Right Cross

Rick Henderson from the October 1994 issue

(Page 3 of 3)

In contrast with the communitarian conservative view that private, consensual conduct is subject to public scrutiny, libertarians promote a "civil society" outside the public sphere, in which individuals voluntarily form communities and make rules which are subject to the consent of the community's members. And unlike the communitarian vision, in which communities are monolithic organisms whose members live zombie-like and in lockstep, a libertarian vision recognizes that individuals in fact join many communities--a person can simultaneously be a Presbyterian, a softball player, a parent, a weekend auto mechanic, and a mystery reader--and that divergent communities may at times exist peacefully side by side. For the most part, the state shouldn't interfere with those communities.

The bourgeois virtues Frum praises--diligence, prudence, thrift, willingness to take risks--are indeed essential for the development of civil society. If conservatives wish to promote those values, they must decide which model of governance they prefer: Burke's demand for order, or the Founders' insistence upon individual rights.

Despite this confusion, Frum recognizes that the burdens of the welfare state will someday result in a fiscal crisis and a further disintegration of civil society. His advice to conservative intellectuals like Bill Kristol: Discard "all consideration of what the public wants to hear, and tell...the public what it needs to know when the crisis does arrive." Conservative intellectuals, he concludes, "should learn to care a little less about the electoral prospects of the Republican Party...and do what intellectuals of all descriptions are obliged to do: Practice honesty, and pay the price."

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