The TEA Party has got establishment Republicans’ panties in a major twist.  While most party insiders argue that fiscal conservatism is the uniting factor which will bring Americans out of a socialist abyss, TEA Partiers (despite some obvious ideological diversity within their ranks) aren’t so sure that fiscal conservatism alone is the answer, [1] bringing a serious brand of social conservatism into the mix.  Supposedly this foray into “archaic” and “unwinnable” social issues could cost Republicans the elections, but what could Republicans lose without social conservatism?

First, conservatives must realize that fiscal and monetary policy are a result of culture.  It would be silly to think that we conservatives can detach the way we handle money from our cultural values, as Max Weber’s Protestant Work Ethic asserted, and what even the mainstream media report about the gigantic economic and scientific [2] contributions of the Jewish community.  For a modern day example of culture’s influence on capital, we might even consider how the Chinese government is actively investigating the [3] success of Christian businesses.  But if our culture does not value basic monetary wisdom, chances are we’re neither going to accumulate capital nor respect the rights of others who do.  After all, fiscal leftism is predicated upon the idea that social inequalities arise out of happenstance, and that wealth cannot be a result of legitimate and moral labor, otherwise leftism loses its moral standing.  Leftism can’t simply grow itself from a healthy society: it must result from a poor cultural worldview about wealth building, and from a hotbed of poor cultural values which promote rampant economic distress.

Second, we must ask ourselves how social liberalism encourages this economic instability.  We know–without a doubt–that social liberalism destroys the [4] bedrock wealth-building institution of family through promiscuity and divorce.  We know it supports [5] socially-corrosive drug use and encourages and [6] supports debilitating diseases like AIDS.  We also know that social liberalism actively destroys what George Washington described as [7] socially-foundational religious institutions, and burdens even secular companies with [8] increasingly-likely discrimination lawsuits.  If these are social liberalism’s effects, then we can be sure to face a growing economic instability in future years.  And when the kind of social and economic turbulence resulting from social liberalism becomes unbearable for people–[9] think, Detroit–they will really only have a couple of options: either they embrace conservative culture, discarding the shackles of immorality and holding every man responsible for himself and his family; or they start looking around for people to blame.

And consider why social liberalism makes blaming easy: social liberalism destroys cultural connections within a society, as it opposes most kinds of cultural assimilation and unity, splintering a once-unified populace into diverse cultural groups with diverse cultural values.  But as time progresses under diversification, it is not unfair to ask ourselves whether cultural groups with different cultural values will accumulate wealth differently.  Conservatives know that cultural groups most certainly will and most certainly do, since thoughts affect behaviors, and behaviors affect wealth; but those who deny a direct correlation between wealth-building and culture (leftists) will have nobody to blame for rising social inequalities other than the winners, regardless of whether or not the winners are getting their wealth legitimately.

History shows us that when one cultural group succeeds beyond others in a multicultural environment, [10] it is not uncommon for the other groups to blame the success on cheating, and to seek government intervention.  While social conservatism unites all peoples with a common value system by which to judge the building of wealth, social liberalism leaves room only for suspicion and jealousy, and suspicion and jealousy when combined with democracy oftentimes equal the forcible and arbitrarily-determined redistribution of wealth, also known as fiscal leftism.  It is for this reason that we may conclude fiscal leftism and social liberalism are eternally intertwined, although many in the Republican party may have the momentary illusion that one can exist for an extended period of time without the other.

Furthermore, social conservatism doesn’t just support social stability by reinforcing proper behaviors and personal responsibility, but concerns itself with a cultural foundation for inalienable rights.  Certainly, when our founding fathers appealed to our Creator’s system of natural rights in the [11] Declaration of Independence, they were making a socially-conservative stance which Enlightenment thinker John Locke himself derived from [12] Old Testament Law, as stated in his book, Second Treatise on Government ([13] section 136, including footnotes).  Without a social bedrock of unalienable rights, who are we to tell others when taxation crosses into thievery?  Who are we to tell others the difference between an economic safety net and socialism?  Without unalienable rights, we need to understand above all else that our rights are only a matter of opinion.  Consider the last time you heard someone say “I want my rights,” and they were talking about something which clearly wasn’t actually a right.  How do we tell someone their right is wrong?  From where do we derive these rights?  And can this source ever be a matter of fiscal conservatism?  And isn’t this dissolution of inalienable rights what’s inflaming TEA Partiers, anyway?

Fortunately for us, we don’t have to look very far to see the impact that social liberalism has on society.  A nationwide study by the nonpartisan Bay Area Center for Voting Research showed us which cities were the most liberal, and which were the most conservative, according to voting records.  Consider the ideological/cultural affiliations of these cities (especially those known for unusual [14] cultural diversity) and then consider their safety, and the fact that the most conservative cities were noted by the BACVR for actually having the strong prevalence of a healthy middle class.

Most liberal:

1 Detroit Michigan, consistently rated America’s [15] most dangerous city.  [16] Murder rate five times the national average; rape, robbery and assault far higher than double the national average.

2 Gary Indiana, [17] murder rate 8.75 times the national average, rape rate almost double.

3 Berkeley California, a strange anomaly considering its partners, with relatively average crime

4 Washington, D.C. Dist. of Columbia, [18] murder rate almost six times the national average

5 Oakland California, [19] murder rate almost 4 times the national average, robbery almost three times higher

6 Inglewood California, [20] murder rate 3.6 times the national average

7 Newark New Jersey, [21] murder rate almost 4 times the national average

8 Cambridge Massachusetts, the second livable city, out of ten

9 San Francisco California, scenic place to get robbed: [22] robbery rate almost double the nation’s

10 Flint Michigan, [23] rape and murder almost three times the national average

Most conservative:

1 Provo Utah, [24] murder rate 0.0 times the national average, robbery 0.07%

2 Lubbock Texas, [25] murder rate 0.8% of the national average

3 Abilene Texas, [26] murder rate 0.67 and robbery 0.50 times the national average

4 Hialeah Florida, [27] murder rate 0.73 times the national average, rape rate (YAWN) 0.37 times the national average

5 Plano Texas, [28] murder 0.27, rape 0.55, robbery 0.25, assault 0.6.

6 Colorado Springs Colorado, [29] murder rate 0.56 times the national average

7 Gilbert Arizona, [30] murder rate 0.09, rape 0.42, robbery 0.13, assault 0.22,

8 Bakersfield California, the one conservative city with an actual [31] murder rate slightly above average.  Rape 0.43, robbery 0.76

9 Lafayette Louisiana, [32] murder rate 0.82, robbery 0.68, (it should be noted that [33] cityrating.com’s information didn’t match up with [34] Lafeyette’s Sherriff’s office regarding rape)

10 Orange California, [35] all crimes far below national average

With these facts in mind, I have two questions for Republicans.  If murder, rape, and poverty aren’t clues to social (and by extension, fiscal) liberalism’s failures, then what is?  And if having inalienable rights, a cultural consensus on legitimate wealth building, and strong families–all socially conservative issues–aren’t the basic foundations of a healthy capitalism, then what else will we base capitalism upon?  A platform of low taxation?