It's the Arrogance, Ma'am

Why Conservative Governments Do Better

All democracies, unless they are grounded in the Christian faith, drift inevitably into despotism. Democratic governments invariably expand their controls and regulations over all of human life.

Consequently, it is reasonable to expect that left-wing governments will hold political office for the majority of the time in modern democracies. Democracy and big-government ideologues would appear to be a marriage made in heaven. If democracies are ever drifting leftward as electorates persistently look to government for the solution even to their petty problems, then it seems inevitable that political parties with names such as Labour, Democrats, Social Democrats, or Liberals (in Canada, not Aussie) would hold the reins of power more or less persistently and consistently.

But clearly this is not the case. It turns out that despotically drifting democracies tend to prefer "right wing" or conservative rulers far more than one would expect. There are at least two reasons for this. In the first place, conservative parties and factions are themselves subject to the universal democratic drift towards despotism. If mini-skirts are "in", conservatives will wear their skirts just one centimetre longer than the labourites. They will follow the left-ward drift albeit at a respectable distance. Thus, it is relatively easy for conservative regimes to retain popular support.

As we have seen in New Zealand, when centre-right governments are returned to power their first order of business is not to scare the horses. Thus, they conserve the previous left-wing's advances of statist controls and powers. Modern right-wing governments tend to be consolidators: they have the function of making the electorate comfortable with the newly enhanced state powers. But they often do so with a "human face". They set about calming and quieting the horses, speaking mellifluously about freedoms and commitments to individual liberty and upholding the integrity of families. Uttering the words, even while continuing to maintain or even expand government despotic control, has a strangely calming narcotic effect upon skittish electorates.

Thus, democracies which really lust after bigger and bigger government, provided it continues to pay them out, tend to be more comfortable with conservative administrations. They "feel" better and more comfortable whilst the despotic drift continues.

But there is another reason why left-wing political parties do not do as well as might be expected in ever increasingly socialistic democracies. It is that they are quickly perceived to be arrogant by the electorate. The problem is that left-wing politicians tend to believe that they actually do know what is best for people: essentially more government, bigger government is better. Quickly this translates into politicians knowing what is best for voters. Left wing politicians are easily and naturally perceived as arrogant.

Voters hate arrogance on the part of their servant-rulers. The irony is that both voters and politicians really share a common belief that governments can do it better (in virtually everything). But voters don't like to have this rammed up their noses--as it were. They like to be respected, courted, won-over. They like their politicians to do the dance of a thousand genuflections in their direction. But left-wing politicians are more hidebound by naked ideology: the risk is that ideology quickly overshadows the mincing dances towards the electorate. The lust for the "greater good" can make left-wing politicians stridently impatient.

The rapid declension of the Obama administration and the Democractic Congress in the United States is an apt illustration of the conundrum. Obama and the Democrats have been increasingly fixated upon introducing socialised medicine into the US. With good reason they believe that if they get it in now, the conservatives will never turn it back. They just know that it is going to be good for the country. At heart, we suspect the overwhelming majority of the electorate probably likes the idea that the government will be there for them in a medical emergency or costly illness. But quickly the Democrats political capital has evaporated as an electorate has felt un-consulted, jilted.

Obama and the Democrats are now tagged with elitism and arrogance. Their response is to double up and drive harder--as all ideologues will. If they continue, it is possible that the 2010 elections will send them into a generational political wilderness.

But, let us be clear. If the Republican party ends up dominating federal and state politics in the US for the next twenty-five years it will not stop the despotic drift of the US into socialism-by-another-name. It will only effect the speed of the drift and the comfort of the electorate along the way.

The only way this would not occur is if a significant majority emerges in the United States which no longer regards government as their de-facto god because they have truly repented and humbled themselves before the Living God, and received mercy at His gracious hand. Such things, however, usually take two or three generations to eventuate. And, like all true works of Messiah, they are impossible to predict; they can only be seen and known after the fact.

Regardless, all Christians who are properly taught, understand that there is no hope and no salvation in modern secular democracies. Can there be any hope in a culture which, in its final analysis, has nothing other than a creed of "our god is our belly"? But our hope ever remains in the King of all kings; His realm is inevitably growing and expanding. In the end, truly sustainable democracy will emerge all over the earth where the power of government is extensively proscribed out of the people's love for God and for their neighbours. Omni-competent despotic governments, and the secular democracies which spawned them, will be obsolete.