Reaction from the Values Voters Debate (part II)

For part one of Reaction from the Values Voters Debate see here

It is amazing how many people seem to think that the government exists to turn
their prejudices into laws. -Thomas Sowell

A do gooder is a do gooder is a do gooder. Janet Folger suffers from the same syndrome that liberals who want to cure poverty, eliminate racism, and tackle global warming suffer from. That is the belief that government can solve all of the ills of society. It cannot, you cannot legislate morality the same way you cannot legislate eliminating poverty.

Prohibition was an attempt to legislate morality (how far from being a free society have we come? At one time a Constitutional amendment was deemed required to tell our citizens that a particular behavior was not going to be tolerated.) What it ended up doing was enriching organized crime. It certainly didn't stop people from consuming alchohol. What do we have to show for the billions spent on the war on drugs? The EXACT SAME THING. The illicit drug trade is a multibillion dollar underground industry. Legislating laws against it haven't stopped drug use. In addition, you could make the argument that a negative consequence of our strategy on the war on drugs is creation of a condition similar to our military industrial complex. There is an incentive not to change our strategy (with no regard for efficacy) because to do so would affect the special interests that benefit from our current strategy in our war on drugs (primarily government itself).

So just how powerful is the "Values Voters" coalition? The so called top tier of the GOP deemed them not powerful enough to not ignore them. Stated threats this week to back a third party didn't even meet the threshold for the flashing siren on Drudgereport. But keep in mind that the GOP has been a sinking ship for a number of years, for Christian conservatives to leave the party is a little like being odd man out on getting to the lifeboats.

The GOP has been hemorrhaging membership for years because of runaway spending, massive increases in entitlements, loss of privacy for its citizens, a nearly incoherent foreign policy, and all around incompetence and cronyism. Bush can hang his legacy hat on the tax cuts, his immediate reaction to 9/11, and his Supreme Court nominees (he almost missed out on this one, remember Harriet Miers?). Anything else? With a majority in Congress for so many years there should have been.

If social conservatism cannot be imposed by government fiat what is the alternative?

(to be continued)