SLIBECONS with Biceps

Athletes as politicians? It’s not exactly a new phenomenon. But wrestler and body builders as governors? That is new. First there was Jesse (The Body) Ventura who became Jesse (The Governor of Minnesota) Ventura in 1998. Now we have Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Is this is simply be one small step from 2nd rate professional wrestler to 1st rank professional bodybuilder? If so, there’s no great cause for concern. But something else is afoot here.

Ventura and Schwarzenegger represent a specious form of libertarianism by way of offering voters a beguiling combination of social liberal and economic conservative (henceforth SLIBECONs). Underneath Jesse’s gleaming dome was this message: Democrats interfere in your private economic lives too much, so vote for me and I’ll get government off your over-taxed back; Republicans interfere in your personal lives too much, so vote for me and you’ll be free to do whatever you wish when you’re on your back.

Strip away the Terminator Persona and what do you have but Jesse’s message California-ized. But you have something else as well. You now also have the culture war alive and well within the GOP. It was one thing for a 3rd rate celebrity running as a 3rd party candidate in a 2nd tier state to win a single gubernatorial term by selling himself as a SLIBECON. It’s quite something else again when the SLIBECON in question is the highly popular Republican governor of California. Then add former New York Mayor—and future GOP presidential candidate (?)—Rudy Giuliani, not to mention Senator Arlen Specter, to the mix.

SLIBECONs claim to be models of consistency. Orthodox Republicans, they tell us, are rightly suspicious of government when it comes to marketplace issues, but wrongly sympathetic to government when it comes to “privacy” issues. Democrats, on the other hand, leave us to our own devices in the bedroom, but not in the boardroom.

SLIBECONs also claim to favor a two party system which, on domestic issues, breaks down neatly along pro-government and anti-government lines. Such a division already exists. In point of fact the Republican party is the consistent “let it be” party—at least they tend to be, which is pretty much all that can be expected of a major national party (as opposed to the Libertarian party).

Still, the SLIBECON temptation is a real one—and a seemingly attractive one as well. How often have I heard people identify themselves as social liberals and economic conservatives, as in “cut out the moralizing and cut my taxes and you’ve got my vote.”

And at what is all this moralizing directed? Let’s be honest. The bulk of SLIBECON anti-moralizing is devoted to issues revolving around homosexuality and abortion. Should the Republican party take the SLIBECON route and abandon its opposition to the gay rights agenda and finally embrace Roe v Wade? In a word, no.

If anything, the GOP of today should take a page from the infant Republican party of 1856. In its first platform what would soon become the party of Lincoln boldly condemned the “twin relics of barbarism, slavery and polygamy.” Today’s Republicans could adopt a similar stance. If it still wants to be thought of as the party of Lincoln, the GOP could—and should—condemn the “twin exemplars of modernism, abortion and gay marriage.”

That line lacks the ring of the 1856 version, but it would help halt any GOP slide into SLIBECONism and open the way for Republicans to make the honest case that it is the “let it be” party, whether the subject is the bedroom or the boardroom . . . or taxes period.

In truth, today’s Democratic party is the big government party, save the most legitimate arena for big government action, namely national defense. But Democrats of recent vintage have preferred to use the federal government for lesser objectives. Among those objectives are the preservation of abortion rights. Having long defended the judicially imposed nationalization of the right to an abortion, they are now prepared to use that branch of government to advance the gay rights agenda as well.

The overheated rhetoric of the gay rights lobby aside, Republicans have no interest in breaking down bedroom doors and peering inside. Nor are they out to stop consenting adults from behaving as, well, as consenting adults. Despite the charges of the Democrats, they do not even seek to “legislate morality.” If anything, it is the Democrats who are determined to legislate a new morality, whether by redefining the family or by criminalizing (as homophobic hate speech) any opposition to the gay rights agenda.

On the abortion question, Republicans ought to be the states’ rights party. Here irony intrudes. In the 1850s Democrat Stephen Douglas challenged Lincoln Republicans under the banner of “popular sovereignty”: Let the voters of each territory decide between slavery and freedom. Today the Republicans could be the popular sovereignty-ites of the abortion debate: “Let each state legislature write its own laws in reference to the unborn.”

Lincoln opposed popular sovereignty because he wanted to contain slavery and set it on the road to “ultimate extinction.” Today’s Republicans ought to favor popular sovereignty in the name of putting legal abortion on a similar road to oblivion.

Today’s Democrats hide behind the mantra of choice when they defend the nationalization of abortion. Does de-nationalizing the abortion question constitute a step toward an intrusive big government? Hardly. If anything, it is a step toward democratic choice.

Where does all this leave SLIBECONs? They’re welcome under the GOP tent, but once inside they should be persuaded that they are mistaken. They should be permitted to voice their views—and hold their views. But they should not be able to paint GOP social conservatives as intrusive, anti-homosexual Puritans (when all the social conservatives are saying is leave people alone). Nor should they see the GOP as the anti-choice party (when all social conservatives are saying is give choice a legislative chance). Finally, SLIBECONs are mistaken if they think that American greatness can be sustained by SLIBECONism. Need we look any further than a dying western Europe? A country which discourages homosexuality (but ultimately lets it be) has a chance to maintain its greatness. So does a country which encourages and protects life. But a country which encourages homosexuality and discourages life will not long maintain its greatness.

Nor will it remain prosperous. SLIBECONism may mean a comfortable life today and tomorrow. But the demographic bill will eventually come due. If SLIBECONs understand no other argument, they should grasp this one—unless they’re so bent on pursuing their own self-interest and immediate self-gratification that they’re blind to what’s in the nation’s best long term interests.

There is, after all, a very real connection between strong families and the strength of a nation. If SLIBECONs fail to grasp this, there is no basis for a shotgun marriage with the GOP—and little long term hope for America, no matter how many bicep-bulging governors we elect.