kukla_tko42 just mentioned in her journal, the other day, that she couldn't imagine how anybody could support President Bush. Well, you know by now that I don't, either. I do, however, understand how some people can make that mistake. Still, her confusion is perfectly natural. For one thing, people tend to surround themselves with like-minded people. For another, most people naturally avoid confrontation. So even though I strongly suspect she probably has one or two friends reading her journal who were planning on voting for Bush in November, none of them were willing to come forward and explain why when she asked them to.

Tonight, I don't want to talk about specific candidates or specific policy positions, though. You see, there is a seldom-articulated coherent position that underlies the entire modern conservative coalition in America. It's such an obvious principle, to them, that most conservatives don't even think about it. Most of them couldn't explain it, consciously. Their leaders, who could explain it, mostly don't. To about half of them, it's so obvious it's not worth talking about. The others don't want to argue about it. Since the principle is so obvious, they assume that you know it, understand it, and fully agree with it. That's why, when you take stands that are at odds with that principle, they're unwilling to assume you're doing so sincerely and out of the goodness of your heart. You have to be venal, corrupt, or dishonest to take a stand contrary to that principle, because obviously you know better and are only saying what you're saying for some evil purpose.

So let me start with the bare minimum of history, just by way of an example, and then explain what that principle is. Because once you know what it is, you'll find much of the debate, and much of the campaign advertising, and much of the news coverage this election year a lot more comprehensible. Of course, you may also have a smidgen more self-doubt, because you may be driven further into that crippling liberal/moderate paralyzing affliction: being pathologically able to see both sides. (People who only see one side are a lot easier to get fired up, unfortunately.)

The historical precedent for this will come as news to most of you, because it really is forbidden history. Since so much of this is tied up in the religious history of the United States, and since school systems are terrified of parental lawsuits, you never had most of this in school.

In the 1620s, Puritans (the antecedents of modern fundamentalists) had successfully conquered England, overthrowing the monarchy and ruling directly through Parliament - but they weren't happy. There were two flies in their ointment. For one thing, their revolution hadn't been nearly as thorough as they'd hoped. They were hoping for a top-to-bottom pietistic overhaul of English society; they didn't get it. And what's more, while they may not have seen the Restoration coming, they could tell that public opinion was turning against their experiment, and that society was already going back the wrong way. So some of them devised a new experiment. Money was raised to buy a colonial charter, and passage by ship, for tens of thousands of English Puritans. By the time that migration was done, around 1640, these Puritan colonists made up nearly the entire European-descended population of the New World.

What they hoped to demonstrate was that you didn't need the Church to run the State, or vice versa, as long as they both agreed. Their hope was to create a civilization where everybody was a Puritan; every citizen, every voter, every worker, every boss, every politician, every lawyer, every policeman, every judge, every teacher, every minister. Puritan ministers wouldn't have to control the government; the government would naturally agree with them. Puritan governors wouldn't have to appoint and control teachers and ministers; being fellow Puritans, they would naturally agree with the government. By the time the last of them were getting off the boat in 1640, they could already tell that this wasn't going to work. In fact, that's what the Antinomian Crisis of 1640 was about. Some of the last Puritans to arrive from England got to Massachusetts expecting to find the Puritan Experiment still running. When they found that the government was specifically dictating to the churches and to teachers, they rebelled - and were tried for heresy, convicted, and thrown out of Puritan New England for being, yes, too Puritan. So the Puritan Experiment was, realistically speaking, over.

But along the way, the Puritans had discovered one embarrassing truth. Being a Puritan was a great way to get rich. It wasn't supposed to be, it just worked out that way. Puritans were a deeply pleasure-phobic culture, firmly committed to restricting and avoiding pleasure. They were also fully convinced of the redeeming power of gainful employment, and not just any employment, but hard work. And along the way, they found out something that any Greek hoplite of the 4th century BCE could have told them: working hard and not spending any money is how you get rich. What makes this embarrassing to Puritans is that getting rich means that you no longer have to work hard or avoid pleasure. Puritanism contains the seeds of its own destruction. Successful Puritans naturally accumulate the wealth that corrupts them (and especially, corrupts their children) from being successful Puritans. During the Enlightenment a generation later, an ameliorating trend was invented. The cure to having too much wealth is investment. What's supposed to cure you from the tendency to spend your accumulated wealth on frivolous pleasures is the opportunity to turn it into even greater wealth -- harnessing pure greed and envy to the service of greater virtue.

Since then, this is the number one fundamental principle of conservatism. This is the obvious truth that hardly needs to be said in public debate. The method to improve your lot in life, and your family's lot in life, is widely known and well documented. Anything that encourages you to stay in school until you get a good job, get married and never stray, work every waking hour, save every penny, and invest every possible penny into improving your children's lot in life is good. Anything that distracts you from doing those things is bad.

How can conservatives want to destroy every governmental institution that helps the poor, and still consider themselves good Christians? Well, what's the metaphor that we use for those social programs? We call them the "safety net," right? Well, consider this. People take more risks when there's a safety net to catch them if they fall. Conservatism doesn't want you to take risks. Conservatism wants you to follow the known rules for making yourself, and especially more so your children, wealthy and powerful. They want you to be afraid of poverty. Fear of poverty is supposed to be what keeps you on the straight and narrow path.

After all, who actually needs the public, government-funded safety net? When it doesn't exist, many people who have catastrophes happen to them get rescued anyway. They have family, or friends, or employers who value their hard work. Voluntary contributions have a huge advantage over governmental contributions - they only go to the worthy. In an entirely voluntary charity situation, the only people who don't get help are the totally isolated, the totally friendless, and those who are disapproved of by the people they know because of the choices they made. In a conservative world view, such people are meant to be made examples of.

This is so obvious that it doesn't even have to be explained to most people. Most people can easily think of family dramas, where ne'er-do-wells in the family were allowed to sink into poverty because they were so determinedly bent on self-destruction. Well, if somebody's that bent on self-destruction, if somebody's that determined not to stay on the straight-and-narrow, what entitles them to being helped? And what makes you think that helping them is going to actually help them, instead of simply enabling them to continue in their self-destructive ways? What makes you so sure that letting them sink isn't the compassionate thing to do? Shouldn't they be allowed to hit bottom, if that's what it takes to show them the error of their ways? And what makes you think that even if you can help them, that you're not doing even more harm to several other people, by giving them a bad example of somebody who made inappropriate choices and yet did OK?