Saturday, April 23, 2011

The weird thing about social conservatism

All economic policy needs to be implemented on a societal level, so it makes sense for that to be part of politics. Social liberalism needs at least tacit consent or utter indifference from government - they basically need to not make laws that meddle in people's private lives, and eliminate any such laws that are still on the books.

But social conservatism doesn't require any government involvement at all. Citizens are free to be as socially conservative as they'd like, regardless of whether this behaviour is enshrined in law.

As an example, the most socially conservative thing about me is I am monogamous. As it happens, I live in a culture and a city and a neighbourhood where casual sex is socially acceptable and freely available. But this in no way hinders my being monogamous. Regardless of how much casual sex is permissible and available, I can quite easily not avail myself of it. Similarly, I'm vegetarian, but meat is freely available and socially acceptable. I'm carfree, but cars are readily available and socially acceptable. I can quite easily live this way without asking the government to outlaw meat, cars, and casual sex. It wouldn't even cross my mind to ask the government to outlaw things that I'm not into.

And yet there are a lot of very loud people who try to do just that. Where is this coming from?

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