Social liberals - because of their indifference to civil society's health and their permissive attitude to destructive behaviours - are unwitting allies of big government.
"Most Tories Are Probably — Illogically, I Think — Both Economic Liberals And Social Authoritarians."
- Michael Portillo November 2004
"The Cultural Contradiction Of Libertarianism Is Simply This. A Liberal Society Depends On The Existence Of Non-Liberal Institutions. Without Them We Erode The Ecology Of Civil Society Without Which Order Can Only Be Sustained By The Leviathan Of The State".
- Jonathan Sacks, The Chief Rabbi, 2000
The Notting Hillbillies
In the summer of 2004 'The Notting Hill Tories' emerged as an influential group of rising Tories. The Notting Hillbillies described their worldview as euro-sceptic, socially liberal and supportive of small government.
The idea of small government has mixed appeal to voters. Many, if not most, like the implications for their tax bill of a slimmer state but many also support a big role for government in providing public services, protecting vulnerable people and fighting crime.
Demand for government increases when there is a real or exaggerated failure by another part of the nation to fulfil its role. When, for example, families are weak or when businesses aren't creating jobs. If government retreats from, say, caring for vulnerable people before somebody or something else is ready and willing to take its place then that retreat will quickly result in social injustice, and in unpopularity for the political architect of the retreat.
The incompatibility of social liberalism with small government operates in two ways...
Social liberals are unwilling to nourish society's caring institutions
Social liberals – a branch of 'the Liberati' - are unwilling to nurture free society’s caring institutions. Because social liberals avoid ‘moral judgments’ about family structure - and close their not-so-open minds to the overwhelming evidence of the damage done by family breakdown - they neglect to support the healthy marriages which underpin society's most important caring institution.
Social liberals 'permit' the growth of social problems
The permissive liberati’s willingness to tolerate sexual promiscuity and soft drugs produces more broken and maladjusted lives. Permissive policies on drugs and alcohol have not only fuelled crime - they have also produced unhealthy citizens who underperform at work and in the home. Taxpayer-funded safe-sex policies have appeared to condone – even encourage - sexual experimentation. This has produced a devastating and expensive explosion of sexually-transmitted infections and a huge number of welfare-dependent young mums.
Only sixties socialists have the moral and intellectual right to oppose social conservatism. The political left’s belief in a big welfare state at least means that they are prepared to provide some sort of care – however inadequate - for children in fractured families or for people whose lives have been devastated by drugs.
The libertarian right seem prepared to permit self-destructive behaviours without providing a safety-net for the victims of those behaviours. Broken people would learn a lesson in this 'brave new world', say social libertarians, by being forced to pick up the pieces from their own lives.
Because it begets social injustice, social liberalism is unwittingly but inevitably a driver of big government. Because the persistence of social injustice is unacceptable in a modern democracy voters will soon ask for 'something to be done'. In the absence of stronger civil society institutions that something will be state welfare...
Capitalism isn't compatible with social liberalism
Capitalism depends upon virtues like thrift, trust and a work ethic that it cannot nurture itself but which family and religion can.
The idea that the fathers of liberal economic thinking were also social libertarians is highly dubious. Adam Smith, author of 'The Wealth of Nations', was also author of 'The Theory of Moral Sentiments' and originator of the concept of ‘sympathy’.
‘Sympathy’ was an idea that helped the free market to produce just outcomes. He wrote that:
"How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature which interest him in the fortune of others and render their happiness necessary to him though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it."
Burkean or social conservatives believe that close and enduring social structures provide an essential underpinning to feelings of sympathy.
Michael Portillo needs to revisit his thinking (with which this definition began). Social liberalism is not only incompatible with small government - it undermines capitalism, too...
Tim, this dictionary is much more polemical than definitive.
I'm socially liberal and pro-family. I make moral judgements, but I don't need the government to make those judgements for me. St Thomas Aquinas said, rightly, that there can be no virtue without free will.
Libertarians don't like to see the government sphere encroaching into the private sphere, it is none of the government's business what I do in the bedroom and how I choose to bring up my children, nor is it the proper role of government to attempt social engineering. Support for the family as an ideal is a matter for civil society and the faith-based community. The government should make sure that it does nothing to undermine the family.
You claim that "Only sixties socialists have the moral and intellectual right to oppose social conservatism." Well that's just ridiculous, who gives out these rights? Who determines what is moral?
Incidentally, I know lots of libertarian conservatives who detest liberal lifestyles, but support the right of others to live their life as they choose, because they value individual liberty. Like free speech, you may not like the results, but to prohibit it would be worse.
I suspect your argument is that big government is necessary to mend the "broken society". If faith based institutions had not lost their influence we might not have so broken a society, but this special pleading for government intervention in the areas of special interest to you is little different from the special leading from trade unions who want the government to intervene in areas that matter most to them - in the labour market.
Getting the government involved in "nurturing free society’s caring institutions" is asking for trouble. The welfare state destroyed the nurturing of private caring institutions.
By all means support the family and work to mend the broken society, but do not force others to pick up the pieces or live by your values against their will. Do not legislate or govern with the delusion that you have a monopoly on the moral highground or caring for social justice. A theocratic government is not part of the conservative vision of a free society and it definitely is not a component part of a culture of liberty.
Instead of trying to divide social from liberal conservatives, you should work to unify them against our collectivist enemies.
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