The "social conservatives" are not conservative

Their ideology is, in key respects, a post-1960s phenomenon.

Written by Simon Laird.

The American conservative movement is an alliance of three factions: economic libertarians, foreign policy hawks, and the so-called social conservatives. Economic libertarians want to slash regulations and shrink the national debt. Foreign policy hawks previously sought to contain Soviet expansion; now they want to confront Russia and China. The people who call themselves “social conservatives” oppose abortion, assisted suicide and gay marriage.

The movement got its name because it sought to conserve the norms and traditions of the US circa 1900—against the disastrous policies of Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt. However, there has been so much social change since 1900 that the movement no longer seeks to conserve the status quo; it now seeks massive governmental reform.

The people who call themselves “social conservatives” like to imagine that they are the only faction in the conservative movement that stands for the values of pre-1960s America. But they are almost completely wrong. Economic libertarians want to restore the legal norms the US had from roughly 1600 to about 1930. Those norms played a big part in American culture. The entrepreneurship they fostered allowed for unrestrained individual initiative—which has been lost in the modern era of bureaucrats and busybodies.

Furthermore, some of the views of today’s social conservatives are very different from the views that prevailed in America and Christendom prior to 1960. Economic libertarians are “conservative” in the sense of wanting to return to a previous way of doing things. Social conservatives aren’t particularly “conservative” in that sense. Their ideology is, in key respects, a post-1960s phenomenon.

Down’s syndrome

Social conservatives like to put people with Down’s Syndrome in the public eye. Their attitude toward mental retardation (a technical term) is almost celebratory. It’s rather odd.

During the 1950s—a decade that social conservatives imagine to be the halcyon days—mentally retarded people were kept out of sight in specialized institutions. Social conservatives today want them to be part of society. The movement for the rights of mentally retarded people began in the 1960s—just like the sexual revolution, Second Wave feminism, racial integration, and the movement against formal clothing in public.

When toy manufacturer Mattel created a Down’s syndrome Barbie in 2023, conservative commentator Steven Crowder lampooned the doll and decried it as “woke.” He then got slammed by his own side. Social conservatives, such as the activists Lila Rose and Ian Haworth, accused Crowder of “embracing pro-abortion rhetoric” because he poked fun at the doll. Writing in the Washington Examiner, Haworth used language with clear echoes of the woke left: “[The doll] humanizes a group of human beings who are currently the target of a resurgent eugenics movement.” Rose likewise praised Mattel’s toy as “real inclusivity.”

The activists’ rush to condemn Crowder was clearly motivated by their Christian beliefs. Crowder’s response to the Down’s syndrome Barbie—to laugh at it—was instinctive and, in my opinion, understandable. Should we really celebrate genetic disorders?

Homosexual marriage

Gay marriage is something of a fake issue. Once homosexuality is legalized, cohabitation is permitted, and gay bars are allowed, marriage is basically a moot point. While some Christians talk about bringing back anti-sodomy laws, the vast majority of Christian public figures—including almost all Christian academics—hold the incoherent view that sodomy and cohabitation should not be illegal but homosexual marriage should be.

The tax benefits that come with a “marriage license” are not the reason why this is a fraught political issue. The real reason is that the granting of such licenses is considered a symbolic act of social approval. To pro-homosexual activists, the granting of marriage licenses is a triumph over anti-homosexual “bigots”. To Christian academics, gay marriage is a convenient and relatively safe battleground to fight on—one that doesn’t require them to take genuinely radical positions against cohabitation and fornication.

At least before the social media age, opposition to gay marriage was a rearguard action by social conservatives who had lost the battle on sodomy, fornication and cohabitation—but were too timid to revisit those older issues. It brings to mind what Robert Dabney said about the “respectable conservatives” who accepted women’s suffrage:

No doubt, after a few years, when women’s suffrage shall have become an accomplished fact, conservatism will tacitly admit it into its creed, and thenceforward plume itself upon its wise firmness in opposing with similar weapons the extreme of baby suffrage; and when that too shall have been won, it will be heard declaring that the integrity of the American Constitution requires at least the refusal of suffrage to asses. There it will assume, with great dignity, its final position.

My own view, incidentally, is that homosexuality does not have to be totally removed from society but should not be presented as normal in the public square.

Opposition to gay marriage not only represents a surrender on the older issues of cohabitation and fornication, it relies on arguments that are quite different from the ones made in the 1950s, 60s and 70s.

Today, arguments against homosexuality are nearly always based on the Bible or a Christian understanding of natural law. But when Richard Nixon complained that the TV show All in the Family was glorifying homosexuality, he didn’t mention the Bible. He said that society shouldn’t publicly celebrate homosexuality because homosexuality led to the decline of ancient Greece. Other prominent figures, such as J. Edgar Hoover and Joseph McCarthy, made similar arguments about homosexuality as a factor in the decline of civilisation. One rarely hears such arguments from modern social conservatives.

Abortion

This is the one issue where today’s social conservatives line up with the historic conservative movement. However, they go much further than early 20th century Protestants did.

Leftist mythmakers have claimed that American Protestants were pro-choice before 1970. That is false. American Protestants always opposed abortion in most cases: the Lutheran, Episcopalian, Methodist and Presbyterian churches broadly opposed abortion, with some exceptions for rape, the life of the mother or fetal birth defects. The Southern Baptist Convention was more liberal on abortion than other Protestant denominations, but they did not support abortion on demand. They believed that there had to be a threat to the mother’s mental or physical health (or rape, incest or fetal birth defects) to justify abortion.

The ideas that life begins at conception and that an embryo is a person came from the Catholic church. In the year 1950, the wave of Catholic immigration into America that had lasted from 1880 to 1920 was still recent history. It took time for these Catholics to integrate into society and then exert political power. The modern pro-life movement believes that embryos are persons because of Catholic influence.

The conservative movement was founded to preserve the norms of the US circa 1900, at which time the country was overwhelmingly Protestant. The moral norms of Old America never held that embryos were persons. The flagship newspaper of the Amish community doesn’t even list stillbirths in the obituaries section.

Social conservatism versus historic conservatism

Economic libertarians hold views that are closely in line with the conservatives of Old America, such as Henry Hazlitt. I put the term “social conservatives” in scare quotes at the start of this essay because the people who call themselves “social conservatives” hold views that depart from the historic conservative movement.

In Old America, mentally retarded people were kept out of public view. Social conservatives seem to believe that such people are more worthy of public attention than normal people.

Although today’s social conservatives oppose homosexuality, they frame their opposition exclusively in Biblical terms, whereas historic conservatives were no less concerned about the role of homosexuality in the decline of civilisation.

When it comes to abortion, today’s social conservatives take the extreme position that embryos are persons and that abortion is murder. The fact that modern social conservatives take the “embryos are persons” position is actually due to Catholic mass immigration, which historic conservatives were deeply suspicious of.

What’s more, many of the issues that Old America’s conservatives cared about are barely mentioned by modern social conservatives.

Old America’s conservatives opposed excessive alcohol consumption. Today’s social conservatives don’t appear to. Old America’s conservatives cared about upright posture and proper attire in public. The social conservative in today’s megachurches often dress like slobs. Old America’s conservatives were extremely concerned about promiscuity. Today’s social conservatives nominally oppose promiscuity but don’t consider it disqualifying—as seen in their support for Donald Trump. In Old America, being a single mother was deeply shameful. Today’s social conservatives frequently lash out at those who suggest that single mothers should face stigma. They seem to believe that anyone can simply be “redeemed in Christ”, and there’s little room in their vocabulary for terms like “fallen woman.”

Honor culture

Many of the areas where social conservatives and Old America’s conservatives diverge have to do with honor culture. Old America held that rapists and cattle hustlers should be hanged at dawn. Today’s social conservatives are divided on the death penalty and they spend no real effort campaigning for it.

Other norms from Old America, like all-male military academies and the belief that it’s good and natural for boys to get into fistfights, have disappeared and been forgotten. The idea of family honor, something that could be violated by disgraceful public behavior, or a daughter becoming a single mother, is largely alien to modern social conservatives.

The term “social conservative” suggests the preservation or restoration of old-fashioned social norms. Hence the so-called social conservatives would be better described as Christian conservatives—and many would be happy to describe themselves that way. They represent one particular form of Christianity, with values are quite different from those who sailed to the New World, wrote the Bill of Rights, settled the prairie and industrialized the continent.

If we want to preserve and restore the social norms of Old America, social conservatives won’t be much help. We need to resurrect the idea of honor.

A slightly different version of this article was originally published here.

Simon Laird holds a Master's degree in economics from George Mason University and works for a political organization in Washington, DC. He writes about philosophy on his Substack.

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