On the Soapbox

Several days ago, I saw this NYT headline: Incoming Democrats Put Populism Before Ideology. Um, on last check, populism¹ is ideology.

The strong Christian support for the Republican party in this country has long struck me as a curious oddity. Religion has always been a populist institution at its core. It preaches traditional social values and morals while, at the same time, it frowns upon massed wealth and generally advocates a socialist economic agenda. After all, free market capitalism is an extremely Darwinian institution and can be considered the social counterpart to biology's evolution. The Republicans tend to be right-conservative, so while they share the same social agenda as populists, they have conflicting economic agendas. The Democrats tend to be left-liberal, so while they share the same economic agenda as the populists, they have conflicting social agendas. Similarly, libertarians, who one may regard as the foil to populists, dislike Republican attempts to legislate morality and Democratic attempts to hinder the free market. While libertarians tend to be fairly evenly split between the Republican and Democratic parties (based roughly on whether social liberalism or economic liberalism is more important in the eyes of each libertarian), evangelical Christians (who technically should be populists) are overwhelmingly Republican. But as the Democrats tone down their social liberalism in an attempt to win over the evangelical base, the populists are starting to find a greater voice. Indeed, there is a growing number of Christians who are starting to consider a fuller picture of populism and are putting more emphasis the economic dimension of populism instead of myopically focusing on the social/cultural dimension. The Republican party recognized this trend when, in 2000, Bush ran with the message of "compassionate conservatism", though that failed to win the hearts of populists when it quickly became clear that it was nothing more than a superficial label.

Why it has taken so long for religion to rediscover its populist roots may lie in the 19th century. While many socialists were Christians at the time, the spotlight shifted in 1848 and the atheistic Marx and his Communism became a sort of poster boy for socialism. Fast forward a hundred years to the Cold War, the fact that our Communist rivals were staunchly atheist probably contributed greatly to the rift between religion and socialism. Also, 19th century religion was more corrupt and was more interested in advocating the status quo than in notions of social justice. Only in more recent years, as the evangelical movement has grown, have more people began to take in the populist message of religion, and coupled with Communism fading away from our collective consciousness, religion in America is started to rediscover it populist nature.

In any case, I think that the 2006 elections can be marked as a victory for populism. A number of the Democrats who were elected (e.g., Bob Casey, Bill Ritter, etc.) were populists instead of the usual left liberals. A small, but growing number of Christians are also abandoning the Republican party as they decide that economic issues like minimum wage are more important than social issues like abortion. I wonder if this is the beginning of another great political realignment in America (the previous one, which changed Democrats from the party of white Southerners to the party of multiethnic Yankees, started with FDR's new deal and ended with the Civil Rights Act) as the strength of the religious vote forces one of the parties² towards a populist position. The next few decades will be interesting indeed. Perhaps if the country gravitates from a left-liberal vs. right-conservative mindset into a populist vs. libertarian mindset, libertarians may finally find a party to call home.

________________
¹ For those of you not familiar with the terms that I will use, here is a very over-simplified comparison of the four general poles of belief. Populists are people who are socially conservative (supporting traditional values) and economically statist (skeptical of the free market), right-conservatives are people who are socially conservative and economically liberal ("liberal" in the classic sense; i.e., pro-markets), left-liberals are those who are socially liberal and economically statist, and finally, libertarians are socially liberal and economically liberal. Taken to their ideological extremes, populists are authoritarians, right conservatives are fascists, left liberals are communists, and libertarians are anarchists.

² Though it is unclear which party it will be, whether it will be the Democrats toning down their social liberalism or whether it will be the Republicans further embracing "big-government conservatism".