Two Articles by Peter Berkowitz

Catching up after being away so long, I have finally read to articles on my "to-do" list. Both are by Peter Berkowitz.

And both are worth reading. The first is "Conservatism and the Curriculum," from the WSJ. I might quibble with his omission of Duke's courses on "The History of Conservative Thought," and other courses in the Gerst/American Values curriculum, but basically he makes good points.

The second is "Constitutional Conservatism," in Policy Review. Some points he makes on the "way forward":

A constitutional conservatism provides a framework for developing a distinctive agenda for today’s challenges to which social conservatives and libertarian conservatives can both, in good conscience, subscribe. Leading that agenda should be:
• An economic program, health care and social security reform, energy policy, and protection for the environment grounded in fiscally sound, growth-oriented, market-based solutions.
• A national security policy that maintains American military preeminence because it is indispensable to the defense of freedom at home and to the discharge of global responsibilities abroad, and which, in its commitment to defending the nation against the new threats of megaterror, is as passionate about individual liberty as it is about security and is prepared, based on constitutional principles, to responsibly fashion the inevitable, painful tradeoffs.
• A foreign policy that builds on the Truman Doctrine, the Reagan Doctrine, and the Bush Doctrine by recognizing America’s vital national security interest in advancing liberty and democracy abroad while realistically calibrating undertakings — military, diplomatic, and developmental— to the nation’s limited knowledge and restricted resources.
• An orientation toward international relations that promotes free trade, respects international law and institutions while protecting the legitimate prerogatives of national sovereignty, and seeks alliances and opportunities to operate within multilateral frameworks but, particularly where vital national security interests are at stake, is prepared to act alone.
• A focus on reducing the number of abortions and increasing the number of adoptions.
• Efforts to keep the question of same-sex marriage out of the federal courts and subject to consideration by each state’s democratic process.
• Measures to combat illegal immigration that are emphatically pro-border security and pro-lawful immigrant.
• A case for school choice as an option that enhances individual freedom while giving low-income, inner-city parents opportunities to place their children in classrooms where they can obtain a decent education.
• A demand that public universities abolish speech codes and vigorously protect liberty of thought and discussion on campus.
• The appointment of judges who understand that their duty is to interpret the Constitution and not make policy, who bring to their task a presumption in favor of vindicating constitutional principles and protecting individual liberty, and who, where the Constitution is most vague, recognize the strongest obligation to defer to the results of the democratic process.

I should point out that these plausible proposals have NOT risen to the forefront of the Republican agenda. (Yes, even these proposals are pretty tepid, and would hardly satisfy a Libertarian, but I am thinking in directional terms here: The Rs are still going fast in the wrong direction!) And so I am still most definitely not a Republican. You folks who send emails proposing that I am "really" a Republican need to realize that the Repubs are "really" full of goose dung.