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What is a "Social Conservative"?

Dav

Dav

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"Social conservative" is a term a lot of people love to hate nowadays. The argument is, social conservatism is a redneck ideology where the government intervenes in everyone's life and makes sure everyone is being good. Even Wikipedia, a source I rely on so much, defines Social Conservatism as "a political or moral ideology that believes the government has a role in encouraging or enforcing traditional values or behaviors based on the belief that these are what keep people civilized and decent."
[ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_conservatism]Social conservatism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]


But this ignores the fact that social conservatives are for the right to bear arms, and social liberals are not. That's the government staying away from people's own decisions.

From what I can tell, a social conservative believes in the following:

-Abortion should be illegal
-Gay marriage should be illegal
-Drugs and prostitution should be illegal
-Owning a gun should be legal
-"Political Correctness" should not be enforced
-The law should make no distinction between races ("hate crime" legislation should not be passed)
-Indecent things should be censored from public view

I may be wrong about some of these being "social conservative" views, but we at least get a sense that there are things, based on social conservatism, that the government should not get involved in, and there are things that they should get involved in. They are related not by their want of government control, but by... well, I'm not quite sure.

What ties it all together? What is a "social conservative" anyways?
 
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My, rather rough, view and definition of social conservatism from THIS thread.

Social Conservatism

Social Conservatism is easily one of the most debated of the four, and one of the four most reliant on adherence to another pillar for it not to become a large problem. The foundation of his country was built on the belief of liberty, freedom, and self determination. It is a land of opportunity, and has a tradition and culture that accepts all that come to it as long as they embrace America itself. Its foundation is found within the Constitution which his not just a “piece of paper” or a “living document” but is the foundation upon which this country was built. Social conservatism is based in part off of these things.

The other part of it is built off the history of this country, which frankly is generally Christian in values. Whether it is a “Christian nation” or not is easily debatable, and that I will not touch. However, it is inconceivable to make the argument that throughout its inception and history the United States of America, its government, its culture, and its tradition was not shaped, melded, and became intertwined with the general moral compass of Christian people. In general, Social Conservatism believes in the promotion of these type of principles to have a more moral and successful citizenry.

From these things you can branch off into a number of topics. Some issues of the immigration debate come into play here. Immigration has a long and storied tradition within our country. However, in the past, immigrants came to America not in hopes of simply “benefiting” from it but to become a true part of it. They did not come here simply to grab jobs, but they came here to find a new life and a new home. They came here to be Americans first and nationality second generally (while yes, in pockets of the country during the early days the various racial prejudices of their homelands remained, those groups still generally held strong ties to the thought of being “American”). It was about assimilation, not integration. For many, these views and ideals are not as often found within the current majority (or at least vocal minority) of legal and specifically illegal immigrants into the country.

Many other traditional things that most people think of when you hear “social conservatism” is there. The belief that abortion is the ending of a life, that traditional marriage and traditional lifestyles should be the ones promoted, that rampant drug and alcohol usage is a bad thing,. That citizens should not need to answer “why” they need a weapon because the only needed answer is its their right. That while the minority should never be forced into the majority’s will in regards to religion, that the minority should not be able to stifle the expression of said religion by the majority either. The list goes on and is fairly stereotypical.

Here is where Social Conservatism gets tricky. In recent years, especially under GWB, it has completely forgone the next pillar I’m about to explain, thus making it an extremely dangerous and generally unconservative thing.

The key with most social conservative policies is it is not the government’s job to enforce them (specifically when it comes to more of the tradition/morality things) but to enforce against the legislated removal of destruction of them and at most to encourage them.
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The issue is that many Social Conservatives as of late have been Governmentally Liberal or more left leaning, IE they are far more open to government actively enforcing and imposing its will upon the people "for their own good", essentially being in favor of a "nanny state" as long as said nanny state is doing what they wish.

Social Conservatism, barring adherance to the other pillars of the ideology, is often what is thought of by many...especially those on the left...when they hear the term now.

Additionally, I think you have a good example of views generally held by social conservatism. It is how they wish those things to occur that generally seperates someone that is ONLY socially conservative and someone that is simply a balanced conservative.

For example, I am against Gay Marriage. While I understand we are not a nation legally bound to any religion I believe through the tradition and history of this country the word "marriage", which has distinct historical and traditional religious connotations, and as such I have issues with government essentially trampling upon these traditions through federal mandates. In a perfect world I am in favor of stripping the term "marriage" from government completely and allowing it to be solely in the hands of religion. Barring that, I am against the enforcement of "gay marriage" at a National Level, though would potentially be open to a national civil union recognization. At the same time, I am also against the banning of civil unions or gay marriage through a constitutional amendment as I believe its against the traditions of this country to use the consittution to ensure people do NOT have rights and because I think ultimately, if it remains, this should be a state issue.

So while I am in general against "gay marriage" and consider myself moderately socially conservative I come at the way in which said opposition to it should come differently than purely social conservatives.
 
Zyphilin, I read your article before making my thread and it was very insightful, however I think you have some things wrong. There are certain issues where Social Conservatives have always wanted government control. Abortion is the most common example. There is also the issues of keeping pornography and other explicit things from being where kids might see them, and whether or not drugs and prostitution were first made illegal by social conservatives, keeping them so is, I believe, part of their ideology now.
 
Dav said:
Zyphilin, I read your article before making my thread and it was very insighteful, however I think you have some things wrong. There are certain issues where Social Conservatives have always wanted government control. Abortion is the most common example.
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Abortion is a bad example actually. Abortion is only a good example IF you accept the premise that the traditional liberal view of it is the correct view, IE fetus does not equal human.

However, traditionally, the conservative view point is that the fetus IS a human and therefore has rights. One of the few jobs of the government that is distinctly deliniated to it through the constitution is protection of its citizens. From this you have the general conservative belief that, barring the issue of the womans life being at risk (which is thus perhaps viewed as self defense), the womans right to not want to be pregnant does not supercede the other "persons" right to be alive. As such, this is not an issue of government regulating morality or ones life but is acting as law enforcement protecting a citizens right to life.

There is also the issues of keeping pornography and other explicit things from being where kids might see them, and whether or not drugs and prostitution were first made illegal by social conservatives, keeping them so is, I believe, part of their ideology now.
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Now, this is where you get to the difficult part and at the same time again depends on the way in which they are enforced.

Take the issue of pornography. I hear very, very few well rounded conservatives stating that there must be an out and out banishment of all pornography. That would be the government telling the free market what it can and can not produce. The Social Conservative stance would be that in general morality and a sense of deceny is important and thus the open flaunting of pornography is a bad thing.

Your extreme free marketers, those that are heavy on the economic and governmental side of conservatism but little if anything on the social, are generally the ones you'd find saying "Who cares, leave it up entirely to the free market."

Your extreme social conservatives are likely the ones possibly saying "ban it all".

In general, the more balanced stance is that public decency laws are present to maintain a minimum amount of civility and decorum within public so that things that generally offend and shock the general majority of people are not forcefully presented anywhere they go. That while yes, nothing says you HAVE to take your child out into public EVER, it is rather unreasonable to expect such. And as such, it is reasonable of the government to mandate a certain level of decency, for example public displays of nudity, to allow for such reasonable levels of public activity to occur without chancing the violation of other peoples rights.

For example, it could be thought of that taking a child to the doctor is a reasonable normal activity that I should feel "safe" doing. As such, your right to put up a billboard depicting graphic sex or run up to my car shaking your junk around at the windows is trumped by the rights of the child or even the person going about normal routine business.

I agree, things do get very tricky when it comes down to deceny laws and censorship, but at its heart it generally comes down to a protection of rights issue more so than the government "forcing" morality through new laws. Its why a PRIVATE strip club is free to have naked women shaking their ass all they want, but don't put it out on the sidewalk where people have a reasonable expectation to not have their rights infringed upon by things the general population veiws as obscene and thus offensive.

Drugs takes us into a WHOOOOOLE nother issue that probably needs a thread in and of itself.
 
Dav said:
"Social conservative" is a term a lot of people love to hate nowadays. The argument is, social conservatism is a redneck ideology where the government intervenes in everyone's life and makes sure everyone is being good. Even Wikipedia, a source I rely on so much, defines Social Conservatism as "a political or moral ideology that believes the government has a role in encouraging or enforcing traditional values or behaviors based on the belief that these are what keep people civilized and decent."
Social conservatism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


But this ignores the fact that social conservatives are for the right to bear arms, and social liberals are not. That's the government staying away from people's own decisions.

From what I can tell, a social conservative believes in the following:

-Abortion should be illegal
-Gay marriage should be illegal
-Drugs and prostitution should be illegal
-Owning a gun should be legal
-"Political Correctness" should not be enforced
-The law should make no distinction between races ("hate crime" legislation should not be passed)
-Indecent things should be censored from public view

I may be wrong about some of these being "social conservative" views, but we at least get a sense that there are things, based on social conservatism, that the government should not get involved in, and there are things that they should get involved in. They are related not by their want of government control, but by... well, I'm not quite sure.

What ties it all together? What is a "social conservative" anyways?
Click to expand...

As a social conservative I'd say that's fairly accuret.

US Conservatism per-se is based on the Decleration of Independance, so what ties it all in is our common understanding of the Natural Law premis found in the DoA. It is upon this premis that we evaluate verious subjects from abortion to gun ownership, compair such legislation to our values and decide how we'll regard that rule.
 
Zyphlin said:
...
In general, the more balanced stance is that public decency laws are present to maintain a minimum amount of civility and decorum within public so that things that generally offend and shock the general majority of people are not forcefully presented anywhere they go...
Click to expand...

Two extremely well-presented explanations of the moderate social conservative position, Zyphelin. Bravo sir. :applaud
 
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