Is Social Conservatism Necessary? Social conservative James Kalb says, yes, and explains why the conservatives of a previous era didn’t dwell on social issues:
The social issues weren’t issues for Eisenhower because they weren’t public issues at all then. Nobody in public life favored abortion or homosexuality, and people thought of Christianity and the more-or-less traditional family as good things we should all support. They were seen as basic to the social background against which political disputes played out. No one was demanding their eradication as a violation of inclusiveness and tolerance.That was then and this is now. The situation was changing rapidly by the time of the Goldwater candidacy, and by the late sixties the transformation of social relations had become a driving force of politics. “Change” is now the slogan, and that means giving political will a free field of action.
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You don’t get social justice if you don’t deal with social issues. Those who want “change” are the ones most concerned with them. That is why “getting government out of our bedrooms” has turned out to mean sensitivity training, sexual harassment law, compulsory radical redefinition of marriage, and training children to put condoms on cucumbers.
Kalb believes that leftism demands “supporting the system and otherwise minding our own business by concerning ourselves only with tolerant and private goals”:
It is therefore basic to the liberal view that people must be made to view non-liberal goods and institutions as wrong and shameful. In particular, they must be taught to reject with disgust distinctions not related to the functioning of liberal institutions. That’s what “inclusion” and “tolerance” mean.For example, the system depends on certified expertise, so it’s OK to distinguish between high school grads and college grads, or even between Harvard grads like Obama and State U grads like Palin. There’s nothing wrong with that. In contrast, distinctions related to family, culture, religion, and inherited community must be suppressed. They have at least as much effect as formal education on what we are and do, but they’re bad because they offer an alternative method of social organization and so threaten liberalism. That is why those who make distinctions based on sex, marital status, or community and cultural background must be squashed.
Hence the extraordinary moralism and intolerance of liberalism, its tendency to treat any tolerance for non-liberal standards and distinctions as the worst human quality imaginable. People become intolerant and moralistic when they confront views and conduct that they believe threaten the basis and functioning of social order. And liberals confront such things everywhere. All history, all nature, all culture, and all religion threaten the basis and functioning of a liberal social order.