Conservative Passing Gear

FOR A HUNDRED and fifty years at least, conservatives have been shouting: Stop! as assorted reformers and lefties have urged the world to advance boldly into the future, abandoning its shameful past.

It really is time to get over all that. It is time to jam the old jalopy into passing gear, and yell Hit It! And then zoom past the foolish and demoralized lefties and liberals to lead the world to a glorious future. The problem is that, up to now, the left had all the best cars. They were fast, they were flashy, and they had fins. Who can forget the ’49 Marx Manifesto? Generations of youngsters fell for its throaty growl. And the Nietzsche Übermensch? Then there was the Heidegger Dasein, not to mention the Sartre Nausea. Now the trendy types are all agog over the Derrida Différance and the Foucault Discipline.

OK, so those Europeans really have created some amazing concept cars, and academics and a devoted coterie of fans couldn’t get enough of their European engineering. But there was a problem. They all had great curb appeal, but they just weren’t too practical. When it came to driving to work, taking the kids to soccer practice, well, ordinary moms and dads wouldn’t buy them.

Ordinary Americans preferred the ’33 Roosevelt Democrat and the ’65 Johnson Medicare, and back in the 1930s, the Roosevelt seemed like a lifesaver. Generations of Americans swore by it, and as they grew older, they liked the Johnson too. But at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the Roosevelt is really showing its age. It only runs on taxes, it doesn’t really have the performance or maneuverability to take advantage of modern highways, and people are getting fed up that it only comes in a one-size-fits-all model. As for the Medicare, you should see the repair bills.

At first, conservatives and Republicans were slow to respond. But then, back in the 1980s, they brought out the Reagan Taxcut. It was a big seller, but the auto industry journalists hated it, and it never got the buzz it deserved. Then in ’96 the hotshot Gingrich design shop brought out the Welfare Reform, although they had to put a gun to CEO Clinton’s head before he’d let them ship it to dealers. It worked like a champ, although many industry analysts harrumphed and worried about whiplash on kids riding in the back seat.

Somehow, despite producing some really great cars, conservatives can’t get a real blockbuster, one that will forever change the way Americans think of cars. That’s a shame because there is some great homegrown American technology out there waiting to power the next generation of automobiles.

There’s Michael Novak’s greater separation of powers concept that he developed in The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism. It blows a hole in the politics-with-everything engineering from the Europeans by conceptualizing society with a political sector, an economic sector, and a moral-cultural sector, and each sector jealously keeps the other sectors from getting too powerful. How about the curb appeal of that baby!

There’s sociologist of religion Rodney Stark with his idea of churches as religious firms and preachers as religious entrepreneurs. He gives American religiosity (not to mention burgeoning Christianity in Latin America, Africa, and China) flash and verve, while exposing Euro-secularism as dull and dowdy.

There’s Frederick Turner and his Culture of Hope. He’s building a new auto aesthetic that builds on ritual beloved by his anthropologist father, returns to poetic meter and rhyme by recognizing their universal presence in oral culture, and embraces Shakespeare as a prophet of Twenty-first Century Economics.

Then there’s “integral philosopher” Ken Wilber, who might look to conservatives like a wacko New Age poseur. But he’s produced a concept car modestly named Theory of Everything that leaves the postmodernist left eating his dust. He proposes a society that celebrates the creativity and universal compassion that the lefties have longed for since the early nineteenth century, but insists that it must be done by transcending and including the bourgeois ethos instead of destroying it.

If conservatives powered and fueled their movement with these ideas, we would have a vehicle that could go head to head against anyone. We would appeal to the fearful immigrant trying to make it in the city and to the ordinary suburban family that goes to work, follows the rules, pays its taxes, and obeys the law. We could appeal both to the adventurous entrepreneur and the creative artist. We could appeal to the conservative philanthropist and the social activist dreaming of a world of genuine caring and sharing.

We could be leader of the pack and set the national agenda for the next generation. Best of all, we could have fun doing it. Because Americans have always loved a great car.

Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Conservative Passing Gear

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