How libertarians and Christians can unite

By Steve Baldwin

On various blogs and websites, a discussion has begun lately about the reforming of the social conservative/fiscal conservative coalition that was so instrumental in the election of Ronald Reagan and in the early days of the conservative movement. However, over the last decade or so, this coalition fell apart as various Bush (both Bushes) policies drove wedges into it. Indeed, many fiscal conservatives have since left the Republican Party and became libertarians. It is likely that the dissolution of this coalition contributed to the election of Barack Obama.

There are many compelling reasons to re-form this coalition, the most urgent being the survival of the United States as we know it. Indeed, today we are confronting a whole array of issues that we should be working together on but have not been. We are now entering an era of tremendous peril, and without all of us uniting, we stand to lose the debate over the nature of government itself. Is it an entity limited by our Constitution, or is it simply a sophisticated version of Santa Claus?

There have certainly been mistakes made by both social and fiscal conservatives, and I believe there is room for both sides to alter their stances on some issues without compromising their principles. Indeed, I believe both sides have lessons to learn from policy battles that occurred during the Bush years.

First, the libertarians need to understand that there are constitutional concerns with many issues of importance to social conservatives. Take the gay issue. Libertarians like to look at it as a personal freedom issue, but the baggage that comes with the gay agenda is inflicting great harm to constitutional rights in general.

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Indeed, the entire gay "rights" agenda is composed of policies and legislation that, in almost every case, compromise the constitutional rights of others. Hate-crime laws are a full assault on equality under the law. The legalization of same-sex marriage leads to attacks on religious freedom when churches refuse to marry gays. It leads to attacks on private schools when they refuse to teach about gay marriage. It leads to attacks on private adoption agencies for refusing to place children with gay parents. And much more. We know this because such attacks have already begun.

Likewise, so-called "anti-discrimination" laws have already led to attacks on private-property rights and religious freedom. In other countries, pastors have been fined and even sent to prison for refusing to stop preaching biblical lessons on homosexuality. If one thinks such attacks are not coming to America, they have not been watching the trends. Libertarians need to understand that once we lose religious freedom, all other freedoms will come under attack. That's been the pattern with dictatorships throughout history.

Libertarians need to quit regarding the gay issue as a personal-freedom issue and realize that it's a gateway issue that allows the progressives to launch a full-scale assault on many other constitutional freedoms. And the Christian right needs to do a better job explaining this. It's not enough to simply make moral arguments in opposition to the gay agenda. Social conservatives need to show how attacks on fundamental American institutions such as marriage almost always paves the way for attacks on a wider array of constitutional rights.

However, the social conservatives also have lessons to learn from the Bush years. The effort by the Christian right to use the federal government under George Bush to promote its own moral agenda was deeply mistaken. I'm referring to the school-based abstinence funding movement and the "faith-based" movement, in which churches/Christian groups were funded to carry out various policies deemed to be in the public's best interest.

First, it was misguided to push for more federal involvement in the education and welfare areas since the federal government should not be involved in those policy areas to begin with. The centralizing of federal power will always come back to haunt us and always has. But more importantly, the horrible precedents set by the abstinence and faith-based movements gave the Christian right a lesson I hoped they have learned from.

The Obama administration has used much of the same bureaucratic framework set up originally for funding abstinence to now fund have-sex-with-anyone-for-any-reason sex education programs all under a phony "abstinence" label. Obama is also using the structure set up by the faith-based movement to move millions of dollars to leftist "social justice" programs designed to increase dependence on the federal government.

The Christian right should never again assume they can use the government for alleged virtuous programs without paying a steep price. I hope they have learned that government will never be our friend and will always eventually transform programs designed with good intentions into programs that undermine its own agenda.

The common theme here is that government will never be a force for virtue, and it is in the best interest of both fiscal and social conservatives to fight together to reduce the size and power of government at every opportunity. That's what unites us. Lets start fighting together to save America.

Steve Baldwin is a former member of the California Legislature and former executive director of the Council for National Policy. He is the author of "From Crayons to Condoms," published by WND Books.