Statism By Any Other Name?

By Kale S. Bongers | Monday, January 9, 2006

BOOK REVIEW

It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good
Sen. Rick Santorum
ISI Books, 2005

If one had to choose the central building block of American society, the simplest level of interpersonal organization, it would undoubtedly be the family. Our nation's history books describe in heroic terms families venturing westward, bringing the fledgling American nation to what had previously been frontier lands. With a shift to industrialization, the family lost none of its relevance: Theodore Roosevelt famously proclaimed that "the whole welfare of the nation rests" upon the family. Yet today, the family is perceived as under attack, and myriad social conservatives have risen to the defense of the beleaguered institution. Among the most recent defenses of familial dignity is It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good, by Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum. Though the tome does raise some excellent points regarding the necessity of virtue for a strong, cohesive society, it ultimately falls short, lapsing into near-hysterics and at times even abandoning conservatism for liberal statism.

It Takes a Family is, to be sure, polemic, but one that, from the opening chapters onward, seems to be undergoing an identity crisis. While Santorum's attacks on "liberal" policies are abundantly clear, he alternately attempts to bridge and exacerbate the increasingly yawning divide between the two flanks of conservatives: the libertarians and the social conservatives, into whose camp Santorum believes he falls. However, Santorum's thoughts are not necessarily conservative when classified by traditional conservative/liberal dichotomies: realist/idealist, anti-statist/pro-statist, or even traditionalist/progressive. It is a sad day for conservatism when Santorum is considered the intellectual and political heir to the libertarian-leaning, fiercely anti-statist Senator Barry Goldwater: the two, though perhaps united by common desired ends, use quite different means to attain them. Goldwater was an uncompromising idealist; Santorum is a bit of a mercenary with a family-centered utopia as his aim.

To be sure, for parts of It Takes a Family, Santorum espouses both the value and efficacy of free-market solutions for family and neighborhood problems, particularly in depressed regions of the country. For instance, he notes the utter failure of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society boondoggle to actually accomplish anything of substance. Additionally, Santorum cites several inner-city organizations that use capitalism as a powerful tool for creating and keeping jobs in depressed neighborhoods where large sums of government money have had no impact. Such cases should not be surprising: as seen in the contrasts between government responses to natural disasters and NGO impacts, pointed, planned, privately-funded charity is often much more effective in forging solutions, due in large part to increased efficiency, more accountability, and a greater impact on workable, local results. However, interspersed with these homages to the free market, Santorum proposes programs that have conservative ends (strengthening families) as a goal, but move via extreme government intervention—loan programs, ill-planned expansions of entitlement programs, government pork, and other potentially disastrous ideas couched in terms of supplementing and supporting the ability of families and communities to help themselves. The justification for his ideas seems to be that, since Santorum is a self-proclaimed conservative, Americans can trust him with their tax monies: his Great Society-like programs will succeed where Johnson's did not solely because Santorum is on an opposing ideological side. In a world where the ends do not justify the means, we should rightly be concerned with how Santorum proposes action as much as what he wants done.

Additionally, Santorum's calls for a compassionate conservatism are straw men—indeed, no one, excepting of course the very few eugenic determinists (almost none of whom were conservative), strict individualists, or their fellow-travelers, has ever argued that the common good is not worth promoting, or that individuals should not support society through volunteerism or charity. Indeed, many long-held conservative beliefs (for free trade, against abortion, etc.) are at least partly premised on a greater societal good.

Despite these problems, the Senator's work quickly redeems itself. From the practical, he launches into a strong, thought-provoking segment that is among the best in the book. Santorum's argument is at its best when he discusses the necessity of virtue for the maintenance of a strong society. His approach is simple and formulaic: American society is fundamentally strengthened by ownership and moral values. Further, Santorum claims it is mainly through non-governmental institutions—most notably the family, but also religion and other voluntary associations—that values of trust, compassion, self-discipline and more are inculcated into the young. Such traits, Santorum notes, cannot be instilled effectively by the government, which, by its nature, destroys the moral facet of transactions of both social and economic capital by replacing gifts and charity with entitlements, personal interaction with faceless largesse. As such, passing on virtue must follow, as Santorum posits, the theory of subsidiarity: it is done most effectively at the lowest possible level: via a family, church, club, or other organization with far more institutional memory and with greater concern for and proximity to the individual. By placing the individual (in this case, a child) into such a system, success is far more likely.

The values taught by these local institutions, he notes, not only strengthen civil society, but also make governmental institutions stronger by advancing the cause of liberty: in other words, to quote Edmund Burke, "Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their appetites….[M]en of intemperate minds cannot be free." Burke, in his own time, recognized the French Revolution as an abomination, precisely due to the breakdown in societal virtue; on the death of Marie Antoinette, he noted, "little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor, and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult." Burke understood then, as Santorum does now, that societal virtue is a prerequisite for societal stability, which in turn is necessary for liberty. Thus, for broad-scale liberty to flourish, there must be temperance, trust and other morals promoting a common respect.

Given some of Santorum's trends toward a family-based statism, yet his emphasis on virtue and morality, a haunting question remains sadly unanswered. Is virtue necessarily virtuous when aided by the State, or is the virtue diminished via regulation against vice? This question is moot when it comes to interpersonal offenses, such as murder or rape, which assuredly need State regulation to promote justice and to prevent a decline into vigilantism. However, when it comes to personal choices that do not infringe upon the rights of another, though possibly abhorrent and contrary to virtue, government regulation is ineffective: rather, it destroys the worth of virtue for its own sake. Santorum, however, fails to ask this question, which renders sadly irrelevant large portions of his argument.

It Takes a Family devolves after reaching its halfway point: partly, it becomes a self-help book for parents worried about the corrosive effects of vulgar culture on their precious offspring; partly, it becomes a chance for Santorum to lapse into tired arguments one would expect to hear on talk radio, in the same nearly hysterical tone. Attacking the liberal leanings of faculty members in American universities? It's been done, by virtually every other conservative pundit in the past decade. The nation is quickly spiraling into oblivion because of activist liberal judges? It was covered more ably, with more brevity and more wit, in Goldwater's The Conscience of a Conservative. In his closing chapters, Santorum sacrifices any attempt at profundity for a chance to rile up his followers via a rousing exit.

Santorum's work starts out with an interesting premise, but later wavers in tone and loses its edge, becoming little more than a simplistic rant against the Left. While many of the trends facing the familial institution today are worrisome, they can be solved without excessive government intervention, by locally-focused voluntary associations. Virtue, the basis of a free society, can be promoted without government intrusion. Urban renewal can take place without government stepping in. Families can flourish without government interfering. The real problem is not that families are suddenly incapable of maintaining themselves; rather, the real trouble is convincing Santorum and other elected officials to realize that families can do just fine without them.

Statism By Any Other Name?

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