Schwarzenegger Madness

Yep, it's been a few days since Schwarzenegger popped up onto our radar screen, so lets see what Bill Murchinson has for us today.

Murchinson takes on the tricky question of whether Arnold's liberalism on social issues matters. "If you define "conservatism" as "skepticism of government's ability to solve any but basic problems," you may, but also may not, want government prescribing particular moral practices. Morality, you may assert, is a private matter, one from which government should stay away. This would mean, in practice, that the government should allow abortion and prohibit school prayer and that, additionally, it should affirm sexuality in all its forms.

If, on the other hand, you define "conservatism" in terms of its relationship to hierarchical and time-tested norms, many of those norms being religious in origin, you may posit a governmental duty to roll back particular wrongheaded government policies."

In other words one faction wants small government, the other is comfortable with big government, so long as that big government is busy enforcing "time-tested norms." Murchinson does try to link the two together suggesting, rather ludicrously, that recent economic scandals are somehow connected to the lack of school prayer. Perhaps Mr. Murchinson would benefit from a study of the Guilded Age, a more religious time, but certainly not lacking in economic (or political) corruption.