The mother nation

A recent visit it to a ProgCon (Progressive Conservative) website alerted me to an interesting dichotomy: the mother nation versus the nanny state. We have here two fundamentally different views of the role government should play in our society. We have a choice to make in this matter, and it is my view that by adopting the ideal of the mother nation, as opposed to the nanny state, we choose an enabling state, rather than the state as a vehicle for a dependency culture.

A recent conversation with a local Conservative councillor was also illumintating. He spoke of the local government as an 'enabler'. He advocated a different approach to higher taxes and increased spending. He promoted the idea of partnerships between government and business, the bringing in of the private sector with the help of public sector subsidies, to enable projects and initiatives to get off the ground and remain economically viable for the long-term. The Conservatives had taken a cautious approach to spending the people's money, and had not rushed into ambitious yet uncertain projects that would rely on unyielding state funding.

This is not a pitch for the Conservative Party. But it is a pitch for the consideration of different ways of operating in government.

The conventional wisdom would seem to be that greater public benefit must only come from greater public spending and greater government attention to problems. It seems to me that the only real way of dealing with social and economic problems is to develop solutions that allow people to solve those problems for themselves. This is not a harsh, stand-off-ish philosophy, but one which recognises that government, in and of itself, cannot hope to be able to solve all of society's problems. It is a philosophy which runs directly counter to Fabianism, the socialist school of thought advocated by George Bernard Shaw, which would imply that only a large, ever expanding government, run by experts who know the people's interests better than they do, can build a better society. It is the philosophy of voluntarism, of compassionate conservatism, of the fundamental belief in the power of individuals, families and communities over any form of social engineering or activist statism.

Government and the welfare state have an important part to play in our society, but as an enabler, as a vehicle to help people help themselves. 'Compassionate Conservatism', a book written by Marvin Olasky, illustrates excellent examples of how this approach can be encouraged and nurtured. Let us debate the role of government!

South Dakota and the right to life

Recent developments in the United States should be of great interest to those of a pro-life persuasion. The state legistlature of South Dakota has just passed into law, requiring only the signature of the state's governor, to effectively ban abortion in that state. It is clear that such a policy has the design of provoking the Supreme Court into making decisions that could possibly overturn the landmark decision in the 1973 case of Roe v. Wade, giving a woman the right to 'privicy' under the consitution.

George W. Bush made the comment, before becoming President in 2000, that before Roe could be overturned, American hearts needed to be changed. By this he was saying that before there can be full and absolute protection under the law for the unborn, there needs to be a concentration on prevention, and the discouragement of the termination of pregnancies. I believe this to be the right approach to the issue and that simple prohibitions are not adequate to meet the needs of women in difficult situations. A pro-active, pro-life approach to the abortion question should be one based on compassion, both for the unborn and the woman in question, and such care can be faciliated through civil organisations that are there to help and support. This forms a great part of the solution to the problem of abortion that, in my view, should not be ignored.