Jeff Bell and the Conservative Society Myth

The Wall Street Journal interviewed Jeff Bell, a conservative thinker of sorts, on the subject of social issues and Rick Santorum's recent surge. The upshot of the article is Bell's notion that conservative social issues will send the GOP to victory in 2012 and help create a permanent Republican majority in politics. This runs against traditional wisdom, which regards such social issues as divisive and ultimately off-putting to swing voters. The title of Bell's forthcoming book, "The Case for Polarized Politics," reveals what he thinks of such an argument.

What I find immediately interesting about Bell's point of view is not so much his analysis of current politics (it seems transparently wrong about the tenor of conservative politics), but his attempt to justify his position as morally true. That is, he regards the socially conservative positions he espouses as objectively right. If the interview is to be believed, he believes that this truth is grounded in History (capital "H" History). As such, it is narrative that creates moral meaning, that in essence give norms their objective reality. (For anyone interested in a theoretical position endorsing this, see Robert M. Cover's article "Foreword: Nomos and Narrative," in the Harvard Law Review, volume 97 (1983-1984).)

So what is Bell's narrative? The roots of social conservatism lie in the Revolution. "Nature's God is the only authority cited in the Declaration of Independence," said Bell, and he then says that natural law is god-given, although conveniently non-denominational. "If you believe that rights are unalienable and that they come from God, the odds are you're a social conservative." This position then allows Bell one more intervention. The Tea Party has made a connection with the Founding one of its central tenets. (Economic and social conservatives unite!) In Bell's reading, "liberals" have (since the French Revolution) attempted to pull down the institutions of family and religion. Obama's presidency proves this. After all, he let gays into the military and took on the Catholic church over contraception.

I won't comment on the weakness of the narrative--it would be unfair given that it is not fleshed out. Suffice it to say that natural law had obvious Christian roots, but the beginnings of liberal theory (Grotius, Hobbes, Pufendorf, Locke, etc.) divorced natural law from the traditional hierarchical society that had once dominated political understandings of politics. Natural law became at first a theoretical and then later a political attack on hierarchy. This meant an attack on slavery, monarchy, and--wait for it--traditional marriage. Of course, "traditional marriage" at the time of the Revolution meant the absolute subjection of women to men--women who literally lost their legal identity to their husbands, surrendered their property, their wages, and their right to defend themselves in court from attack. Conservatives who opposed them complained that to grant women the right to their own property would undermine the "natural" foundation of society. Women thought otherwise. Some men did too, and marriage was reformed (a process taking generations),and  ultimately brought into line with the equality implicit in natural law thinking.

This historical interlude is, I repeat, not meant to comment on Bell's untenable historical narrative, but rather to illustrate the ways in which narrative can construct meaning. In Bell's narrative, he wishes to draw a line through time which connects today's social conservatives to the Founders. The line that connects them is respect for traditional institutions and a belief in God. These are absolute values, in Bell's reading. And the narrative gives them objective value. But the objective truth to which he clings is a chimera. And this, if he is not aware of it, ultimately dooms not so much his analysis of present politics as it does his own pretended morality.

Perhaps in a future post I will comment more about the substance of his narrative. At present it deserves no comment simply because it is so patently absurd. But perhaps after I have paused to read the comments on the WSJ post I will see whether a significant segment of the population actually takes this seriously.