David Brooks has a brilliant new column in The New York Times. It's great to see liberalism in decline. Liberals aren't taking it well, either, as Paul Krugman's increasingly hysterical semiweekly columns show. I would take issue with one aspect of Brooks's column, however. He fails to grasp that conservatives are not libertarians. There is nothing in conservatism, as a political philosophy, that rules out costly governmental programs. Conservatives are not necessarily advocates of minimal government. What we have seen since Ronald Reagan was elected is a coalition of conservatives and libertarians. They worked together to acquire and solidify power. But now that the movement has succeeded, we will begin to see the philosophies split. Libertarians will press for smaller, leaner government; conservatives will tax and spend as necessary to achieve their substantive aims. Here is philosopher Roger Scruton:
It seems, then, that the conservative attitude in fiscal matters will be opposed to the attempt to bend taxation permanently and directly to some external aim of redistribution. This does not mean that conservative politicians will subscribe to the view that the only legitimate use of tax is to secure the revenues of the state: they too will be prepared, when necessary, to use it as an instrument of social control. But they will do so only rarely, and in the interests of continuity rather than social revolution. (Roger Scruton, The Meaning of Conservatism, rev. 3d ed. [South Bend, IN: St. Augustine's Press, 2002], 102)
Making the lives of the elderly secure promotes continuity. It is a way of keeping faith and of linking generations. The new Medicare program is expensive, but that, in itself, does not make it nonconservative.