, and I conveniently took that as an invitation to come over. I ducked below the rope in my area, jogged over, shook her hand and ducked below that rope and into the press area.

None of those serious looking guys with ear buds came rushing over. I actually pulled it off!

We spoke for a couple seconds about something I cannot remember – that wasn’t the point, after all. Then this press herd started moving to our right, wrapping toward stage left. I ended up within nothing more than 40 feet between me and the President with my 135mm fixed zoom lens. If I had sneezed, he could have caught my cold.

The pictures were terrific. One half to one third of him in the frame. The pin stripes on his suit were nice and sharp. I got a whole raft of photos of an animated President Reagan running for re-election. I wrote it up. Above the fold, front page stuff for my high school newspaper. Life was good.

I share this because I am convinced as conservatives we need to look at the electorate very differently than we have in the past. There are those of us who have memories like these. And we have neighbors who don’t. This, more than anything else, is why I am writing this book: I was born in 1967, so I was 13 when Reagan first took the oath of office and turned 17 a few shorts weeks after he won re-election to a second term. I have first-hand memories of him like the one above. I also remember the things he said, and why they mattered. But in this respect, my generation is likely the last.

Ronald Reagan is a generational touchstone. There were a myriad of social and economic circumstances which rose to a crescendo in the late 70’s. He made a very common sense of all of them. But if you do not remember the circumstances, it is unlikely you grasp either the meaning or significance of who he was and what he said.

Forgive me if I geek it up and go all ‘professor’ on you here for a second. I will come back to the distinction between meaning and significance a few more time in later chapters. The meaning of something is what was originally intended. The significance of something is what we bring to the meaning, from our place and perspective. Think of a compass. The needle would be useless without the pin at the center of the compass. The needle rotates around the pin as you turn. If you need to go east and you are facing north, the needle will point you the ‘right’ (for all you jocks out there, that direction was chosen on purpose – think about it for a second). The pin in the middle is the meaning. The direction to which the needle points us is the significance, as it depends on the direction we happen to be facing. There can be no sense of significance if the meaning is not fixed. Hang in there with me; I’ll come back to that concept in future chapters.

Back to circumstances and the things Ronald Reagan said. As an example, take the following:

444 Days.

If, no sooner than your eyes had completed scanning that two-word paragraph you knew to what it refers, you are at least as old as I am, and probably older. If it is just an arbitrary number of days to you, you might be my age but are much more likely to be younger than me.

The American hostages held in the U.S. Embassy at Tehran, Iran, were held for 444 days. The last of those days was January 20, 1981, the day Reagan took the oath of office for his first term. I’ll throw out some ideas about foreign policy in Chapter 10, but if you want to understand why your conservative neighbor tends to see things the way they do on matters of national security – and terrorism in particular – you have to go back to the beginning of those 444 days. They overran our embassy, took the embassy staff as hostages, and we responded by – wait for it…

Tying yellow ribbons around trees and fence posts.

Really?

Yes, really. That’s where those Support the Troops yellow ribbon magnets originally came from.

It has everything to do with why the matter dragged on for 444 days, to say nothing of just about everything that has happened between us and Islamic radicalism since. Its why many of us see ‘Benghazi’ as this generation’s ‘444 days’. But this first chapter isn’t about that; I’ll get to that later. This chapter is about memories, numbers, and the direction of those numbers. Because, at the end of the day, elections are about numbers.

There are two groups of people in the electorate, and I’m not talking about Democrats and Republicans. I’m not talking about liberals and conservatives. I am talking about those of us who remember Ronald Reagan, and those of our neighbors who do not. There is a stark reality with which we have to come to terms: My generation, and the generations which came before us and who have first-hand memories of Ron and Nancy – we are doing what every generation before ours has done.

We are dying.

And that means our numbers in the electorate are getting inexorably smaller. Better candidates and campaign management is not going to help with this. Slicker ads will not reverse this trend. Social media and data mining have enormous potential – just not in this respect. Elections are about numbers and as long as we continue to think of conservatives in terms of ‘Reagan’ we will continue to be on the losing end of each election – and by increasingly larger margins.

It’s not that the ideas are wrong. It’s just the practical reality of getting on that stage and saying I’m the ‘Reagan conservative’, vote for me! We might as well be saying I’m like your grandma and grandpa, vote for me!

As my kids would say, Really, dad? And then would do it again so you knew they were serious: "No, dad, really?"

Now we all love grandma and grandpa, so don’t get me wrong. But someone needs to show me the last guy or gal who won office running on grandma and grandpa’s coat tails.²

If we are dying and our numbers are getting smaller, then each year as we graduate a newly minted set of adults into the electorate, the number of those who do not remember Reagan – or the circumstances that gave significance to the things he said – will only get larger. To many among this number he is – well – just another dead white guy they read about in their history books.

Now if you think that is outrageous, I apologize – really, I do. I certainly don’t see him that way. And I’m sure there are more than a few of our newly minted adults who don’t either. But if a little over-the-top rhetoric is necessary to grab us by the shirt collar and shake us up a little, well that is why I am writing this book after all. As conservatives – and even as neighbors with others who have different political opinions – there is a lot we can do together to renew the ideas of freedom and opportunity espoused by Ronald Reagan – but trotting out the next clown in a three-piece suit desperately trying to grab the brass ring of his legacy in this circus we call a political party is definitely not one of them.

We simply have to stop talking about him. We have to stop talking past our neighbors who do not remember him.

In the pages that follow I’ll try to map out what the next conservative generation might look like. I’ll start in the next chapter by posing what I think is the core question we have to ask ourselves; the answer will then make sense of the rest of what the next conservative generation actually looks like. I’ll try to show why the answer to this question has everything to do with our life together as neighbors and across racial lines, and how it gives a uniquely American significance to the idea of multiculturalism.

In Chapter 3 I’ll talk about why the next conservative generation will have to define conservatism in terms of community. No, not communism – community. I’ll explain the difference. I’ll also have to explain a little about myself and the community I call home, and how I have come to see it this way. This will then be the ‘prism’ through which I will view the issues. I hope you’ll come away convinced this is the only way we will be able to successfully communicate with today’s younger generation and the generations which follow.

Starting in Chapter 4 I’ll tackle issues, one by one, from the point of view of a ‘Community Conservative’. I’ll start with social conservatism and moral thinking. Now before you roll your eyes and say oh boy, here we go… please understand that I – as a seminary-trained Evangelical Christian – have an exquisitely good sense of why you might feel that way. If you think you don’t like shirt-sleeve Christianity, where they wear it on their sleeves, at least give me the benefit of the doubt. I think you’ll come away from this chapter with your eyes having been opened to a reality from this crowd called ‘social conservatives’ which will surprise you.

I’ll go from there to what might be the most important part of the book, the chapters on fiscal conservatism. The first of these chapters is subtitled Where the Tea Party Meets the Occupy Movement. I really believe these two groups have something in common. Please join me in that part of the conversation, then by all means make up your own mind.

From there I’ll tackle organized labor. I’ll let you in on the main point here: We conservatives like to talk a lot about ‘unalienable rights’, namely, those rights which are ours by nature. We are fond of saying that if government did not grant me a right, government cannot take it away. I agree. I also think the right to collectively bargain happens to be one of those rights which belong to us by nature – not because some law was written by some legislature. I also happen to be disgusted at how organized labor has all but flushed this down the toilet. Join me and I’ll explain.

I’ll then come to the immigration debate as one who has actually been through the process with a loved one and hope to show you why no one has even started talking about the real problem. The experience is not unlike the line at the grocery store – with a calcified bureaucracy at the check stand.

No discussion of conservative thinking can ignore the courts and judicial philosophy. From a recent Supreme Court case we will see how conservative judicial reasoning can produce what I will call an ‘absurdity at law’, only to be exposed by an absolutely spectacular dissent from the Court’s most liberal justice. The fascinating thing is how all of this will show us what I think conservative judicial philosophy for the next generation might look like. Now I’m not a lawyer, but I did grow up in a household of them and law enforcement. If you are a lawyer, I’m one of those pro pers who likes to pretend to be one. Believe it or not, I actually did just hear you mutter Oh, God help us! Yes, indeed.

Then I’ll tackle what is probably one of the most immediate – in light of our recent friend Edward Snowden – and pressing issues: civil liberties and the digital age. You’ll find at many places in this book that I insist we ask the right questions. I am an information technology professional and I think I have a pretty good idea of the contours of what is going on here. And I am reasonably certain no one has yet asked the right question – at least not in any public forum or media I have encountered.

Questions about foreign policy will follow. It is a natural issue to pick up having left off at civil liberties and the digital age. But a matter even more fundamental than the constitutional prerogatives of the Congress and the President is at stake here. I’ll call us to revisit the ideas surrounding the ‘Just War’ tradition, but this time keeping our focus on the consciences of the young men we send into to combat.

Then I’ll introduce you to another author who has written an absolutely fascinating book about the environment from a conservative point of view. I do not agree with a number of things he says, but one of the central concepts which ties this entire book together came from his. I’ll call us as conservatives to look at our own environment like we would look at a treasured family heirloom – something to care for and preserve so we can hand it down to the next generation, and they to the generation that follows, and so on.

Lastly I’ll touch on education. But I am not going to parrot the typical complaints about our public schools. I am going to ask why we are trying to put a square peg in a round hole by using a form of testing wholly unsuited to measuring how our schools are doing. I have a unique experience I will bring to this discussion. If you’ve heard how our students rank poorly against their Asian counterparts on test scores, I’ll explain why I think your response should be: So what?

I’ll conclude with a chapter on why I believe political labels are actually more important than ever. But I’ll try to show how all of this is basically an attempt to use ridicule to keep average people – those who have not been educated beyond the point of common sense – out of the political arena. Labels are a way of identifying ideas – and if we use them that way they are helpful. But I reject the idea of using them as tools of ridicule to push ordinary people away from each other and the conversations we need to have as a community.

Through it all I hope to make you think and even sometimes laugh. Make sure to read the end notes… that’s where I’ll usually try to make you laugh.

Now back to high school. We are coming to the end of our senior year, thoroughly infected with ‘senioritis’. Our physics teacher is sitting on the forward edge of his desk and the bell is about to ring. He leans forward and starts telling us about the amazing transformation he has seen in graduating classes since the one which left for the adult world as we straggled in as freshmen.³ Just four years before us, the sentiment among the graduating seniors was one of brooding apprehension. Interest rates were pushing toward 20%, inflation was raging and unemployment was off the charts. They had absolutely no sense of what, if anything, would be out there for them in the adult world into which they were about to be thrust.

And then there was us. In just those four short years, interest rates were tamed, inflation was under control and unemployment was dropping quickly. The economy was starting to gets some legs and the future looked to us to be one of opportunity waiting to be seized. Worry had given way to one word we all shared, something you cannot have without some sense of community: confidence.

If for no other reason, we need to learn how to build a new generation of ‘Community Conservatives’ so kids like my older son (who will graduate from high school three years from now) and his brother (who will follow him two years later) have a community into which they will become adults which is thriving, free and just – a community with a shared confidence in the future.

That is the conversation I want to have in these pages. Please join me.

Chapter 2

The Core Question We Face:

The Most Significant Unit of Society

It was a pretty heady time. A pandemic had gripped the globe in the clutches of fear like nothing you or I have even come close to experiencing. People rushed to the churches and their priests for answers. And they had none. So slowly but surely some among the few who could read started to do so. Having seen that no one – not even the priests – had answers as people died in the millions, generation after generation, they started to ask questions. And not just about the human body and sickness. About everything. And out of the Black Death of Europe a Renaissance began to take form, and then a call for Reformation.

There is a question we have to ask ourselves today. But I’ll need to take you on a little tour of church history for it to make sense. Most identify the Reformation with Martin Luther. While likely not as many remember him, the name John Calvin will probably ring a bell. But few remember names like Felix Manz, Conrad Grebel and George Blaurock – or the movement known as the Swiss Brethren.⁴

The Roots of Individual Liberty & Our First Freedom

The Reformation had three basic ‘streams’ of thought: Luther from Germany challenged the authority of the Roman church, asserting the Bible as having final say. Calvin challenged the Roman church’s notions of salvation. But the German Lutherans and the Swiss Reformed (Calvin was French, but settled in Geneva) and the Roman Catholics all looked at one thing the same: a person became a Christian by being baptized as a baby into the church. And if you were not baptized in the church of the community, you did not live in that community. If you were German (at least in certain parts of Germany) you were Lutheran, and if you weren’t Lutheran, well, you did not live in those parts of Germany. If you lived in Geneva, you were ‘Reformed’. If you didn’t belong to the Swiss Reformed churches, they’d see to it you didn’t live in Geneva.

The third ‘stream’ of thought came out of the Swiss Brethren. This really shook things up because it challenged the very notion of how you became a Christian. Remember here that people had started reading, and thinking, for themselves. And they read that people in the Bible were baptized after having believed the message preached by Jesus’ followers. They reasoned this must mean that one became a Christian by first hearing and understanding the message, then responding by choosing to believe it, and then by being baptized. So they subjected themselves to a new baptism as adults. They became known as the Anabaptists – those who were ‘baptized again’.

This did not sit well, to say the least, with every other group of Christians. The Roman Catholics condemned them. The German Lutherans condemned them. The Swiss Reformed out from which they came condemned them. Dutch Anabaptists had formed congregations in England and the Church of England⁵ condemned them. (Rome had broken off from what became the Eastern Orthodox churches,⁶ who didn’t care much for the whole lot of them, Roman, Protestant, English or otherwise.) Remember here, if the church of the local community condemned you, living in that community was no longer an option.

In England these churches became known as the ‘Dissenting Churches’. No one wanted them around. Wonder where they went? For our purposes it will be enough to roughly identify the Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth Rock as belonging to the Dissenting Churches.

It is out from the idea you become a Christian by deciding for yourself to be baptized that another idea sprang forth: The only true religion was the religion freely chosen. If Christianity could withstand the scrutiny of human reason, then