Call Me a "Civil Societist"

Now that the conservative light is dimming at the end of the Reagan-Bush era, it is time to get back to basics. 

Unlike the coach who bellowed: Let’s get back to basics—this is a football, our basic need is: What do we believe in.  And what we call ourselves.

Are we conservatives?  Libertarians?  Conservative libertarians? Libertarian conservatives?  Names matter.

Arnold Kling has decided what to do. 

Call me a Civil Societarian. I strongly support the institutions of civil society. These include families, corporations, religious groups, private schools, charities, trade associations, and the other peaceful, voluntary collective organizations that promote our individual and collective well-being.

Me too.  But wait.  We are not done yet.

As the structuralists say, don’t forget difference and opposition.  We are opposed to compulsion, political hegemony, government education, government welfare, government healthcare, government subsidies, government privileges, government tenure, and just about everything except a government of laws that defends us against enemies foreign and domestic.

And we also think this.  It is a miracle, a stunning discovery of cosmic proportions, that we should have discovered that in civil society—voluntary cooperation beyond the boundaries of blood kinship—we can build a Great Society, a voluntary collective of all together with all.  And it works.

Not only does it work, but it works better than anything else.

We propose our vision of the Civil Society and its voluntary collective in proud opposition to the idea of the compulsory collective, the mean and cramped vision of our liberal and progressive friends.

But I’m sorry, “Civil Societarian” doesn’t cut it.  We need something shorter: the shorter the better.  What endings are available?  There is conservat-ive, liber-al, social-ist, patri-ot, fight-er, for a start.

I think that the -ist ending is best.  It is modern, as in scient-ist, and is shorter than the three syllables of -ar-i-an.

So let us call ourselves  “Civil Societists.” 

Then liberals can call us neo-socs. (They will, you know.)