The right's rhetoric is all about individual liberty, but love of fellow humans is essential to a functioning society -- or policy.

All you need is love: 

How community can save conservatism

 

by Michael R. Strain


The right's rhetoric is all about individual liberty, 

but love of fellow humans is essential to a functioning society -- or policy.

In May, Rep. Paul Ryan gave a speech at an American Enterprise Institute dinner, where I work, titled "Conservatism and Community." Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, spoke of the inherent human need for community.

 "We want everyone to have a chance in life -- a chance to be happy," he argued. "And we're happiest when we're together. We want to be together. It's in our nature. We feel it in our bones." People "hunger for a community -- where they realize their potential."

The vision Ryan offered is appealing, and conservatives should listen to it.

Conservatism, properly understood, has long championed the essential role played by the mediating institutions of civil society -- Edmund Burke's "little platoons" -- the churches, the schools, the men's and women's clubs, soup kitchens, scout troops, youth sports leagues, and neighborhood associations. It is here that we learn how to interact with each other. 

It is here that a healthy dependence of mutual obligation is formed. It is here -- enmeshed in a layered, vibrant web of social interactions and commitments -- that manners are learned, habits of virtue are cultivated, tradition is discovered and appreciated, and young people are taught who they are and how to live.

Many on the right correctly emphasize individual liberty, but they do not emphasize what conservatism knows to be true: It is in community that people learn how to be free.

Ryan argued that "the federal government has a role to play" with respect to community, but that "it's a supporting role, not the leading one." This is generally true. Government should distance itself enough from the individual that civil society -- which exists in the space between government and citizen -- can flourish. Speaking generally, government should help support these institutions, but it should not do their work for them.

But this is not to say that a communitarian ethic should be absent from politics and public policy -- quite the opposite. Proceeding with a spirit of community would help conservatives formulate and support better policies. Let's discuss a few.

The most obvious and immediate need for a spirit of community in the public-policy space is in the labor market. We still have two million fewer jobs than when the official "recovery" from the Great Recession began. More than four million of our fellow citizens have been unemployed for 27 weeks or longer.

Although our labor-market crisis is often discussed in economic terms (if at all), it truly represents a human tragedy. It constitutes millions and millions of workers who are unable to flourish, to earn their own success, to realize their full potential.

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Read more: www.aei.org