Free to Do What?

THE CHOSEN THEME for the Philadelphia Society’s annual meeting was “The Culture of Statism-Communism Is Dead: Long Live the State!”-a mordant summation of the challenge facing conservatives of all stripes in the Nineties. And the number of different stripes is part of the challenge. At the time of the meeting (the last weekend in April) the Perot Phenomenon was just a glimmer in Larry King’s eye, but Pat Buchanan’s candidacy had drawn battle lines between conservatives who no longer had their common opposition to the Evil Empire to keep them fighting on the same side. As the Society’s president, Daniel Oliver-formerly known as “embattled FTC Chairman Daniel Oliver”-put it in his Saturday luncheon address, the Soviet Union’s fall left us free, “but free to do what?” The most basic division is between those who exalt freedom, particularly economic freedom, and those whose primary goal is the encouragement of virtue-a view that traces its lineage to the Founding Fathers: “One cannot imagine Governor Winthrop succumbing to the argument that for reasons of personal liberty and financial abundance the Shining City on a Hill Pharmacy should be allowed to open on Sundays in order to meet the competition in the selling of condoms.”

But even those of the Right for whom virtue is a higher priority than economic freedom would argue that “Good government is limited government. In government, less is more.” And, for conservatives, the best way to reconcile the different priorities is to insist that as much of government as possible be local.

TF

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Tim W. Ferguson

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Constitutional Government

THE CHOSEN THEME for the Philadelphia Society’s annual meeting was “The Culture of Statism-Communism Is Dead: Long Live the State!”-a mordant summation of the challenge facing conservatives of all stripes in the Nineties. And the number of different stripes is part of the challenge. At the time of the meeting (the last weekend in April) the Perot Phenomenon was just a glimmer in Larry King’s eye, but Pat Buchanan’s candidacy had drawn battle lines between conservatives who no longer had their common opposition to the Evil Empire to keep them fighting on the same side. As the Society’s president, Daniel Oliver-formerly known as “embattled FTC Chairman Daniel Oliver”-put it in his Saturday luncheon address, the Soviet Union’s fall left us free, “but free to do what?” The most basic division is between those who exalt freedom, particularly economic freedom, and those whose primary goal is the encouragement of virtue-a view that traces its lineage to the Founding Fathers: “One cannot imagine Governor Winthrop succumbing to the argument that for reasons of personal liberty and financial abundance the Shining City on a Hill Pharmacy should be allowed to open on Sundays in order to meet the competition in the selling of condoms.”

But even those of the Right for whom virtue is a higher priority than economic freedom would argue that “Good government is limited government. In government, less is more.” And, for conservatives, the best way to reconcile the different priorities is to insist that as much of government as possible be local.