It came to me today that the social conservatives have a problem. Well, one additional problem.
On the one hand, they proclaim loudly that the habits of the tribe, the mores of the majority, should hold sway. If the majority band together and declare your religion / politics / ideology / orientation as a sin, then that ought to be that, game over, the gang with the most rocks wins.
Thus, the outrage, outrage I tell you, over Judge Walker’s ruling in Proposition 8. The majority have spoken! How dare this liberal fop deny the will of the majority!?
Of course, the Founding Fathers were highly dubious of such a proposition, coming from a background of innumerable wars in Europe over just these sorts of differences. So they codified into the Constitution various protections against the majority. Yes, they believed in democracy (or at least democratically elected representatives), but, fearing the mob, they put safeguards in place to make sure that fundamental beliefs and rights could not be waved aside by popular vote.
And so we have things like “Freedom of speech” and “the press” and “religion.” We have “equal protection under the law” and “due process.” Even though so often the Right seems interested only in the second amendment (and, lately, in the tenth), the first and fourteenth have done more to protect individual freedom than anything else.
And that’s what sticks in their craw. Social conservatives are about the taboos and dictates of the tribe. The majority rules. If not, then you’ll have individuals thinking for themselves, acting for themselves, and the social order will become all higgledy-piggledy.
Thus we get to the problem. (I mentioned there was a problem. I’ve identified a number of problems here, but none, so far, has been The Problem from the first paragraph.)
The majority might not be the majority for long.
Demographics are changing. Immigrants continue to come into our country, as they have for the past tw centuries (and, by definition, did for the two or three centuries before the Constitution). Diversity continues to increase. Not only do we have denominational variations between Christians, but now we have sizable populations of Muslims and Buddhists and Jews and even folks who don’t believe in God at all.
And even leaving aside immigration, the majority of the populace continues to drift in their social beliefs. For example, acceptance of gay marriage teeters around the 50% mark in standard polls, with the number increasingly higher as you look at younger demographics.
The social conservatives scream bloody murder that the will of the majority is being thwarted by folks like Judge Walker. But what happens when the majority changes its mind?
And that’s where you see the social conservatives scrambling like crazy. Because, honestly, they only trust the majority so far as the majority supports them. Remember, conservative Christianity thinks people are lazy, nasty, untrustworthy sinners, given their head. The majorities will only follow them as long as they are kept in the dark and whupped into shape.
And so you see …
- Efforts to control school curricula and textbooks and what religious content teachers can provide (as approved by school board). Catch the kids early, indoctrinate them right, and maybe another generation can be raised to keep those majorities in line.
- Efforts to stop the changing demographics of America. Fearmongering about violent Mexicans, or jihadist Muslims, or baby-raping Gays. If the borders can be sealed, if the unbelievers can be kept from building worship places, if the perverts can be pushed back into the closet or prison cell … then They won’t have a vote in elections, They won’t be in our neighborhoods, and We won’t get to know Them as, after all, people and neighbors and friends.
There’s a desperation to try to keep the majority under control, both by influencing them directly, and by restricting who might become part of that majority. And, in desperation, you being to see some forward-thinkers considering what happens after the fall from power.
Increasingly you see social conservatives playing the hate crime card. On the one hand, they decry efforts to end prejudice against groups they don’t like as being a “hate crime” against them — “If the law prevents job discrimination against Teh Gayz, then it’s an attack on my freedom of religion, and it will soon be against the law to be a Christian.” But they do this against a backdrop of trying to use the religious beliefs of the majority as the basis for laws to persecute those with whom they do not agree. Thus, saying that all faggots will burn in hell is not a hate crime, but criticizing those who say it is.
The confusion between the Constitution’s restriction on governmental action and the social consequences of ticking off the majority also is illustrative of the social conservative mindset. If the government is there to serve the majority, then when the majority rebel against them it’s tantamount to government oppression. Thus poor Dr. Laura decries how her First Amendment rights were trampled by the wave of popular revulsion against her recent N-word tirade — even though the First Amendment only protects against governmental actions (“Congress shall enact no law”) not the public and punditry turning on you socially.
The other fall-back position that the social conservatives have is a bit more worrisome. The Right has been and remains the side of violent imagery — everything is a “war” or a “battle,” or bad stuff is “forced down our throats” or “puts us in chains” or “is like a knife to the heart.”
And, so, you get more and more references on the fringe and not-so-fringe Right to “second amendment solutions” to the evils coming from the majority-elected federal government. Given that amendment is about gun ownership, it’s not an unclear allusion (esp. with other rhetoric spouted out) about armed resistance to the change in majority sentiment, turning against the old ways and beliefs and mindset.
Mexicans? Muslims? Faggots? I got my solution right here, hand-loaded and ready to go off. And if the government comes in its black helicopters to haul us off to prison camps, well, that same solution will work just fine against them, too.
Time is working against social conservatism. It was ever so, because society changes — usually for the better, in aggregate — with time. Conservatives, by definition, resist that change. That’s not necessarily a bad thing — change, as well as stasis, are value-neutral — but in so many ways we can see the Old Order changing, and the argument that “the majority is on our side” rings more and more desperately hollow.
What will happen next?