There’s a lot of hand-wringing in Washington over the dramas of the Trumpn administration, not to mention the tug-of-war over congressional seats andn jobs in the bureaucracy. But when this period has passed and tomorrow’sn conservatives look back on it, it may seem obvious to them that these weren distractions from one important fact built into modern Americann conservatism from the beginning.
n This fact is the philosophical difference between libertarianism and socialn conservatism, a difference overcome only by the existence of a commonn enemy. Before, that enemy was communism. Today, that enemy is identityn politics. In the ten months since I began working in D.C., I have beenn asked to relate the embarrassments of high-profile leftist protests at myn alma mater countless times, and each time my story has operated as an bonding ritual for an eager audience. Universities are the new Ironn Curtain, which makes the steady trickle of conservative millennials fromn elite colleges into jobs on the conservative side of D.C. prize defectors,n witnesses to the evil empire of progressivism.n
n But within this band of witnesses, in particular among those committed ton Christianity and social conservatism, the question of who’s driving then conservative-movement bus has not slipped from anyone’s mind. The youngn social conservatives I’ve gotten to know recently do not accept that socialn conservatism and libertarianism are natural allies, and they regret then outsized influence libertarianism has on the Republican party.n
n Consider what this group says about two specific issues: free speech andn abortion.n
n Campus free speech is purportedly important to young conservatives becausen of its relevance to young people generally. It’s the hot topic in educationn circles at the moment, especially on the self-identified “center-right,”n where media outlets from Campus Reform to The Daily Caller to Fox Newsn regularly discuss the issue. Meanwhile, a number of states have startedn legislating over it at the prompting of Betsy DeVos, as Orrin Hatch leadsn the charge to do the same at the federal level.n
n But on the ground, the conservative consensus breaks down. Socialn conservatives, I’ve found, are unimpressed with the free speech crusade.n Criticizing the Columbia University College Republicans’ “Free Speechn Month” speaker series—which brought to campus InfoWars’s Mike Cernovich andn English Defence League founder Tommy Robinson—in an undergraduaten conservative journal, a friend of mine wrote “G. K. Chesterton said thatn tolerance is the virtue of a man without convictions. And what is then virtue of a campus political club without convictions? Free speech.” Hisn essay, titled “Conservatives Have No Party,” explains this paradox—that an group can be outspoken but lack conviction. The leaders invitedn controversial speakers, but insisted they didn’t endorse the speakers theyn invited. They tried to position themselves as neutral facilitators of an marketplace of ideas, “as if the community should commend them for eithern lacking a concrete political agenda or being too cowardly to tell aboutn it.” Free speech does not require any commitment to real positions, and then club’s combative defense of it only underlined its historical reluctance ton take stands on social issues.n
n A friend from Yale explained the paradox another way, telling me that then libertarian spirit of the free speech movement did not strike him asn meaningfully distinct from “liberal identitarianism,” as “both reject then community in favor of ‘autonomous’ individual preferences.” In a universityn culture where rules are broken left and right in the name of personaln freedom, it takes no special bravery to flout rules and spark controversy.n
n The sense among socially conservative millennials that libertarianism vs.n leftism might be a false choice comes into sharper relief in theirn conversations about abortion—which they care about far more than freen speech. The self-proclaimed “pro-life generation” is cooling on classicaln liberal arguments for life that focus on the individual rights of childrenn in the womb in favor of arguments that an ethic of life promotes the commonn good of mother and child. I began to notice this change at meetings of myn school’s Right to Life club, the leaders of which were deeply interested inn cultural perceptions of life and family. They saw at the core of then abortion problem a false view of family life as “contractual” orn “transactional,” as consisting of rights and preferences mutuallyn recognized by all members, to be dropped if the relation provesn inconvenient or otherwise undesirable. Another former Ivy League pro-lifen leader told me “neither side’s liberal arguments are especiallyn convincing.” Even when employed against abortion, “pro-life ‘rights’n language doesn’t do what I want it to,” she told me. “A framework in whichn we view the fetus as a stranger allows the mother to treat the fetus in ann unacceptably shabby way.”
n As liberal rhetoric of rights and autonomy loses its luster among youngn people, Republican elites seem to be losing interest in the pro-life cause.n One friend who works in the movement expressed suspicion that it onlyn receives establishment support “because we get Republicans elected.” Shen also told me about a meeting she had attended between pro-life activistsn and a Republican congressman who “wanted lots of photos but also onlyn wanted to talk about other issues, for some reason.” By her account, then electoral power of the pro-life movement does not match the level ofn attention it attracts from conservative leaders.n
n To get a broader view of the organizational side of the pro-life movement,n I spoke to Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America. Shen was considerably less cynical than my friend, but still understood whyn young pro-lifers distrust the conservative establishment. She said thatn pro-lifers of my generation “are less inclined to feel that they have ton agree with an entire agenda,” and they “don’t want to be tied to someonen else’s constructs,” whether religious or political. While many millennialsn might share their conservative principles, she explained, Republicans maken the mistake of “trying to force this generation into the box of then conservative movement, including allegiance to every particular policyn point. It would be better to build common cause where there is agreement,n and stop asking for allegiance to things that they don’t really care aboutn yet.”n
n Insistence on issues of lesser importance to pro-lifers, however, is onlyn one cause of the “branding problem” that Hawkins sees. The bigger problem,n in her view, is political impotence: “Consider that even after then explosive videos showing Planned Parenthood officials laughing about then money they were making selling the body parts of aborted infants, we stilln can’t defund Planned Parenthood.” She summarized the situation in this way:n “The pro-life generation has no confidence in the conservativen establishment. The good news is that they don’t have confidence inn political types in general.”n
n The young pro-lifers I spoke with suspect there’s more to it than millennialn nonconformism and Washington gridlock. One said, “I think the politicaln failure primarily serves to expose an underlying philosophical failure,” ann incongruity between the values of social conservatives and those of then elites making political decisions.
n One could see how recent news stories might create that impression. Forn instance, now-former representative Tim Murphy’s scandal last October (inn which the Pennsylvania Republican representative resigned after it came outn that he had pressed his mistress to procure an abortion) was not especiallyn surprising to my pro-life peers—not because they suspected Murphy inn particular, but because, as one put it, “Republicans clearly don’t caren about life as much as their base.”n
n Murphy’s scandal and the recent failure to pass the Pain-Capable Unbornn Child Protection Act and defund Planned Parenthood motivate closer scrutinyn of outwardly pro-life Republicans. One veteran of my college’s Right ton Life group declared that any Republican who votes for a budget thatn allocates a single cent to Planned Parenthood (that is, any of the budgetn bills passed since 1970) is insufficiently pro-life to earn his vote. In mentioned this declaration to a Georgetown friend, who replied, “That’sn kind of absurd, but it’s also absurd that Republicans would shut down then government over Obamacare but not over abortion.”n
n All this adds up to a suspicion that Republican loss of ground on socialn issues is systematic and intentional, and that social libertarianism cannotn be separated from the economic libertarianism to which the party isn committed. My Yale friend, upon departing his job in Washington, recountedn his frustration that whenever social conservatives try to pick up the slackn and make the arguments that Republican politicians seem to give up on, “then libertarian establishment is silent or openly hostile. We’re tired of beingn treated like our issues are of secondary concern.” If an issue “can’t ben solved with a new tax rate,” he said, the establishment seems not to care.
n As young as they are, socially conservative millennials find concreten examples of this treatment in their own memory. They remember the abruptn abandonment of the defense of traditional marriage on the part ofn Republicans around 2014. “Who really believes,” one pro-life Columbian graduate asked, “that they all discovered at the same time that they haven this one LGBT relative that they love so very much in what just-so-happensn to be the same way that liberals define love? It’s ridiculous.” A Princetonn graduate concurred, recalling that within conservative circles, socialn conservatives argued for years that gay marriage was not a value-neutral,n taste-dependent, market-style option, but “the liberal establishment didn’tn deign to engage with these arguments.” She added that the experience ofn being “absolutely ignored” in the recent past by the same people nown calling for “viewpoint diversity” and free speech “isn’t one that inspiresn confidence.”n
n Of course, it could be said that quibbles with classical liberalism aren’tn important, so long as everyone finds identity politics repugnant. This mayn be so, but it’s worth noting that social conservatives are not bothered byn identity politics in the ways that other conservatives are. Liberals ofn left and right tend to dismiss identity politics for highlighting personaln identity over state, class, and economic power. I’ve found that this isn’tn so much of a problem for social conservatives. “What we need right now,” an D.C. resident told me in a conversation about identity politics, “is an Christian anthropology.”n
n In contrast with liberalism, the identity politics I encountered in collegen does not see the self as freely self-constructing or dependent only onn personal choice. All the talk about liberation exists only to removen assumed barriers to self-expression. To “identify” as white, black, gay,n straight, or any of the genders is to be bound to something which definesn one’s desires and situates one in a category of similarly self-identifyingn people. Identity politics tries hard to depict the human person not as an rootless and rational consumer browsing lifestyle options, but as a bundlen of meaningful attributes whose desires are neither arbitrary nor arrived atn by utilitarian calculation, but are rooted in his personal nature andn fulfilled in something like a community. Of course, it falls short inn almost every respect: It desires community, but can only offer broadn abstractions like the “LGBT community”; it desires a connection to history,n but only knows clichés about repression and colonialism; it desiresn solidarity, but can find no basis for it other than the exclusion ofn “privileged” groups, and so on.n
n These desires need to be grounded in a theory of the self better than then one identity politics uses now. A Christian anthropology, perhaps, whichn asserts that our need for community does not come from particularn attributes but from something deeper in our nature and common to all. Manyn have observed that identity politics resembles a religion—Elizabeth Coreyn and Mary Eberstadt have done so recently in the pages of First Things. Thatn resemblance can be interpreted optimistically: Adherents to identityn politics operate on the assumption that human beings need something like an religion. That assumption is not shared by libertarians. Youngn conservatives are beginning to suspect that dismissing or insultingn identity-obsessed college students for the purposes of shoring up then conservative coalition is the wrong move. The same friend who referred ton identity politics as “a kind of religious reaction” spent the next fewn minutes denouncing pundits on the “right-wing web” who, in his view, failn to see the desires behind activist rhetoric.
n The relationship between social conservatives and libertarians looks to ben as fraught as ever in the near future. The young insist that the first factn of fusion conservatism—the fault line that runs beneath it—has notn disappeared and will ultimately prove more important than anyn Trump-induced drama. The extent of their influence on the future can’t ben determined yet, but if they have their way, the establishment donors,n politicians, commentators, and experts who spend much of their energyn tallying tariffs and House seats could find themselves facing a toughn question: Who’s driving this bus, and who should?n
Philip Jeffery is a Public Interest Fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C.
Photo by Jeffrey Bruno/ALETEIA via Creative Commons. Image cropped.
