The Rhetoric of Social Conservatism

Bob McDonnell’s graduate thesis is worth the read

By Michael W. McLean

Manufactured controversy erupted last month when Democratic candidate for Virginia governor R. Creigh Deeds released sensational quotes from Republican opponent Bob McDonnell’s 99-page graduate thesis. The media and political pundits rushed to judg­ment, writing sensational headlines and accusing McDonnell of harboring radical social views about women, the family, and homosexuals. The Wash­ington Post led in publish­ing the revelations against McDonnell– an effort that was less than evenhanded even by mainstream me­dia standards. The Post took quotes from McDon­nell’s thesis out of con­text, leading readers and Virginia voters to assume McDonnell’s graduate work was comprised en­tirely of radical rhetoric.

Many of the chopped quotes sparked under­standable ridicule. Taken in its entirety, however, it is obvious that McDon­nell’s graduate thesis is a relatively unsurpris­ing work well within the bounds of mainstream social conserva­tive thought. Voters were already aware that McDonnell, a Republican, is a social conservative, and nothing in his writ­ing should particularly surprise them.

McDonnell’s thesis, “The Republican Party’s Vision for the Family: The Compel­ling Issue of the Decade”, begins by chroni­cling the decay of the traditional American family during the 1960s and ’70s as histori­cal background for his proposal of a “model view of family in society.” In this context he attacks the legislation of liberal social policies through court decisions including Roe v. Wade and Griswold v. Connecticut.

The second part of the thesis centers on the need for a national family policy and Republican legislative and political actions to strengthen the definition of family under President Reagan. McDon­nell voices support for school prayer and for “withholding federal funds from programs which are likely to undermine family authority or facilitate the decay of family values,” while condemning pornog­raphy, drug abuse, and homosexuality.

McDonnell evaluates several Republi­can family policies and expresses skepticism about the federal government intervening in family life, which he claims should be the primary concern of the church and state and local governments. “Assessing the Republi­can policy vision in its totality,” he writes, “one discerns a preference for limited gov­ernment and fiscal restraint, yet little hesi­tancy to legislate when an urgent unmet need or objectively good time presents itself.”

McDonnell goes on to assess politi­cal considerations in the development of family policy. In discussing why social conservatives often come across as radical to mainstream Americans, he writes, “Be­cause of political apathy of the electorate and poor marketing, Republican views are not fully understood and accepted even less.” He criticizes “the media’s generally liberal perspective on important issues such as teen pregnancy, abortion, welfare dependency, and homosexuality [that] have made conservative orators sound like extremists.” Ironically, McDonnell, one such conservative orator, is now being labeled as extremist twenty years after writing this warning to fellow social conservatives.

The portion of the thesis liberals have highlighted is the concluding section entitled “Conclusions and Recommenda­tions,” which lists fifteen specific proposals that Republicans should pursue. They are:

1.A human life amendment and strong state anti-abortion laws

2.Appointment of strict constructionists to the courts

3. Enactment of a parent-leave work policy

4. Adoption of laws against pornography

5.Welfare reform

6. Primary education vouchers

7. Fighting a redefinition of family and marriage

8. Fighting the use of federal funds for state sex education and clinics sponsoring abor­tion and contraception

9. Repeal of the inheritance tax

10. Reverse of the no-fault divorce law trend

11. Network the government with churches and businesses to solve family problems

12. Reduce states’ dependence on federal mandate funds

13. Keep social conservatism in the spotlight

14. Lobby for social conservative legislation

15. Market the social conservative message

None of these suggestions is radical. In fact, the Republican Party has pursued many of them successfully, often with the support of large coalitions, in the last twenty years.

Though many have claimed McDon­nell believes women should be regarded as socially inferior to men, careful examination of the writing reveals no evidence of this. In one passage, for example, the author speaks of “a dynamic new trend of working women and feminists that is ultimately detrimental to the family by entrenching a status-quo of non-parental primary nurture of children.” In this case McDonnell is primarily concerned with children’s home life, not feminists and work ing women. In another passage he writes, “The real enemies of the traditional fam­ily– materialism, irresponsibility, feminism, lust, and ultimately selfishness– are largely outside the sphere of federal government im­pact.” When McDonnell refers to “feminism” here and elsewhere he is referring to radical feminism, and never in his work does he infer that women are or should be unequal to men. In fact, the aforementioned two passages are the only two refer­ences to feminism in the entire thesis.

Although Mc­Donnell’s position on homosexuality has also become controversial, his position is in line with social conservatism, not to mention most churches and or­thodox religions. His work infa­mously claims the state should “stat­utorily and pro­cedurally prefer married couples over cohabitates, homosexuals, or fornicators,” and that “the cost of sin should fall on the sinner not the taxpayer.” Rhetori­cally charged though it may be, the sentence advances no surprising revelation for a social conservative. No doubt McDonnell wrote his graduate thesis with a strong emphasis on the Judeo-Christian values he believes to have positively guided and shaped America, and his views on homo­sexuality are shaped by his religious faith.

Bob McDonnell’s thesis is neither surprising nor outrageous for a social conservative running as a Republican for governor. The hype proves yet again that if your views are not liberal in this country, you will be considered an extremist by the media establishment. The unfortunate lesson of the thesis controversy is that politicians and those who aspire to public life must watch their rhetoric. Words spark the flames of controversy even when the message is relatively unsurprising. In an era of thirty-second sound bites and chopped quotes, we are all too quick to jump to conclusions. McDonnell joins the ranks of Michelle Obama and others whose schol­arly work has been taken out of context and exaggerated in the name of politics. Even if you disagree with every word McDonnell writes, reading the thesis at a bare mini­mum allows you to form your own opin­ion independent of the agenda of those secondary authors writing about it. And who can argue with independent thought?