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MODERNIZE, DON’T MODERATE
“I know that for America there will always be a bright dawn ahead.”
—Ronald Reagan
The morning after the 2012 election, I posted a piece on the Daily Caller titled “The GOP Needs Modernization, Not Moderation.” A few days later, I wrote another column on the same theme for The Week. It seemed to strike a chord. Later that week, appearing on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, journalist John Heilemann mentioned the phrase, and GOP strategist Brad Todd later gave the idea a shout-out on MSNBC’s The Daily Rundown with Chuck Todd. That Sunday, appearing on CNN’s State of the Union, Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers observed, “I don’t think it’s about the Republican Party needing to become more moderate. I really believe it’s the Republican Party becoming more modern.” And then finally, in a much-ballyhooed CNN.com column titled “How Republicans Can Win Future Elections,” Governor Bobby Jindal observed, “We need to modernize, not moderate.”
It’s flattering to have coined a phrase—even if this moment of introspection was painfully short-lived (and even if attribution wasn’t always provided)—but what does modernize, don’t moderate even mean? In a sense, this is the political equivalent of the project Pope Francis has undertaken in the Catholic Church. He has changed the emphasis, not the doctrine—changed the tone, not the music. In short, what this means is that conservatives must recognize and accept the fact that twenty-first-century America will necessarily look different than twentieth-century America—and that this is okay. Meanwhile, conservatives must simultaneously honor and preserve our fundamental conservative principles, which, in many cases, go back to antiquity.
The way to win isn’t to abandon conservative ideas or policies, but rather to adapt them to a twenty-first-century world—and explain why conservatism is the best philosophy for making the largest, most diverse number of Americans happy, virtuous, safe, and prosperous.
Before we continue, I want to be clear and transparent about something: this involves both style and substance.
Modernizing entails a lot of things: it means using cutting-edge campaign technology to win elections and fielding more diverse and cosmopolitan candidates (something the GOP has actually done a good job of)—and perhaps fewer candidates who look like a caricature of Boss Hogg from The Dukes of Hazzard. (Fair or not, some Americans are now sonically biased against a Southern accent. In the post–George W. Bush era, one wonders to what degree this bias has harmed candidates such as former Texas governor Rick Perry.) But it also means being open to adopting new common-sense policy reform positions that don’t conflict with foundational conservative beliefs, as well as more effectively communicating how current policy positions can actually benefit Americans who haven’t traditionally been part of the conservative coalition. Candidates won’t feel empowered to promote innovative ideas that appeal to a larger swath of Americans if they fear their bases will reflexively attack them for challenging the status quo. (It doesn’t do us much good to elect fresh twenty-first-century candidates if we then force them to go on the record and talk like stale twentieth-century ones.)
So, in the face of daunting demographic challenges, how can the GOP position itself to win the twenty-first century, without betraying conservative values? Here’s my recipe for success:
1. Appeal to Younger, More Cosmopolitan Americans
Most of the factors that would turn off a young, college-educated urbanite to conservatism have little to do with conservative philosophy and everything to do with culture and signaling. Tell them you believe in community, and they’ll nod their head. Tell them you think we should be incentivizing entrepreneurial, digitally savvy, disruptive businesses like Uber to operate without fear of onerous governmental regulations, and they’ll smile. As Rod Dreher suggested in his book Crunchy Cons, whether it’s homeschooling, living in a tight-knit community, or going to a farmers’ market, traditional conservative values are pretty consistent with the way a lot of young urbanites actually live. What doesn’t fly with them? In some cases, you can blame conservative policies such as opposition to gay marriage. But in many cases, what turns them off has more to do with cultural identity, not philosophical beliefs. Too many college-educated Americans write off conservatism—not because they disagree with a Burkean philosophy—but because they are repelled by what conservatism has come to represent. In fact, according to one study, millennials often “decided they were liberals because they really didn’t like conservatives.”101
To many Americans, conservatism isn’t about tradition or Aristotelian ideas or the preservation of Western civilization, but rather watching Duck Dynasty, shopping at Walmart, and displaying a gun rack in your truck. The sad thing is that a lot of young cosmopolitan Americans who think they are liberal—based not on philosophy, but instead on these cultural shortcuts—are actually, in their personal lifestyles, rejecting much of what liberals have to offer. Yes, it’s true that many advocate social tolerance while practicing a rather bourgeois existence, but the starkest example of cognitive dissonance probably has to do with technology: it is unrealistic to think the guy who manages his bank account on his iPhone, orders a car via Uber, buys tickets to a baseball game on StubHub, and on the way trades some stock will view government as passively as his grandfather. Nor should he; the world has changed. It’s hard to imagine he will be satisfied with cavalierly outsourcing the management of his social security to a bloated bureaucracy.
I recently spent some time with Alex Castellanos, the longtime Republican political consultant who heads a PAC called New Republican. In his Alexandria, Virginia, offices—a huge factory-converted loft—the charismatic Cuban American held court, regaling me with stories while puffing cigar smoke. Castellanos is passionate about fixing the Republican brand and is astounded that the GOP doesn’t already own the twenty-first century. He argues quite convincingly that big-government liberalism is tantamount to a top-down command-and-control assembly line system that worked in the Industrial Age but is antiquated in the modern era. In between puffs of smoke, he shows me a picture of Adam Smith and harrumphs, “We were right too early.” A few seconds later, he continues. “This whole ‘all men are created equal’ thing”—he pauses to hold up his iPhone—“it’s never been more true.” He has a point. At some future juncture, an increasingly educated and cosmopolitan public simply will not tolerate the government being so inefficient compared with the plethora of amazing new, mostly app-based service companies that are improving so many other aspects of American life.
FedEx, UPS, and e-mail have replaced much of what the US Postal Service used to do—and they do so more efficiently. We also see this with companies like Uber, the smartphone app that connects you with a driver “at the click of a button,” replacing taxicabs by providing a superior experience. As the party of labor unions who disdain the emerging gig or sharing economy, Democrats find themselves in a pinch. This tension reached a head in July of 2015, when Hillary Clinton outlined her economic policy, promising to “crack down on bosses who exploit employees while misclassifying them as contractors.” Grover Norquist, a conservative antitax crusader, responded joyously, telling Business Insider, “She just declared war on the future. She just declared war on Uber.” Maybe. But while technology and free market economics really could be a bridge to college-educated young urbanites, it’s easy to imagine conservatives blowing this opportunity, or, at least, failing to capitalize on it. And the easiest way to miss the boat would be to nominate Republican candidates who send the wrong message. The 2016 primary really is a fight for the future of the Republican Party, and sides are already being chosen. According to a Washington Post/ABC News poll released in July of 2015, “Among those with no college degree, 32 percent support [Donald] Trump, compared with a mere 8 percent of those with college educations.”102 (A Washington Post/ABC News poll released in late September only confirmed the trend, showing Trump polling 22 points better among all non-college graduates—and a stunning 46-point education gap among Republicans. An October 2015 national Pew Research Center survey of Republican and Republican-leaning voters similarly had Trump winning 30 percent of non-college graduates, but just 16 percent of college graduates.)
2. Appeal to Hispanics
Depending on who’s on the ballot, Republicans can generally figure on losing 85–95 percent of the black vote. Allowing this same thing to happen with the Hispanic vote would be mathematically catastrophic. It’s vital for conservatives to compete for, and win, at least 40 percent of the Hispanic vote. To do so, conservatives must enact some immigration reform legislation. Whether you favor a pathway to citizenship, legalization but not citizenship, or some other form of immigration reform that addresses the 11–15 million illegal immigrants in the United States, the issue has become a conditio sine qua non, and something must be done to address the problem humanely.
Consider this: By 2040, whites are expected to account for just 38 percent of eligible voters in…Texas.103 That means 62 percent of eligible voters in the Lone Star State will be nonwhite (Hispanics are projected to be the largest bloc at 43 percent).
The good news is that, for a variety of reasons, Hispanic voters in Texas are not yet a wholly owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party. In fact, as recently as 2014, US senator John Cornyn, a Republican, won 48 percent of the Latino vote (his Democratic opponent got just 47 percent)!104 Rather than finding new ways to turn off even Texas Hispanics, Republicans might take a page from Cornyn’s playbook and take solace in the fact that this voting bloc is up for grabs. But rather than competing for the Hispanic vote, it seems more likely that Republicans will antagonize them. But let me be clear about something: if Republicans lose Texas, it’s game over.
Of course, some conservatives look at this demographic challenge and see it as further evidence we should end birthright citizenship, deport the eleven million (or so) illegals, and erect a fence (with a moat—and alligators). Others see this demographic information as proof that we had better start persuading Hispanics that our policies will help them achieve the American dream. I think most Republicans would agree that America must secure its border and that deporting eleven million undocumented immigrants is unfeasible. Controlling the border and wooing Hispanics need not be mutually exclusive—and yet, the rhetoric of many Republicans has made it that way. Consider the comments of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on June 16, 2015: “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems to us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” It’s almost as if these Republicans, in an effort to win the votes of disaffected populist Republicans, are trying to lose the Hispanic vote at the same clip we’re losing the black vote. And make no mistake, there are real consequences for this kind of rhetoric—usually at the ballot box. As former Republican majority leader Dick Armey quipped to ABC News back in 2012, “You can’t call her ugly all year round and expect her to go to the prom with you.”
Earlier I noted that the Electoral College map essentially means that the only way a Republican can win is to win both Florida and Ohio. Well, in 2012, Mitt Romney garnered 39 percent of Florida Hispanics. According to prominent pollster Whit Ayres (who worked for Senator Marco Rubio in 2016), if Romney had simply done as well with Florida Hispanics as George W. Bush did in 2004 (when he got 56 percent of the Hispanic vote), Romney would have won the state by five points (instead of losing it by one).105 But even if you don’t believe Republicans can win the Hispanic vote (despite the fact that Texas senator John Cornyn did precisely that in 2014), simply losing it by a slimmer margin could be the difference between winning and losing a presidential election. The question for conservatives is whether or not to view Hispanic immigration as an invasion—or an opportunity. Whether to joyfully pursue their votes and contribution to America, or to stand athwart demographic changes, yelling “Stop!”
3. Change the Culture
Instead of merely adapting to the environment (like a thermometer106) why not seek to change the culture (like a thermostat)? For example, if Republicans have a hard time winning single women, one obvious option is to find a way to appeal to unmarried women. And I certainly think there are ways to do that. But another option is to encourage policies that incentivize marriage and childrearing. Depending on the policy proposal, this would be an appropriate and positive thing to do.
Though policies can incentivize certain lifestyle choices, when I say we must “change the culture,” I’m mostly referring to infiltrating or influencing academia, education, and entertainment—the institutions that, outside of the family, tend to have the biggest influence on us. These are all tough nuts to crack. In the next chapter, I will offer some advice for aspiring conservatives who want to support the world of the arts. The primary answer, I think, is to fund it. Conservative donors with the ability to give millions of dollars to political campaigns would be wiser to invest some of that money into helping win the future. And since politics is downstream from culture, this is a wise investment. As Rod Dreher wrote at the American Conservative, “None of the great artistic works of Western civilization were done without patronage. Dante depended on the charity of wealthy supporters to write the Divine Comedy.”
4. Get Our House in Order
We must find ways to reward good behavior and punish bad actors. If someone is engaged in scamming conservative donors (as described in Chapter Eight), or otherwise harming the cause (for example, incendiary rhetoric spewed by a conservative pundit for personal aggrandizement, ratings, or buzz), there ought to be someone with the gravitas, courage, and moral authority to call them out. For too long, smart conservatives have abdicated this responsibility. Like adults who would prefer to be liked and considered “cool” by their kids, they have held their tongues. I was happy to see that Erick Erickson, a prominent conservative blogger and talk radio host took the bold step of disinviting Donald Trump to the RedState Gathering after Trump said some inappropriate things about Fox News host Megyn Kelly, who had moderated a Republican primary debate featuring Mr. Trump in August of 2015. While more famous conservative talkers were boosting Trump, Mr. Erickson rose to the occasion and demonstrated leadership. In this respect, he was following in the grand tradition of William F. Buckley. Because Erickson is young and on the rise, there is reason to hope that he, and others like him, will provide for future generations of conservatives what has been sorely lacking in recent years—some adult supervision. Any institution worth its salt finds a way to police its own neighborhood. It needn’t be a formal thing. Sometimes shaming works. Regardless, conservatism can’t function—certainly can’t thrive—if there are no adults willing to call out the punks hanging out on the street corner and causing problems.
5. Cast a Positive and Inclusive Vision
In an ideal world, we could take some cues from the good aspects of populism, which is to say we can be for the little guy while also embracing the optimistic brand of conservatism embraced by Ronald Reagan. It may just happen. Upon its inception in 2015, Jeb Bush’s newly created Right to Rise PAC put out a statement (posted on the “What We Believe” section of the group’s website) that blended elements of populism with a more optimistic brand of conservatism. “We believe the income gap is real, but that only conservative principles can solve it by removing the barriers to upward mobility,” the statement said. “We will celebrate success and risk taking, protect liberty, cherish free enterprise, strengthen our national defense, embrace the energy revolution, fix our broken and obsolete immigration system, and give all children a better future by transforming our education system through choice, high standards, and accountability.”
Bush, whose wife is a native of Mexico, clearly believes his brand of conservatism can compete among diverse groups of Americans. Because of his last name, Bush may be an imperfect messenger to represent twenty-first-century conservatism, but conservatives would benefit from studying this messaging. (The Right to Rise website is available in English and “Español.”)
6. Reconciling Conservative Philosophy with Science
Amazingly, a lot of Americans still don’t understand that one can believe in the Divinity of Christ—in creation, miracles, the Virgin Birth, and the Resurrection—and also believe that Earth is billions of years old. In contrast, Catholics have long been open to the notion that there is no contradiction between evolution and faith, with Pope John Paul II going out of his way to reaffirm this in 1996. In October of 2014, Pope Francis drew headlines for saying “the evolution in nature is not opposed to the notion of Creation, because evolution presupposes the creation of beings that evolve.” (There was so much bad reporting on this that it necessitated a Newsweek article titled “Pope Francis’s Remarks on Evolution Are Not That Controversial Among Roman Catholics.”)
Pope Francis’s ability to discuss the issue provided a stark contrast with Republican politicians’ inability to do so. (Recalling Francis’s comments, the New Yorker’s Michael Specter quipped, “It would be nice if we could elect political leaders capable of that kind of thought. But, in this country, that might take a miracle.”) According to a Pew Research Center poll released in January of 2014, Republicans are less likely to say that “humans have evolved over time” today than they were as recently as 2009, despite the fact that 60 percent of all American adults embrace evolution.
Yet there is a move afoot among evangelicals to reconcile the gap between their faith and science.107 During a panel discussion in 2012, the aforementioned Pastor Tim Keller said, “The Bible does not teach that the Earth is young.”108 Keller then went on to explain that “the genealogies are not complete.” (By this he means that Bible verses stating “so and so begat so and so” imply ancestry, not specifically fatherhood.) Ultimately, Keller concluded that a belief in (or against) an old Earth shouldn’t be a deal breaker for salvation: “[It’s] not in the Apostle’s Creed, and therefore there’s wiggle room.”
Although this debate over evolution and Earth’s age has invaded our politics for almost a century, prior to the era of William Jennings Bryan and the Scopes Monkey Trial, many Protestant Christian theologians thought evolution was acceptable as part of God’s plan.
In his 1908 classic Orthodoxy, the future Roman Catholic convert G. K. Chesterton observed, “If evolution simply means that a positive thing called an ape turned very slowly into a positive thing called a man, then it is stingless for the most orthodox; for a personal God might just as well do things slowly as quickly, especially if, like the Christian God, he were outside time.”
Indeed, as Baylor professor Barry Hankins told me, “Some of the best conservative, evangelical theologians of the late nineteenth century were willing to consider ways in which evolution—not Darwinism or Darwin’s theory of how evolution took place—but evolution, itself, could be part of God’s plan. But by the 1920s, the categories had hardened.”109
Science sometimes seems to contradict faith, but sometimes it can also turn an atheist toward God. In a 2014 Wall Street Journal op-ed, Eric Metaxas wrote, “Fred Hoyle, the astronomer who coined the term ‘big bang,’ said that his atheism was ‘greatly shaken’ by scientific developments quantifying the incredibly long odds of our universe randomly supporting life.” What is more, Metaxas continued, “theoretical physicist Paul Davies has said that ‘the appearance of [intelligent] design is overwhelming’ and Oxford professor Dr. John Lennox has said that ‘the more we get to know about our universe, the more the hypothesis that there is a Creator…gains in credibility as the best explanation of why we are here.’”110
Christians should probably be a little more open to the notion that evolution was part of God’s plan—and so should atheists and intellectuals.
A similar fear of science undermining faith holds conservatives back in the debate over climate change. But the solution is not to surrender to liberals, whose environmentalist alarmism is quickly becoming the secular version of an apocalyptic, snake-handling, end-of-times prophecy. Conservatives may be saddled with the anti-science label, but liberals, too, put their ideology before science.
Conservatives should first understand that much of the Left is more interested in smearing conservatives as “climate science deniers” than they are in convincing people to accept the science. To win the climate change argument is to gain the added political cudgel that conservatives are stupid and, beyond that, more interested in politics/ideology than in actually solving not only climate change, but also immigration reform and other issues. In this regard, liberals deserve a good bit of blame for why our political process is broken.
The liberal notion that conservatives are all climate science deniers is misleading. Sure, some deny scientific consensus outright. But with this exceptionally broad brush, liberals tar those who constructively question the most alarmist interpretation of the data and criticize heavy-handed government solutions to the problem. To the extent that ignorance is defined as credulously adhering to a reductionist doctrine, and intelligence is associated with skepticism and a nuanced understanding of things, it is perhaps ironic that conservatives are labeled stupid. It is today’s liberals—not conservatives—who all too often forget that science is not a creed but a process.
The subject of climate change—and conservative views about it—is much more diverse than most people appreciate. First, we must acknowledge that some examples of global warming alarmism and doomsday hysteria have simply proven not just marginally, but wildly, overwrought. Conservatives should hardly be penalized for “denying” such “facts.” It’s also true that liberals have made a quasi-religion out of environmentalism. This hearkens back to Rousseau and his belief that man, in his natural state, was pure. His Eden was destroyed by property, religion, and (you guessed it) capitalism. So a natural liberal bias exists toward believing that civilization causes problems; whereas, I would argue, the true conservative believes that civilization makes us better (that’s why we call things “civil” after all). And while both sides have their inherent biases, it’s hard to argue that environmentalists have been exactly consistent, or even honest, in their presentation of what we have now taken to calling “climate change.” There were, of course, warnings throughout the twentieth century about “global cooling” and a “little ice age.” “If present trends continue,” declared ecologist Kenneth Watt on the original Earth Day in 1970, “the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000.” A more recent story, known as “Climategate,” raised questions about the agenda of scientists studying climate change. After a hacker released a trove of e-mails, Forbes.com’s James Taylor observed that three themes had emerged: “(1) prominent scientists central to the global warming debate are taking measures to conceal rather than disseminate underlying data and discussions; (2) these scientists view global warming as a political ‘cause’ rather than a balanced scientific inquiry; and (3) many of these scientists frankly admit to each other that much of the science is weak and dependent on deliberate manipulation of facts and data.”
But not all conservatives are skeptics. In fact, a handful of prominent conservatives like former representative Bob Inglis (R-SC), who now heads the Energy and Enterprise Initiative at George Mason University, and conservative economist Art Laffer—inventor of the Laffer curve, which spawned “Reaganomics”—support policies to slash carbon emissions. Both advocate swapping the income tax for a carbon tax. Inglis is a devout Christian who says his faith calls us to be good stewards of the earth, and, as he told me, we have a “moral obligation to restore Eden wherever possible.” Laffer is a conservative economist who remains agnostic on the science of climate change, but who argues taxing carbon makes more sense than taxing income.
Even if one believes in anthropogenic global warming (the fifth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC] concluded that “it is extremely likely [95 percent confidence]” that humans are responsible for more than half of the observable global warming), it is not unreasonable to insist on studying the issue further before decreeing sweeping public policy decisions. There are still good questions worth asking: To what degree can we change things? Should we focus more on reducing carbon emissions or adapting to inevitable climate changes? What’s the cost-benefit analysis for either approach? If we could lower the temperature by a fraction of one degree over the next century, but the cost would be millions of jobs over the next decade, would it be worth it? There’s also the question of unilateral disarmament: unless China and India agree to a legally binding, long-term climate agreement, our efforts to control climate change would amount to little more than a drop in the bucket.
Conservatives should be capable of translating science into evidence-based policy—in other words, accepting the science, noting its limitations, and putting forth market-oriented policies to address potential problems according on what is known.
It’s easy to suggest Republicans seek safe harbor by adopting the positions of their adversaries. But that’s simple moral cowardice. Properly executed strategies do not capitulate to the Left. They expose the Left’s hypocrisy while restoring the reputation of conservatives as clear-eyed problem solvers.
It’s become increasingly clear that politics clouds the minds of conservatives and liberals alike. A study released in the March 2015 issue of The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science suggests that both liberals and conservatives are susceptible to having their political views bias their belief in science. Liberals were less likely to believe the science on hydraulic fracturing, while conservatives were less likely to believe the science on evolution and global warming. If conservatives put scientific blinders on, then environmentalists also seem allergic to the science of natural gas, the energy source most responsible for our increased energy independence and our reduced reliance on coal. Liberals skew paranoid about nuclear energy (which some experts like Carol Browner, who served as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under President Bill Clinton and director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy in the Obama administration, believe could actually reduce carbon emissions) and have been known to be susceptible to the antivaccination hysteria, and “Trutherism” (the notion that 9/11 was an “inside job,” and alarmism over genetically modified foods). Writing at Forbes, Jon Entine, founder and director of the Genetic Literacy Project and senior fellow at the Center for Health & Risk Communication and STATS at George Mason University, took to task Chris Mooney, author of the one-sided The Republican War on Science, for his past opposition to hydraulic fracking. “Don’t expect Mooney to come clean,” Entine wrote, but there are more Democrats who reject the science of fracking than there are Republicans who reject evolution. Conservatives could potentially trump liberals with a science-based, market-based approach to climate: recognize that fossil fuels can’t be eliminated anytime soon and get government out of the way of the Keystone XL Pipeline, fracking, and nuclear projects, while implementing revenue-neutral carbon taxes that allow market incentives to drive greener consumer behavior.
7. Let Go of Cultural Identity Preferences That Have Nothing to Do with Conservatism
In Chapter Four, we talked about how South Carolina Republicans were wise to throw the Confederate battle flag under the bus, so to speak. Some Palmetto State conservatives might feel a cultural connection to the flag, but it is deeply offensive to many African Americans and is historically connected to the Democratic Party. It’s sometimes hard enough to justify carrying your own baggage; why carry someone else’s?
Having already made this point about shedding oversimplified images of the South, let’s examine some of the suburban stereotypes. As previously noted, conservatism has become associated in the popular imagination with McMansions and gas-guzzling SUVs. Meanwhile, liberalism evokes images of public transportation or bicycle commutes from high-rise lofts to open-floor workspaces.
It is assumed that conservatives, if they must live near a city, will seek to buy the biggest house they can possibly afford with the longest commute they can possibly endure and purchase the biggest, least fuel-efficient car to take them back and forth. And you know what? Based on our choices, it’s pretty clear that we conservatives believe this, too. Never mind the fact that conservative icons such as William F. Buckley rode a motor scooter and that Russell Kirk (as previously mentioned) refused to drive a car, which Kirk referred to derisively as a “mechanical Jacobin” that would increase rootlessness in America. While I have no problem with the country or the suburbs, for a long time now I’ve been a proponent of something called New Urbanism. The name is unfortunate, inasmuch as it makes people think I’m suggesting we all live in urban areas; I’m not. Essentially, the concept promotes walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods with narrow streets and retail shops on the sidewalk level and apartments above. And it’s not just about high-density, high-rise buildings. The New Urbanism concept promotes living within a safe walking distance of our churches, schools, shops, restaurants, and more.
A couple of years ago, I interviewed two modern New Urbanists on my podcast and wrote about it at The Week. Sid Burgess calls himself a “Coolidge Republican,” and Kerry S. Decker, who considers himself a Tea Partier, briefly worked as a city planner. Their stories illustrate why modern conservatives should embrace ideas like New Urbanism. But the conversion won’t be easy. “Whenever I start mentioning any kind of New Urbanism items—for conservatives and Republicans who I talk to who don’t know me personally—I’m instantly branded a Communist,” Decker confessed.
Burgess became a champion of this movement after hearing James Howard Kunstler’s 2004 TED Talk.111 During his presentation, Kunstler showed slides of urban sprawl and then declared, “These are places that are not worth caring about [and] when we have enough of them, we’re going to have a nation that’s not worth defending.” Kunstler then asked his audience to think about the American soldiers who, at that very moment, were dying in Iraq, and said, “Ask yourself, what is their last thought of home? I hope it’s not the curb cut between the Chuck E. Cheese and the Target store.” Just back from Iraq himself, this hit home with the conservative Burgess.
“To make us love our country,” Edmund Burke said, “our country must be lovely.” Burke was also talking about the spiritual attributes of a people—something Kunstler doesn’t deal with. But it’s not out-of-bounds to think that aesthetics—and the search for the sublime—are somehow interrelated to the intangible and spiritual aspects of a people. Or another way of looking at it: the place we physically inhabit is an outward and visible manifestation of the inward.
Ironically, government regulation (the tax code, zoning, a federally financed highway system, a failing public school system, and so on) helps explain America’s post–World War II push for sprawl. What is more interesting, though, is that conservatives so readily embraced this modern fad as being tantamount to the American Dream.
Americans may be uniquely fond of cars, but most humans long for family and community and beauty. According to a Swedish study,112 people who endure more than a forty-five-minute commute are 40 percent more likely to get divorced. A study of German commuters conducted by University of Zurich economists Bruno Frey and Alois Stutzer found that people had to earn 40 percent more money to be as satisfied as someone who can simply walk to work.113 In truth, it’s probably impossible to quantify the spiritual and psychological cost associated with endlessly frustrating commutes, disconnection from a community, and ugly buildings. And there is certainly an economic cost of taxpayers maintaining low-density areas and infrastructure that yields relatively little revenue.
If you worry that wanting to live in a walkable community makes you some sort of hippie Leftist, have no fear. In a report titled “Conservatives and the New Urbanism,” Heritage Foundation cofounder Paul Weyrich joined the American Conservative’s William S. Lind and New Urbanist Andres Duany in making a pretty compelling case for why more conservatives ought to embrace these communities:
On the face of it, it is hard to see why conservatives should oppose offering traditionally designed cities, towns, and neighborhoods as alternatives to post-war “sprawl” suburbs. As conservatives, we are supposed to prefer traditional designs to modern innovations in most things (and we do). We hope to demonstrate traditional designs for the places we live, work, and shop to encourage traditional culture and morals. This should not surprise us. Edmund Burke told us more than two hundred years ago that traditional societies are organic wholes. If you (literally) disintegrate a society’s physical setting, as sprawl has done, you tend to disintegrate its culture as well.
To be sure, any suggestion that Americans should encourage these local polices will be greeted by some as proof that there’s a vast conspiracy dedicated to undermining our freedoms. I suspect this goes back to Eden and our long national preference for all things rural. “Liberals in power produce more mass transit because they hope more mass transit will produce more liberals,” wrote conservative columnist Terence Jeffrey in a piece titled “The Conspiracy Against the Car.”
Nobody I know is suggesting big government—or the UN—ought to mandate or impose these sorts of development policies. The idea is that local governments should think of these things—and that conservatives who actually hold traditionally conservative values may want to live in such communities. Conservatives—who often talk about states’ rights and local control—tend to stick to their antigovernment views even at the local level. To some degree, this is admirable and appropriate. But sometimes, it’s a bad thing. Conservatives ought to be involved in making local government work well, proving that the heavy hand of the federal government isn’t needed for smart planning and growth. We’ve all heard that famous line about a shining city on a hill. Did you ever notice there is no shining cul-de-sac on a hill?
The GOP was able to thrive in the latter part of the twentieth century, partly because they dominated this constituency of the South, rural America, and suburbia. But since turning out voters at the polls who already agree with you is easier than either finding new voters or persuading voters who disagree with you to change their minds, the base drives policy.
The real culture war taking place is one of ideas, pitting conservatism against liberalism. Unfortunately, we have simplistically conflated ruralism with conservatism and urbanism with liberalism. To use a term Rush Limbaugh likes, this is sloppy signaling—it’s “symbolism over substance.” (Read about Brooklyn’s large and thriving Orthodox Jewish community, if you find urban conservatism unimaginable.) And there could be negative long-term consequences. The problem is that a party that relies solely on non-college-educated rural and suburban white men and married white women might eventually run out of them.
But it’s not just ostentatious suburban McMansions that feel increasingly repellent. A recent business story regarding the fate of McDonald’s might serve as a microcosm for the struggles of a conservative movement that is culturally the political equivalent of the fast-food chain. The company is undergoing a slump, and while McDonald’s has been culturally associated with conservatives, they have apparently seen the writing on the wall. In 2015, a new CEO came in to help turn things around and promptly declared the franchise a “progressive burger company.” Only time will tell if this appeasement will pacify the company’s critics, but it just might work—at least, it did for another once hated company. Having fended off attacks from the Left in the 2000s, Arkansas-based Walmart, has, in recent years, worked to ingratiate themselves with their erstwhile liberal oppressors. In 2015, Walmart’s CEO spoke out against an Arkansas religious freedom bill and, in the wake of the horrific church shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, they pulled merchandise featuring the Confederate flag from all stores.
It’s unclear whether it’s wise to try to make friends of your enemies by making enemies of your friends. Conservatives argue McDonald’s slumping sales are due to switching from beef flavoring to pure vegetable oil in their French fries—a concession they made to health-conscious progressives. Others argue they were just doing what they had to do to keep up with the times. As the Wall Street Journal pointed out, “Customers in their twenties and thirties—long a mainstay of McDonald’s business—are defecting to competitors.” While McDonald’s was resting on its golden arches, pricier (but cooler, trendier, healthier, tastier, and more flexible) competitors like Chipotle and Five Guys exploited the demographic and cultural changes.
Sound familiar? Like the GOP, the once savvy McDonald’s failed to adapt to changing times (they also both revere a guy named Ronald, but that’s a different story). But change is hard, and—for the GOP, at least—solutions won’t be as simple as deciding to serve breakfast all day.
Growing the Tent without Burning It Down
If Republicans can add these seven ingredients called for in my recipe, they’ll be well on their way to success. Of course, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. While Republicans simply must appeal to segments of the population that are growing, attempts to modernize the GOP into a brand that is capable of winning the twenty-first century also risk alienating loyal supporters. Sometimes this is unavoidable. But while the GOP must win more urban and cosmopolitan votes, Republicans would be foolish to mock or undermine their current base. Writing off the South or evangelicals, for example, would be unwise. By the same token, writing off Hispanics, unmarried women, and college-educated Americans is also stupid. (Quick! Ask yourself, who did Reagan write off?) If conservatism is really the best philosophy, then it can win the free market of ideas among a diverse audience. If we are to turn off voters, then let it be because they disagree with our ideas—not because they drive a different kind of car, or their skin is a tone lighter or darker than ours, or they live in a more or less urban area, or we have allowed them to wrongly believe the worst stereotypes about us.
While the larger umbrella of conservatism must be coherent and consistent, conservative leaders, especially at the local and state level, should stress different aspects of the conservative perspective to different regional audiences. In a 2013 New York Times column, David Brooks made the case that the GOP should “build a new division that is different the way the Westin is different than the Sheraton.…Would a coastal and Midwestern GOP sit easily with the Southern and Western one? No, but majority parties are usually coalitions of the incompatible. This is really the only chance Republicans have. The question is, who’s going to build a second GOP?”
It’s unclear what the exact Boss Hogg–to–Bill Buckley ratio should be in a big tent party. But if the Democratic Party can stress different values in different regions of the country, why can’t the GOP?