The Conservative Case Against Using Government Power Against the Barbarians Inside the Gates
What time is it? Consult your local news.
I read two things back-to-back this morning. The first was Farming Out Virtue, an essay in Law & Liberty by Peter Van Ness, which took aim at Right-critics of libertarianism today (he used many terms—“new right,” “social conservatives,” “paleoconservatives,” “traditionalists,” “right-wing moralists”). What unites the thinkers and politicians on the Right whom Van Ness criticizes is their desire to use government power to shape culture. Van Ness professes to agree with these non- and anti-libertarians on the Right on the ends, but is dead-set against their means, which seems to include everything from using the federal government to restrain our post-national tech oligarchs to changing tax laws to incentivize family formation. Van Ness warns conservatives against damaging the institutions of civil society and calls for conservatives to focus on their local communities, forever eschewing the use of the government powers which could in the future (never mind the past and present) be used by the Left for nefarious purposes, presumably in the expectation that by keeping one’s hands off the levers of power, those levers will disappear, and civil society will be spontaneously re-ordered in the meantime.
The next thing I read was a local news story about Campbell County, Wyoming, where a group of citizens have spent months protesting gender ideology in their local library, including obscene sexual materials in the children and teen sections of the public library, to no avail. (It has even received some national attention.) Not only have their protests fallen on mostly-deaf, obfuscating ears; last month, so exasperated by these pesky parents and (is this the right term?) right-wing moralists in their local community, the county commissioners voted to close all public comments, not only about the library but about all matters, to the commission. In the latest development, covered in today’s article, the county commissioners have asked for and received from the sheriff extra security at their meetings: up to six police officers now attend the meetings, while citizens (who are still allowed to attend, but not speak) silently hold signs in protest at the back of the room. Well, at least they didn’t call in the FBI, and at least they aren’t calling the citizens who elected them domestic terrorists. Perhaps that’s the best that one can hope for in a deep-red county in a deep-red state.
I have my principled disagreements with Van Ness about the nature of government and law (which Aristotle—whom Van Ness quotes unconvincingly for his purposes—recognized must be concerned with the moral formation of their citizens). There’s more that could be said, but above all, I couldn’t help but laugh when I turned from his essay to my local news. As Dave Reaboi puts it, what divides those on the right today is their cognizance (or lack thereof) of “what time it is.” If you’re still wondering what that means, or where you can find a clock to consult, just take a look at your local news—or, assuming you are a conservative who professes sympathy with the ends, but not the means, of “right-wing moralists,” then just take a look at the local news in a red county in the reddest of red states, where local action on behalf of traditional morality is, we presume, most vigorous. The “new right,” in all its factions, agrees that the old consensus is dead, and that those who cling to it are blind (naïvely or not) to the extent of the contemporary crisis. Meanwhile, those afflicted with what we might call government hesitancy are busy arguing that we cannot, must not, under any circumstances dare not, use government power against the barbarians who are already inside the gates.
Well put. Do you happen to know, to help educate the rest of us in self-gov't, what might the decent people of Campbell Cty, Wyoming do to redress their grievances?