Vouchers, Abortion and the Radical Right in Wisconsin Politics

"Conservative" Can be a Misleading Label

Several months ago, I wrote that “conservative” was a misleading label for those on the right in American politics, and that they should be called “radical rightists.”  I said that conservatives were people who wanted to conserve something, while radicals were people who wanted to make radical changes. Recent passage in Wisconsin of a law promoting private school vouchers and of a law creating new restrictions on abortions provide an opportunity to revisit that argument.

Conservatives Favor Limited Government With a Few Exceptions

Historically, conservatism has been associated in the United States with opposition to the expansion of the role of the government in people’s affairs. Conservatives have argued that most decisions should be left to individuals or to the impersonal workings of markets. They have said that unnecessary government interference reduces our freedom.  Therefore, conservatives have traditionally said that the powers of government should not be used to make changes in long-established practices.

At the same time, conservatives have always accepted that some things require collective action, and they have agreed that those things should be the province of government.  Education is one of those things. Public education has been a part of the bedrock of our society since its very beginning in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the seventeenth century.  Conservatives have traditionally supported public education, and consequently, it has been very strong in conservative parts of our country. It is not an accident that some of our best public school systems and our best public universities are in conservative states like Indiana, Iowa and Wisconsin.

Supporters of Vouchers Favor Radical Changes in Education

Today, however, many on the right in American politics want to apply the principles of free market competition to education. They say that schools that have to compete for students will have to work hard to serve those students well, and in order to stimulate that competition, they have decided to divert tax money from the support of public schools to vouchers that can be used by students who want to attend private schools. This is a radical change in the relationship between government and private education in the United States. 

It is also a radical change in the role of government in determining the structure of education. Setting curricula and setting requirements for graduation have always been responsibilities of local school boards and of state governments in this country.  Under the voucher program, curricula and graduation requirements will be set by private schools even when tax money is used to pay the students’ tuition at those schools. Thus, school vouchers are a very radical solution to the problems of education in the United States. Vouchers may work out well, but by no stretch of the imagination can they be considered conservative.  People who support the use of vouchers are radicals even though they are on the political right.

Opponents of Abortion Favor Expanding the Power of Government to Eliminate Abortions

The situation with regard to abortion is similar. Legal abortion has been an established part of our system for 40 years. However, unlike public education, it has always been controversial.  Supporters of a woman’s “right to choose” and supporters of a child’s “right to life” have no common moral ground. To the latter group, an abortion is a murder, and the group’s members have dedicated themselves to eliminating such murders from our country. Since the decision in Roe v. Wade precludes eliminating the right to abortion, its opponents have focused on making abortions difficult to obtain both physically and psychologically.  The hope is that, if abortions can be made sufficiently difficult enough to obtain, the right to an abortion will become an empty right, which exists only in theory.  No one will actually get an abortion in this country because abortions will be too difficult to obtain.

Here again we see the nature of the political right in our country. Its members seek to alter established practices radically, and in the case of abortion, they seek to do so by means that are directly opposed to traditional, conservative values, which stress limiting the reach of government.  Opponents of abortion seek to extend the powers of government to abridge a right guaranteed in law.  From their point of view, they are correct to do this because, if an abortion is a murder, the law is clearly wrong.  Our system has always included the idea that citizens have a right to oppose laws that are wrong and to attempt to end practices that are immoral.  The anti-slavery movement, for example, used legal and illegal means to bring an end to slavery.  However, such opposition to established practices cannot be described as conservative. A willingness to use all available means to change established practices is a radical stance, and so, members of the anti-abortion movement must be labeled as radicals.

Never Call Radicals “Conservative”!

This is important because words make a difference. The word “conservative” evokes an emotional response that is very different from the response evoked by the word “radical,” and a false use of the word “conservative” affects the character of political discourse.  False political labels mislead voters just as false labels on food mislead consumers. Falsely labeled food is likely to be bad for people who eat it, and falsely labeled political movements are bad for all of us. Never call radical rightists “conservative.”  If you do, you are supporting the use of false labeling. People like Scott Walker, Dave Murphy and Jim Steineke are radicals. They cannot be considered conservatives.