You Can’t Be Socially Liberal and Fiscally Conservative

In the real world, this position makes zero sense.

“Socially liberal and fiscally conservative.”

This is the position of many affluent people.

Research indicates that while most Americans lean toward populism, elites are more libertarian. Summing up his findings, the Stanford political economist Neil Malhotra has stated:

“There is this soft populism among voters overall, which tends to be more economically liberal and socially moderate. Whereas the elite donors are more libertarian in some ways — more economically conservative and more socially liberal than the base of their parties.”

Ordinary people tend to be relatively more socially conservative and economically liberal. There is coherence to this position. Which is roughly that people should curtail their freedom to adhere to strong norms but if they fail there should be a safety net available.

Highly educated and affluent people are more economically conservative and socially liberal. This makes less sense. The position is roughly that people should not adhere to strong social norms and should not curtail their freedoms and if and when they inevitably hurt themselves or others, then there should be no safety net available.

It’s a luxury belief.

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A socially permissive society will inevitably give rise to social ills that must be paid for.

Permissive norms give rise to:

• Addiction

• Homelessness

• Increased incarceration

• Societal dysfunction

• More out-of-wedlock births

• Fathers who abandon their families

• Mothers who require assistance

• Children placed into care

Many of these kids from dysfunctional environments succumb to addiction, or homelessness, or are incarcerated. Or they enter foster care.

The number of cases of children entering the foster care system due to parental drug use has more than doubled since 2000.

Twenty-five percent of foster kids become homeless. Sixty-percent of boys in foster care are later incarcerated. Addiction costs money. Homelessness costs money. Crime costs money. Prisons cost money.

Permissive norms around family formation will give rise to abuse, neglect, and abandonment. Children living in fatherless homes are eight times more likely to experience abuse (often from the mother’s boyfriends) or neglect (from the mother, who is performing double duty to care for the child, provide, and invest time in new romantic partnerships).

Permissive norms around drugs will give rise to more substance abuse, addiction, homelessness, and so on.

Norms constrain behavior. That is why they exist. Lifting them inevitably leads to people engaging in risky or harmful behaviors that lead to costs.

Someone has to pay that bill.

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Social Tax or Economic Tax

Educated and affluent people wield disproportionate social and economic power.

They can “pay” for a functional society in one of two ways:

1. Pay the social cost of cultivating and promoting safe and healthy behaviors for people that minimize damage to themselves and to others, including young children

2. Pay the economic cost of the fallout when people lack cultural guardrails; foster care, crime, homelessness, addiction, mental and physical health problems, and so on

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Many affluent people seem to think that many social ills are due to the norms themselves rather than the violation of them.

The luxury belief class thinks that the unhappiness associated with certain behaviors and choices is primarily stems from the negative social judgments they elicit, rather than the behaviors and choices themselves.

But in fact, negative social judgments serve as guardrails to deter detrimental decisions that lead to unhappiness.

To avoid misery we have to admit that certain actions and choices are actually in and of themselves undesirable—fatherlessness, obesity, substance abuse, crime, and so on—and not simply in need of normalization. Indeed, it’s cruel to validate decisions that inflict harm, especially on those who had no hand in the decision—like young children.

Look. You can be a fiscal conservative. That’s fine. But you have to be a social conservative too. You have to be willing to pay the social cost of upholding norms.

You can be a social liberal. That’s fine. But you have to be an economic liberal too. You have to be willing to pay the inevitable economic cost of social permissiveness.

You either pay the social cost of upholding norms, or pay the economic cost of what happens when there are none.  

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My view here is informed by something I read a few years ago by the social scientist Charles Murray in his book Coming Apart.

I saw him deliver a lecture about this book at Yale back in early 2016. That was back when a speaker like Murray could still visit American colleges. And not get chased through the streets and see his fellow panelists get physically assaulted by protestors.

Anyway, Murray discussed what the Founding Fathers believed were the four requirements for the functioning of American society as they envisioned it. A society with maximal freedom and minimal interference from the state.

A libertarian utopia.

After that talk, I read Murray’s book to better understand the idea.

Four Requirements For The Functioning Of American Society

The feasibility of the American project as envisioned by the founders relied on four key virtues.

Murray identified these virtues based on the writings of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and other key figures of that time.

1. Industriousness. This was a signature characteristic of Americans. It is the deep-seated American assumption that life is meant to be spent getting ahead by working hard to make a better life for oneself and one’s children. American industriousness fascinated citizens of other nations. Francis Grund, son of a German baron and educated in Vienna, wrote that after a decade of living in the United States in 1837, “I have never known a native American to ask for charity. No country in the world has such a small number of persons supported at the public expense.… An American, embarrassed by his pecuniary circumstances, can hardly be prevailed upon to ask or accept the assistance of his own relations; and will, in many instances, scorn to have recourse to his own parents.”

2. Honesty. For Thomas Jefferson, “honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.” Many Americans are familiar with the stories of “Honest Abe Lincoln” and George Washington. This unique trait intrigued European intellectuals, particularly when they noted the willingness of Americans to obey the law. In Democracy in America, Tocqueville described his observations during his journey throughout the U.S. in the late 19th century. In his book, he noted, “In America, the criminal is looked upon as an enemy of the human race.”

3. Marriage. The founders took for granted that marriage was the bedrock institution of American society. In fact, they often used the word “morality” as a synonym for fidelity, meaning to be faithful to one’s spouse. John Adams wrote in his diary in 1778: “The foundation of national morality must be laid in private families.… How is it possible that children can have any just sense of the sacred obligations of morality or religion if, from their earliest Infancy, they learn their mothers live in habitual Infidelity to their fathers, and their fathers in as constant Infidelity to their mothers?” John was married to Abigail Adams for fifty-four years before she passed away at age 73. In an essay titled “Of the Natural Rights of Individuals,” written in 1790, U.S. Supreme Court Justice James Wilson wrote, “to the institution of marriage the true origin of society must be traced…To that institution, more than to any other, have mankind been indebted for the share of peace and harmony which has been distributed among them. ‘Prima societas in ipso conjugio est,’ [‘The first bond of society is marriage’] says Cicero in his book of offices; a work which does honor to the human understanding and the human heart.”

4. Religiosity. Interestingly, the founders held relatively progressive views on religion. Thomas Jefferson was a Deist, Benjamin Franklin did not believe in the divinity of Christ, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison were suspected of being relaxed about their devotion to Anglicanism, and George Washington was often evasive about his views on Christianity. However, all of the founders were united in their view that religion was essential to the health of American society. The social institution of religion emphasized self-restraint and self-discipline, which the founders considered essential for civic society. In his farewell address, Washington stated, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable…Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.” And John Adams: “Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

The founders were explicit in their belief that the American constitution would only work for moral and virtuous people who adhered to the above four precepts. Granted, these men did not always live up to their own virtues. But the founders promoted them, and most tried to live by them.

Their contemporary, the 18th-century philosopher Edmund Burke wrote:

“Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites… Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without.”

The belief that simply allowing individuals to make choices will invariably lead to the best outcomes is a delusion. Proponents of this view fail to understand that the link between freedom of choice and a functional society can only exist if the society is anchored by robust social norms and strong standards for behavior.

I understand the desire for a minimalist state. I really do. Like many young men, I went through a libertarian phase. But a socially liberal, fiscally conservative position only works for very specific kind of citizenry—for people who are industrious, honest, married, and religious (or at least attempt to adhere to those values, regardless of their private doubts).

Assuming the founding fathers were correct about the above four precepts, does anyone seriously think America today is equipped to be a libertarian society?

If the above four virtues are indeed requirements for a free society, than people who want a free society—including libertarians and classical liberals—should be interested in regularly espousing them.

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This is an updated version of an essay I originally posted in 2022.