It is with the greatest honor that I assume the duties of the Publisher of the Princeton Tory for the upcoming year. I have been involved with the Tory since my freshman year – first as a writer, and subsequently as a managing editor – and in that time there have been real strides forward in the quality of this magazine. I’m also excited to introduce to you the names to the right of this letter: Editor-in-chief David Byler, as well as the rest of the editing and production staffs. It is with full confidence that I entrust to them the various duties which are part and parcel of producing a top quality magazine; I look forward to working with them in the upcoming year, and I know that they will do a great job.

As I stated earlier, this magazine has made significant forward steps in terms of appropriating a wiser, gentler tone even just in the last few years. Such is indeed remarkable when it seems that all around us discourse in the general media is moving backwards. Thoughtless name-calling and baseless character assassinations exist on all sides, and arguments are made without a clear eye to the best counterarguments to one’s own positions. This problem is exacerbated when conservatives themselves respond to situations in visceral, reactionary ways. Undoubtedly, there are certainly radical liberals who are equally foolish, and in certain contexts it is our place to point out hypocrisies and follies, but I propose that we conservatives also introspect and consider how we might go about conveying our message in a wise manner.

Similarly, though certain situations may merit justified anger, we must be careful to approach those topics with calmness and even-handedness. Here, the sentiment of the proverb of flies, honey, and vinegar is a valid one. Conservative discourse must also define itself in meekness and gentleness, for it is most likely with these attitudes that we will properly convey our sentiments, and it is most likely with these attitudes that our sentiments will be properly received.

Part of how we might be thoughtful, as conservatives, involves first the conversations we have amongst ourselves, as conservatives. These conversations, in turn, depend on who we actually have in our midst. In this vein, the Tory has always prided itself on being an organization open to a wide variety of viewpoints, and it is my firm belief that the current set of editors, managers, and staff writers continues this tradition of diversity. This is why I believe that this organization will continue to move forward, and just as we sharpen each other, we also hope to be a relevant and constructive voice in the overall campus discourse.

The contrary fear is that if conservatives soften their message too much, we might cease to convey – and eventually remember – what we stood for in the first place. This is a sentiment I fervently agree with, so if we are to be wise and gentle conservatives we must remember first that we are wise, and gentle, conservatives. For while it may be good to be wise and polite in thought general, it would be a tragedy if we were to lose the specific orientation towards political and philosophical thought which informed our wisdom and gentleness in the first place. I feel that the issue you hold in your hands (or before you on your computer screen) represents a well-struck balance.

However, part of wisdom requires that we be willing to admit our mistakes, and so I beseech you, our readers, for any questions, comments, and opinions you may have about a story we’ve run or an article we’ve written. I can’t promise that any or all of the letters to the editor we receive will be published, but I can promise that we will consider very carefully all serious inquiries sent our way. In this manner we also hope to improve as a magazine.

Before I sign off, I also want to thank the Publisher and Editor-in-chief emeriti, Sam Norton and Will Herlands. Both have been incredible sources of wisdom and knowledge in this period of transition. More importantly, the service that these two men have given this magazine is immeasurably great, and they have left us grand shoes to fill.

It is my hope and belief that in the upcoming year the Tory will continue to move forward as it has in the last year, and I’m excited at the responsibility of skippering this voyage. Won’t you please join us on our journey?

Warmly,

Toni Alimi ‘13

Princeton has 34 different academic departments covering a wide range of topics, but some of these departments are – to put it bluntly – tiny. Given the fact that there is evidently little interest for some of these disciplines, many have asked why these departments exist at all. Though it may be a fair question, that’s only so if we intend to consider the answers. In interviewing five representatives about their departments generally, I found a wide variety of explanations as to why these departments are invaluable to Princeton and why more students ought to consider taking advantage of them. First, in evaluating these departments’ impact, the number of majors is a poor measure. These departments strive to, and do, reach a wide range of students in the courses they offer. Furthermore, many of these departments place a strong emphasis on interdisciplinary work. In regards to what they offer, the fantastic student-to-faculty ratio is a great benefit, especially for students interested in research. Finally, these departments are looking to grow, and they hope that students will remain open-minded to their fields. Though students may be cautious of a department that seems to attract few majors, it is telling that all of these departments focus on areas students aren’t typically exposed to in high school.

First and foremost, it’s important to outline just what a “small department” is. When I asked undergraduates to name some of Princeton’s small departments, I got a list that included Astrophysics, Religion, Geosciences, Slavic Languages and Literatures, and Near Eastern Studies. These departments all had 25 or fewer majors (juniors and seniors), so I’ll retroactively use that as the dividing line between a “small” and a “medium” department. As I soon found out, however, it isn’t quite fair to base this definition on the number of majors alone. Many of the courses offered in these departments are being filled by those majoring in an altogether different area. For example, Professor Michael Wachtel, Slavic Department chair, teaches a 400-level course on Russian poetry with four students enrolled: a Slavic major, a math major, an engineer, and an EEB major. It seems that contrary to the understanding that the small departments are extremely narrow, these departments often have a broad appeal. This stems in part from the fact that, perhaps unlike larger departments, these departments aren’t only concerned with the “majors” they have, but actively reach out to the general student population.

As Professor Judith Weisenfeld, acting chair of the Religion Department, explained to the Tory in an interview, “I wouldn’t characterize the small number of majors as limited undergraduate interest. Religion departments tend to see themselves as serving the broader humanities.” Even though there may not be a large number of students choosing to major in the department, the courses offered attract a range of majors. This is significant in and of itself. Professor Wachtel echoed this observation: “We care much less about how many majors we have than we do about the number of students taking our courses.  I would hardly begrudge the Comp. Lit. Department for a student doing that rather than Russian. It would be nice to see more students in the humanities in general.” While these departments would be happy to have more majors, they also have an overarching goal of broadening students’ horizons and preserving and furthering the humanities.

These smaller departments, in addition to pursuing a general broadening of humanities-based studies, pride themselves on offering students intimacy and access to professors. When asked about increasing the number of students majoring in the department, Professor Bess Ward, Chair of the Geosciences Department, said, “We’d love to have 50 majors, but we don’t want to have 300. Something rewarding that we are able to provide in Geosciences is individual attention for a smaller number of majors.” Fifty was by far the highest number offered by any of the departments; the average number these representatives offered as an “ideal size” was closer to 25 undergraduates. Though all seemed interested in growing, the professors I spoke with qualified such growth, putting considerable importance on the benefits that a small department is able to confer upon its students.

One such benefit is a sense of community and warmth that these smaller departments have. It’s difficult for the majors not to know each other, and the departments are happy to have it that way. Michael Reynolds, NES Departmental Representative, offered, “I think students like our department because of the size of it; it’s intimate. Classes tend to be small, and students get a lot of access to the professors and faculty.” Similarly, Neta Bahcall, Director of the undergraduate program in Astrophysics, called hers a “small, friendly, flexible department” that is “well known for its very collegial, supportive, good atmosphere.” Indeed, the Astrophysics Department seems to shine in this regard, with morning discussions over coffee about papers published the night before that regularly attract 20 to 30 students and faculty. In the afternoons, graduate students often have tea and cookies, and discussion is open to any and all areas.

The accessibility of the faculty (all of these departments boast a near 1:1 student-to-faculty ratio) is another strong suit of these departments, especially given Princeton’s atypical focus on undergraduates. In the Astrophysics Department, Professor Bahcall said, “The undergraduates can work with any faculty they want on any topic they want.” Simply given the raw numbers, the larger departments cannot offer the same guarantee. The close relationships between students and professors that can be formed in these smaller departments also allow for improved communication and collaboration.. Professor Weisenfeld explained, “It’s nice to know every major and every majors’ thesis topic. I was a conduit for information, to suggest that they talk to so-and-so. There’s a sense that we’re all invested in everyone else’s work.”

Interestingly, it seems that even the few students that are majoring in these small departments aren’t only doing so because they’re interested in the subject matter; some come precisely for the intimate nature. Professors Wachtel and Weisenfeld both confirmed this, and Professor Reynolds went so far as to say, “Of course, we also get students who are really interested in the topic, and the flexibility is also something students might like. But I think it’s the size of the department and the access to faculty that students get number one, and subject interest number two.”  Certainly, small departments serve students well in appealing to varied interests, but they also cater to the varied priorities students have. Some find the chance to work closely with professors an invaluable opportunity that can’t be passed up.

For students who recognize that their undergraduate education doesn’t necessarily directly line up with their career plans, it seems some choose to take the opportunity to capitalize on the accessibility to professors that small departments grant them. Multiple departments pointed out that they’ve had students go into medical school or finance, reportedly with tremendous success. One student even went so far as to say he only got his job at [a large financial firm] because of his degree in Slavic. In such instances, it could just as well have been a desire to work closely with professors as an interest in the subject matter that attracted these students.

Though the departments are proud of and committed to preserving these special benefits they can offer as a result of their size, all of the representatives I spoke with indicated a desire for their department to grow, and many have already noticed a marked increase in recent years. Though a portion of this growth can be attributed to the 10 percent growth in Princeton’s undergraduate population over the past six years, there also seems to be a growth in interest. The Astrophysics Department has twice the number of majors it used to have – it now has ten –  and it is aiming to double that number yet again in the near future. Professor Reynolds calls the NES Department’s experience “basically a story of expansion. There used to be two or three concentrators every year just a decade ago, but that really changed with 9/11.” The department now has 21 majors, and “could take more than we now have.”

Yet it is important to recognize that few, if any, of these departments will ever grow to the same size as most other departments at Princeton in terms of undergraduate majors. To a large degree, this is due to limited interest in the subject matter. But another common reason I heard from these departments was that without exposure to these areas in high school, few students really think to consider them. Professor Bahcall explained, ”Freshmen are familiar with the science fields they’ve taken in high-school such as biology, chemistry, physics, and of course math.  But here we have a much broader selection of very exciting fields that the students are not yet familiar with, such as astrophysics, geophysics, neuroscience, and ecology and evolutionary biology.  We’re trying to make sure that students expand their horizons once they come to Princeton.” Professor Ward agreed, adding that geosciences is “not accessible to an undergraduate education unless you know something about it.” This issue of minimal previous exposure extends beyond the sciences. Professor Weisenfeld explained the limited number of religion majors as partially owing to the fact that “for many people entering college, the study of religion is not something they’ve imagined as an academic discipline.” Though these professors felt there was little more Princeton could do beyond the current efforts, such as the majors choices program and majors fairs, they highlighted what a shame it is that our preconceived notions of what is and isn’t worth studying are solidified before we even reach campus. It’s fantastic that these departments are here to offer us a broader picture of significant fields, but we must be sure students are capitalizing on these opportunities, and are not too stubborn or intimidated to give these departments consideration in deciding on a major.

In discussing the importance of small departments, it is often said that the work done in these more “niche” areas helps inform other studies and our understanding of the world in general. Indeed, interdisciplinary work is something these departments put particular focus on and contribute to. In the religion department for example, every person on the faculty has a connection to an interdisciplinary program, be it African-American Studies, East-Asian Studies, or the Center for Human Values. These sorts of interactions are highly valued by many departments because of the importance they place on the humanities as a whole. As Professor Wachtel put it, such study “was the common practice of Western culture for many years; it’d be a pity if people stopped seeing value in it for its own sake.” Such interdisciplinary focus is not limited to the humanities. In many smaller science departments, there’s also an emphasis on working with other disciplines. Professor Ward explained, “Basically, we’re a small university, so we cover a lot of ground by having all of these departments. The collaboration and communication between all of those departments is excellent . . . even though they seem small, [the departments] are not silos;  there’s a lot of sharing.”

Clearly, this piece is focused on a usually ignored side of a complex issue. I mean this as a response to what I perceive as the prevailing apathetic attitude many students (myself included) have towards these departments. Though few of us have, or take, the opportunity to examine the efficacy of our smaller departments, it seems worthwhile to give them more careful consideration.  In the end, the numbers don’t tell the whole story. Though there may be few majors in a given department, that doesn’t speak to its value or even its impact.  Considering the fantastic opportunities for working with dedicated faculty that these departments offer, it should come as no surprise that many of their graduates feel passionately about their time here. It just might be time we underclassmen give these departments a second look.

What is PUSH?

PUSH (Princeton University Society of Humanists) is a young organization, founded in 2011, and it is the only organization on campus for non-theists. Like many religious organizations, PUSH members have a variety of different views on religion, including atheism, various levels of agnosticism, secularism, and humanism; in this article, I will refer to all of these as “non-theism.” There are some fine differences between these belief systems, but they all share an absence of traditional religious doctrine. Members also come from different religious upbringings. Some were raised in secular families, but others have Jewish, Protestant, Catholic, Muslim, or Buddhist backgrounds. As non-theists, PUSH members commonly reject prophecy, supernaturalism, divine revelations, etc.  The first goal of PUSH is to make a home for these people. It gives a sense of community to non-theists who might feel surrounded by theistic people.

What makes us a society of humanists rather than a society of non-theists?  Like all non-theist philosophies, humanism rejects traditional religions, but goes a bit further than other non-theist belief systems like atheism or agnosticism. Humanism, like many religions, promotes ethics, values, and human improvement – but uses reason exclusively as its foundation instead of divine revelation or some combination of the two.

In contrast, many other non-theist philosophies, such as atheism, are, strictly speaking, amoral. This does not mean atheist people aren’t moral – it simply means atheism alone does not concern ethics. As an analogy, many physicists have morals, but physics does not include beliefs about ethics. Humanism challenges religion’s near-monopoly on ethics. This is the second purpose of PUSH – to give members a forum to discuss ethics, society, and contemporary events, all through discussions based on reason.

When I talk about PUSH, I always get asked, “What do you do at meetings?” and usually with a look of puzzlement, as if the questioner suspects we all get together and perform some anti-Mass and then complain about religious people. I think the best way to describe it is by examples. In December, we watched a brief film on the history of Christmas, then swapped stories on our own experiences as non-theists living in a predominantly-Christian nation (and, for many of us, Christian families too). In October, we watched a short clip of Richard Dawkins – “An Atheists Call to Arms” – and talked about if or how atheists should promote their beliefs. We also invite guest lecturers such as philosophy professor Gideon Rosen, who talked to us about religious philosophical arguments. Generally, most of our meetings are discussions based on a PUSH-sponsored article, video, or lecture.

Our Politics: Don’t Push my Buttons

PUSH is not a political group. PUSH is not involved in political activism, even on issues related to non-theism. Political activism is simply not in the scope of PUSH. PUSH was never meant to be an activist group for non-theists. Moreover, there simply isn’t agreement among non-theists about political issues, even in issues heavily involved with religion.

Even on issues that would seem to have unanimous consensus among non-theists, differences still crop up. Evolution v. Creationism is a great example. Practically every member of PUSH wants evolution taught over creationism in public schools, but there isn’t much agreement beyond that. For example, should public school teachers be legally mandated to teach evolution? Should we reject school voucher programs that might send students to a school where creationism is taught? Should the theory of intelligent design be allowed in a philosophy course?

Another good example is the “In God We Trust” phrase printed on American currency. Some non-theists lobby to remove this from our currency, but others think it’s petty or a waste of time. If PUSH entered the thorny arena of political activism, it would necessarily isolate certain members, contradicting its primary goal of “establishing a positive social environment for rationalists, skeptics, and non-theists.” PUSH is not a group dedicated only for non-theists with certain political leanings, no matter how tied up politics and religion can get. The only thing PUSH “advocates” is rationality and skepticism. In fact, the third goal of PUSH is to promote intelligent discussion between non-theists and theists. This is the closest PUSH gets to advocating.

However, that doesn’t mean we never discuss politics. Sometimes we discuss political events surrounding non-theism. For example, we invited a guest lecturer to speak on the ongoing creationism v. evolution clash in public schools. Secondly, sometimes our guest lecturers discuss politics, but it is not the emphasis of the lecture. Finally, as politics almost always involves value judgments, politics can indirectly appear any time we discuss values. Once, we had a discussion on the Ten Commandments and their influence on Western legal codes—and then made up an alternative, modern Ten Commandments that we could use today. Naturally, when we thought of a modern Ten Commandments, we made value judgments, and these judgments can be indirectly related to politics. PUSH does not explicitly discuss political issues that aren’t related to non-theism. So, you’ll never hear PUSH debate about tax policy or gun rights.

Since there is no divine authority to shape the beliefs of non-theists, PUSH members have different ideas on politics, philosophy, and ethics. We don’t share any dogmatic, unquestionable beliefs that unite most religions, but we do share a strong sense of skepticism and are more concerned in serving humanity rather than a god.  PUSH is both a forum and a community for non-theists.

Conservative support for Israel in the past three decades has been both reflexive and uncritical. Without reservation, the US has given its unconditional support to Israel and has demanded little in the way of domestic reform. Conservatives, in particular, have advocated for even stauncher support of Israel. In a recent address to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Chris Christie bluntly expressed the conservative attitude toward Israel:

“A threat to Israel is a threat to America. A threat to the Israeli way of life is a threat to the American way of life. Not only for here in America, but for all the nations that emulate our democracy or are trying to emulate our democracy around the world.”

Most conservatives and foreign-policy hawks will nod approvingly of this statement, accepting without much reflection, the two claims presented: that supporting democracy means supporting Israel and that Israel’s interests are one and the same as the US’s interests. On this basis, unconditional support for Israel would not only encourage the spread of democracy but also enhance US power, the two objectives of conservative foreign policy. But does support for Israel really advance these two missions?

Spreading Democracy?

Contrary to the conservative opinion, unconditional support for Israel actually undermines the democratization movement. While a democracy in name, Israel employs a string of undemocratic practices. It denies political rights to those living in the Occupied Territories yet refuses to grant these Palestinians a fully sovereign government. The Palestinian Authority is nothing more than a sham administration with no real political teeth. Whether in Israel or in a separate state, the Palestinians must have sovereign representation.

Worst of all, perhaps, is Israel’s notorious human rights record in the Occupied Territories. International organization after international organization has condemned the behavior of the Israeli military, noting its use of Palestinians as human shields, its arbitrary detention of prisoners, its bombing of schools and hospitals, and its use of disproportionate military means. This shows a complete disregard for international law and accepted rules of engagement. Does a liberal democracy really bomb residential areas with white phosphorus?  Supporters of Israel raise the point that the US cannot judge the nation’s undemocratic actions because Israel is in existential struggle and must use any means necessary to protect its security.  Even if this dubious claim was correct, Israel’s situation does not give it the right to abuse the rights of others as a faithful practitioner of democracy. One cannot simultaneously advocate support for Israeli democracy and then deem its human rights record as above criticism. Either Israel holds itself to a high democratic standard, or it is simply a nation fighting for its existence. It cannot claim both.

With this in mind, it becomes clear why the US’s pleas for democracy in the Middle East ring hollow. Arabs see the US support for democracy and its support for Israel as incoherent, and subsequently see the US as an obstacle for freedom in the region. Israel itself does not promote democracy in the region. In their eyes, political representation is only legitimate when it advances Israeli interests. While Christie may associate the “Israeli way of life” with the “American way of life,” it is hard to reconcile the siege mentality of Israel with the relative stability of the US. I do not mean to unfairly criticize Israeli domestic policy. I fully understand that its security situation may demand more restriction on civil liberties than what Americans would accept. Accepting this restriction, however, puts a serious dent in the argument that Israel holds the regional banner for democracy.

Serving U.S. Interests?

Other supporters of Israel claim that US interests and Israeli interests are intertwined, but should their policies be in lockstep? What positive impact has Israel had on US power? What gains have resulted from Israeli policy? Gone are the days when Israel served as a regional counterweight to Soviet-supported Syria. Its usefulness as a regional ally is minimal, considering the US cannot call on the Israeli military or use its bases for fear of sparking a war in the Middle East. In fact, Israel’s belligerence in the region has handcuffed US policy, leaving the American government to contain the damage that Israel causes for itself. The impending crisis with Iran puts this dynamic on display. The US finds itself forced to consider military action against Iranian nuclear facilities not only out of fear of the Islamic Republic but also out of fear that Israel will strike first and spark a regional conflict. Ultimately, the US has to bear the consequences of another nation’s belligerence, something that clearly does not serve US interests.

More importantly, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict unites Arabs across national boundaries against Israel, and its backer, the US. The cause célèbre of the region, this conflict increases regional animosity towards the US. This anger complicates the US’s relationship with its other regional allies, such as Saudi Arabia and Jordan, as these monarchies cannot openly support Israel. This anger toward the US also impedes reform in the region and lends support to radical Islamist groups, as groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas can garner democratic support for its strong stance against Israel and its backer. Hamas, in particular, is an example of a group coming to power not because of its domestic aims, but because of its position toward the Palestinian cause. Its rise to power ever since is a direct reflection of its ability to undermine PLO peace initiatives and portray itself as the true standard-bearer of the Palestinian cause. If the Palestinian conflict were resolved or at least progressed in that direction, it would strip many fundamentalist groups in the region of their claim that secular organizations, like Fatah, have not delivered on Palestinian liberation. In direct opposition to US interest, jihadi groups, like Al-Qaeda, use the US’s complicity in the conflict as recruitment material for their struggle against US power.

So what are the sum effects of the US’s alliance with Israel? First, it handcuffs America militarily and diplomatically. Secondly, it props up political groups that are violent, theocratic, and anti-US. Finally, it aids the recruitment efforts of terrorist organizations. And this alliance serves US interests? It seems pretty clear to me that the US power suffers a great deal from this arrangement.

What Increased Pressure Can Do

What can increased US pressure on Israel accomplish? Given the $3 billion in aid the US gives it and the US’s status as its only international defender, Israel needs the US more than the US needs Israel. Increased pressure on Israel can drive it to negotiate along pre-1967 borders, a condition that would revive the peace process and bring about a swifter resolution to the conflict. A resolution would do wonders for Israel’s regional relations and would legitimize peaceful Arab political groups over radical Islamist organizations. Additionally, it would improve the US’s image in the region, and give it more diplomatic flexibility.

Supporters of Israel are right in pointing out that other regional actors have contributed a great deal to the current conflict, and its resolution requires their participation, but Israel must make the next step in the negotiation process. This does not mean that the US should call for Israel to resolve the conflict no matter the accommodation but that Israel ceases to claim the status quo as essential to their survival. Increased pressure from the US may not bring an immediate end to the conflict, but it can at least begin to repair its image in the region. A move in this direction will not only improve the chances for democracy in the Middle East, but also enhance US power, a prospect that conservatives should welcome.

America has historically been an important benefactor and ally of Israel, but the relationship has not been devoid of tension or criticism. Partially for that reason and partially because I have no interest in endorsing a criterion-less relationship with Israel, I will not attempt to defend the thesis that America’s policy is, or should be, “in lockstep” with Israel’s. Despite the fact that it is only this moderate attitude toward Israel that Kunze explicitly criticizes, his arguments are suggestive of a shift in policy and outlook that I think are wrongheaded.

I see a number of problems in his article. First, it unfairly characterizes Israel’s democracy based on a simplistic understanding of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Second, it buys hook, line and sinker into anti-Israel propaganda that claims that Israel is the source of all unrest in the Middle East, essentially holding that if Israel were not so intransigent then America would be the recipient of Arabic love letters rather than the target of terrorist activity. Third, it wrongly asserts that increased American pressure on Israel is the missing step in the resolution of the ongoing conflict. I will briefly defend these objections, as well as offer some positive reasons as to why America should remain a strong ally and defender of Israel.

To begin, Kunze attacks Israel as undemocratic, alleging that it has refused to grant Palestinians sovereignty or voting rights and attacking its human rights record. (To make one clarification, Gaza is not occupied by Israel. In 2005, Israel unilaterally pulled out its army and removed settlers from Gaza. Unfortunately, this conciliatory move was followed by the immediate destruction of the agricultural infrastructure left behind, simultaneously accompanied by the rise of Hamas.) I will not deny that bodies like Amnesty International repeatedly vilify Israel on various accounts. However, I put little stock in self-proclaimed “human rights” organizations that fixate obsessively on Israel while ignoring far worse atrocities in other countries whose leaders refer to Israel as a “scum state.” They drool over the anti-Israel Goldstone Report, which was rescinded by Goldstone himself after he realized that the conclusions drawn regarding Israeli war crimes in Gaza were false.

No, the Israeli public hardly has a “siege mentality” as Kunze claims. Arabs living in Israel have the right to vote. They are represented in the parliament, as well as in the Supreme Court. Walking around Jerusalem, one sees Arab and Jewish children playing in the same parks; religious Muslims and Hassidic Jews stroll peacefully through the same shopping centers. The circumstances surrounding Palestinians living in the West Bank are obviously very complicated. Mistakes have been made on both sides, but Israel has repeatedly extended the olive branch in an attempt to create a Palestinian state, only to be summarily rejected by Palestinian leaders. In 2010, a ten-month settlement freeze by Prime Minister Netanyahu was met with silence from the Palestinians. Yet, the repeated demand is that Israel compromise and make the next unreciprocated move. After years of terrorism and vitriol, Israel cannot be expected to sacrifice the security of its people to gamble on what is likely to be a failed state. It is not a simple matter of willfully subjugating another people.

On top of the criticisms about Israel’s democracy were assertions – stated and unstated –  that America’s support for Israel leads to a host of problems for the region and for the United States. My initial reply is that Israel is simply not at the root of the problems of the Middle East. This is a common liberal assumption, which is somewhat ironic: what is more Orientalist, more condescending, than to deny Arabs true agency? Perhaps the support for this analysis lies in the rhetoric of Arab dictators. For decades, they have used Israel as a scapegoat for their countries’ problems. Examples of this abound, but one need look no further than the accusation by Egyptian officials fifteen months ago that the Mossad was behind a series of shark attacks in Sharm-el-Sheikh to see the extent to which blaming Israel has become a Pavlovian response.  Such accusations might be funny if they weren’t so ubiquitous. A better explanation of recent shockwaves through the region, in addition to those over the past half-century, is that Arab autocrats have done a poor job of providing for their citizens’ needs.
A similar argument holds, in some form or another, with respect to the Palestinians. Without getting into too much detail, it is clear that the pattern of terrorist activity against Israel predates Israel’s control of the West Bank and Gaza, and even the founding of the State. The Hebron Massacre of 1929 left sixty-seven Jews brutally murdered by their Arab neighbors. The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), recognized as a terrorist organization by the US and Israel until 1991, was founded in 1964 in an effort to rid Palestine, the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, of Zionism (and Zionists). Israelis dug thousands of graves in preparation for the massacre that they assumed laid in store in 1967 at the hands of Arab leaders who had proclaimed their intentions to wipe Israel off the map and meet one another in Tel Aviv and Haifa.

Groups like Hamas possess and perpetuate deep hatred of Israel and Jews, not frustration at aggression. Moreover, the popularity of groups like Hamas and Hezbollah comes less from their radical political positions and more because they provide health and welfare services that incompetent governing bodies do not. Is Israel blameless? No. But the blame does not lie at one set of feet.

If we accept that the turmoil in the Middle East is not a function of Israel’s behavior, then the idea that American support for Israel helps create the problem dissipates. While support for Israel definitely does not help America’s image in the Middle East, there are more direct reasons for the animosity toward the United States. One possibility is that broader socio-political forces pulling young people toward radical Islam instills them with an ideology directly at odds with the ethos represented by democratic, westernized countries – qualities shared by both America and Israel. Perhaps it is the fact that America has supported despotic regimes not supported by the people. America’s support for Mubarak is naturally a much more direct source of anguish for Egyptians than the indirect connection through Israel. Iranians burned the American flag in the 1979 Revolution because of American support for the Shah, not its treatment of another country. To further claim that the entirety of American foreign policy in the region is dictated by Israeli concerns rather than its own self-interest sounds like a card out of that well-known Russian forgery – quite popular in the Arab world today – The Elders of Zion. A nuclear Iran threatens the stability of the region (a strategic worry) as well its liberty – a threat, as Governor Christie might say, to the American way of life.

I won’t deny that supporting Israel has a negative impact on America’s image in some Middle Eastern countries, but turning on an important ally in response to irrational behavior for some additional goodwill on the Arab Street doesn’t seem like a good tradeoff. For one thing, it is a misreading of the political landscape. In peace deals that have been made between Israel and surrounding Arab countries, it has been the American carrot rather than the stick that proved to be most productive. Repudiating Israel is a good way to lose their citizens’ faith in America’s ability to mediate the conflict. Israelis are sufficiently independent to prefer going at it alone rather than submitting to pressure against what they see as their true interests. A promising Palestinian leadership and plan for economic growth, along with education reform in Palestinian schools, are the surest ways to convey to Israelis that they are a serious partner for peace.

Kunze’s suggestions also underestimate Israel’s value as an ally. The contributions of Israel’s intelligence arms, the Mossad and Shin Bet, are immense. Since the Cold War, Israel has helped provide invaluable information to the United States. Israel is also an incredible source of innovation. The approximately $3 billion given annually to Israel effectively serves as a welfare check to the American defense industry, since Israel is required to spend approximately 75% of it here. Finally, rather than promote democracy, turning against Israel inhibits it.  We must support and encourage pockets of democracy where it flourishes. I think we all hope that the seeds of democratic sentiment that might have begun to sprout in the region will grow into something meaningful. We can all move forward together, peacefully and rationally. Flippantly writing off Israel’s robust democracy with an eye toward coddling despotic rulers or those “democratically elected” leaders who look to instate their stultifying interpretation of Sharia law would be a true hypocrisy.

Reflecting on Santorum’s upset victory in the Iowa caucuses, President George W. Bush’s former chief speechwriter, Michael Gerson, said, “But perhaps the most surprising result of the Iowa caucuses was the return of compassionate conservatism from the margins of the Republican stage to its center.” Santorum’s connection to compassionate conservatism can be seen in both his rhetoric and policy positions. In 2005, he said before the Senate Republican Conference, “Freedom is the dual activity of lifting our eyes to the heavens while extending our hand to our neighbor. The only orthodox conservative philosophy that matches with this is compassionate conservatism.” As a senator, he was the Chairman of the Republican Party Task Force on Welfare Reform and contributed to the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 that reformed welfare using many of the ideas present in compassionate conservatism. Yet his positions during the Bush years on No Child Left Behind and Medicare Part D have also associated him with the big-government tendencies of some compassionate conservatives.

I am not interested in Santorum’s policies so much as whether compassionate conservatism is ideologically predisposed to the big government programs Santorum himself supported. Now that the disappointments of President Bush’s domestic agenda have begun passing into history, I can show that the agenda’s failures were not incipient in his compassionate conservative ideology, but were shortcomings within his administration’s execution of the vision. First, the uncontroversial aspect of compassionate conservatism must be acknowledged—it rejects the liberal welfare state in moral and religious terms. Second, I will show how personnel and the advent of the war on terror doomed compassionate conservatism to be enacted in a more centralized way than originally intended. Finally, supported by the forces of small government, compassionate conservatism today promises to be a third path between laissez-faire and bureaucratized societies.

Marvin Olasky, editor-in-chief of WORLD Magazine and the godfather of compassionate conservatism, defined it as “a way to help the poor without growing government and bringing in all the problems that it leads to.” This definition, on its face, is rather all encompassing. Even libertarians, who are passionately opposed to compassionate conservatism, could accept this view since it does not specify what role the government should take in helping the poor. Indeed, even a critic of compassionate conservatism like Dick Armey, who argues that conservatism’s pro-growth and pro-personal freedom policies make it inherently compassionate to the poor without the need for government intervention, would approve of compassionate conservatism if it were defined in such a way. While this definition may seem to be vague, it does provide a rallying point around which many conservative strands can unite.

Olasky’s definition draws out an aspect of compassionate conservatism that all conservatives agree on—its critique of the welfare state’s failure to help the poor. During the welfare reform debates of the mid-90s, many Republicans approached reform as a budgetary issue. Compassionate conservatism, by contrast, provided an entirely new and more incisive rejection of the welfare state. In an interview with the Tory, Olasky explained, “It wasn’t primarily a question of budgets. It was a question of the way it was treating human beings like animals by just putting food in their bowls and asking them to be content with that rather than treating them as beings in God’s image capable of wonderful things. What helped to put welfare reform over the top in Congress was this different way of looking at it so it wasn’t just green-eyeshades-Republicans vs. Democrats who loved people and wanted to help people. It was actually a real way to help people that helped people get off the welfare plantation.” Olasky’s moral critique of the welfare state’s smothering of human aspiration proved so powerful during the reform debates of the mid-90s because its focus on the latent capabilities of the individual resonated at a religious level deeper than rhetorical platitudes.

Compassionate conservatism, while not identical to neoconservatism or Catholic social thought, shares their concern with the effects of the welfare state on human flourishing. While neoconservatism sprang from increasing disillusionment with the failures of the New Society evidenced by sociology and experience, and Catholic social thought came from Church traditions and a reaction to socialism in the nineteenth century, compassionate conservatism seems to have a newer vintage. The term was used sporadically in the 1980s, but did not gain real cachet until Olasky first used it in 1990. After that, it flourished as Congressional leaders used the ideology to phrase the terms of the welfare reform debate. “It really picked up in 1998 when Governor Bush started using it to define who he was,” Olasky said. “The term reached its height in 2001 and then has declined for the past ten years.”

Despite compassionate conservatism’s relatively recent political origins, Olasky looks to the nineteenth century and the Social Calvinists for the movement’s precursors. “In the nineteenth century you actually had a three-way divide. Social Darwinists were against anything that would help the poor because the human race would progress further and faster if the poor were just wiped out, and Social Universalists were in favor of universal redistribution of goods to the poor. And then Social Calvinists were saying much in the same way that you offer the Gospel to everyone and you don’t know who’s going to go with it and who’s not, you offer work opportunities to everyone and some would accept those opportunities and some would not. But they were neither Social Darwinists nor Social Universalists. They gave opportunities to individuals.” Compassionate conservatism’s basis in the evangelical Protestant tradition makes its potential demise even more worrisome. In rejecting it, its critics not only conclude that a recent ideology couldn’t withstand the test of history, but they also must deny form to a religious tradition’s civil doctrines. Without expression for their charitable values in the conservative mainstream, evangelicals will face the unacceptable choice between a degrading welfare state and a heartless laissez-faire policy. For these evangelicals, reform of the welfare state cannot come at the expense of the inalienable dignity of the individual.

While compassionate conservatism’s critique of the welfare state allows us to dissect the ideology’s central premises, it is not what earned the doctrine disrepute in the Bush years. That was the consequence of the terms’ association with bigger government and increased deficits. Gerson defined compassionate conservatism more strictly in 2006 as “the theory that the government should encourage the effective provision of social services without providing the service itself.” Yet debates within the Bush administration demonstrated that several policy options could encourage services provision. Given the choice between measures that centralized the administration of this encouragement apparatus and measures that devolved the power, the administration consistently chose the more politically advantageous route of centralization.

The hallmark accomplishment of Bush’s compassionate conservatism was the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (OFBCI). Coordinating among several cabinet departments, the office directed government-non-profit partnerships to improve civil society. Even in the administration’s reform of the welfare state, the victory of centralization could be seen. Olasky described the two choices the administration faced in 2001 in crafting the OFBCI’s methods: “One way was to continue the centralized system—the granting system—where the government would decide where the money would go and organizations would apply to Washington, and government people would make better decisions than before, and they would not automatically exclude mainline religious groups.” This grant-based system eventually won out, but Olasky advocated a second method: “The other view which is the decentralized view—namely, as much as possible you start working through tax credits and vouchers. With tax credits, instead of individuals sending money to Washington and having Washington decide where to put that in communities, individuals could send that money directly to poverty-fighting groups in communities and get a tax credit for it.” Certainly, according to Olasky, this decentralized approach was most consistent with true compassionate conservative ideology.

The Bush administration failed to move in the direction of greater reform and decentralization, however, because of ambivalence amongst Bush’s advisers concerning compassionate conservatism. Olasky explained, “Really there was no one else in the White House besides Bush and Gerson who really cared about this at a high position in the White House.” Bush’s chief adviser, Karl Rove, conveyed in meetings his concern for the political effects of faith-based initiatives and how compassionate conservatism helped Bush win independent voters. The ideology in and of itself was not as important as its electoral implications. The first director of the OFBCI, John Dilulio, was a University of Pennsylvania professor “committed to a big-government approach,” according to Olasky. Once the institution was in place, it was difficult for the subsequent directors to steer the office away from grants into tax credits. “The first eight months of the program which were critical went in a big-government direction instead of a small-government direction,” Olasky said, “and actually John out of very good intentions pushed in that direction. That was the window of opportunity to get it going.”

The administration’s initial big-government approach became entrenched when the war on terror began. “After 9/11 that window [for decentralization] closed,” Olasky argued, “because President Bush and his administration became a war president and a war administration and other things like compassionate conservatism were on the back burner.” The tepid ideological commitment by key advisers like Rove chilled completely when pressing international concerns appeared. Calls for decentralized power were swallowed by executive expansions as the war on terror got underway.

While these incongruities between thought and practice may be unfortunate, any ideology must be actualized into a flow of history that will reduce its general wisdom into specific failures. Due to hypersensitivity concerning these failures, compassionate conservatism did not get a fair trial in the courts of history. It was a movement supported by too few true believers and reduced to a banner by others interested in rebranding their political message. In the hands of small-government tea party activists, compassionate conservatism has a chance to reinvigorate itself and avoid the traps of big government that it was originally created to prevent. Inasmuch as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are poverty-fighting measures and not entitlements, Republicans can advocate reform of these programs on the basis of compassionate conservatism. Some part of the budgetary reductions in these programs can be used to fund tax credits for individuals to use on poverty-reducing programs in their community. The other option isn’t austerity; it’s the status quo. “If it’s just a choice between government and nothing,” Olasky said, “then I think government will often win.”

For a number of years, Princeton’s hook-up culture has garnered considerable discussion, and at this point, a significant number of people may be tuning it out entirely.  They’ve heard all the arguments against hooking up, they might say, and they don’t appreciate being told how to live their lives.  If you are inclined to think this way, I only ask that you would consider anew how high the stakes are.  The fundamental ways in which you conceive of yourself and other people can be crucially altered—sometimes in less-than-obvious ways—by sexual decisions made in college, so at least recognize that the debate still matters.  Sex changes the way we think about each other as human beings–and sometimes not for the better, as I hope to convince you.

One of my primary criticisms of the hook-up culture, that it objectifies both men and women, is not a new line of reasoning.  The customary rebuttal to this charge is that both parties, in mutually agreeing to hook up, have made a decision by their own free choice, and they are acting on it.  It is an expression of liberation.  I would respond that it certainly is their choice to hook up, but that does not change the fact that by allowing sexual activity to be the product of a chance encounter (probably facilitated by alcohol), their treatment of sex still reduces both of them to mere vessels of bodily sensation, where human individuality is unimportant.

To elaborate on my claim, sexual activity is generally understood outside of the hook-up culture as something special to be reserved for a person one loves or cares about deeply.  However, when people think it natural to share sex with many others, then it follows that the personal identity of those engaging in the act becomes much less important, if not completely irrelevant.  Few seek to know the true measure of whoever their partner is:  where they come from, what they hope for, their joys and sorrows, their inner thoughts and feelings; all of these things are meaningless when sexual pleasure is the sole objective and the only differentiation between individuals is how well a person performs in bed.

In response to my assertion that a flippant treatment of sex precludes the possibility of a meaningful relationship, it could be argued that some people are just looking for sex and nothing else, and they’re frank about it, so relational depth is immaterial.  That would be the very definition of objectification, though.  As for those who believe regular sexual encounters increase the possibility of finding a deep relationship, I applaud the goal, but I still believe this approach is a damaging way to go about it.

Recall that, ideally, sex is saved for someone in particular.  Attempting to find this person by having sex with a variety of people is neither sensible nor beneficial.  Rather, sex is cheapened and rendered less meaningful when you go through numerous partners, no matter how sincere your search for the right one is.  Even if you do find that person, your relationship with him or her (not to mention your sex life) will never be what it could have been if you had refrained from sex until you met him or her.

In order to see why this is the case, it must be understood that sex connects people not only physically, but emotionally as well, regardless of whether they do or do not ascribe much significance to it.  In fact, Dr. Sue Johnson, the Director of the International Center for Excellence in Emotionally Focused Therapy and Distinguished Research Professor at Alliant University, writes that “a huge part of our brain is designed…for…emotional connection and bonding,” and “our sexual partner is usually at the top of the list” of people we’re bonded with.  A study published in Nature Neuroscience also affirms the bonding nature of sex.  According to a summary at True Love Revolution, “sexual activity in both men and women involves the release of powerful bonding hormones that are designed to help married couples stay together permanently and trust each other.” Having sex with each and every person you’re interested in, then, merely serves to injure you emotionally, because leaving someone will not free you from those bonds.  Quite the contrary, you will probably feel “a palpable sense of loss, betrayed trust, and unwelcome memories.”  If, on the other hand, you refrain from sex until you do meet that special person, you will be able to stop searching and cherish him or her just the same, sparing yourself the struggle to disregard bonds from previous sexual encounters.

Apart from how much it harms you to incorporate sex in all of your attempted relationships, the people you’re having sex with can also be hurt by this practice.  As mentioned above, to treat a sexual partner as no different from anyone else after the fact runs counter to our own natural inclinations.  Thus, employing sex as a means of facilitating the growth of relationships is emotionally risky and counterproductive for everyone involved.

The current president of the Anscombe Society, Audrey Pollnow ‘13 [full disclosure:  Audrey has also written for the Tory], shared with me in a recent interview her own idea of sex:

Good sex means you give yourself to the other person in an important way.  If something really horrible happened to them, you could commit yourself to stick through that.

This level of commitment is, at a bare minimum, less likely to materialize if your own attitude is to share sex with whomever might be the one you’re looking for.  You may not have a problem with that, perhaps finding Audrey’s vision too limiting or restrictive, but has treating sex as “freely” as the hook-up culture does proven ultimately satisfactory or rewarding? Your answer and subsequent behavior will make all the difference.

Since I’ll be graduating in a few months, I’ve started thinking recently about the kind of relationship I will maintain with Princeton University once I walk out FitzRandolph Gate. Other seniors, naturally, have this issue on their minds as well. In a recent edition of the Daily Princetonian, Emily Rutherford ’12 explained the reasons behind her decision not to contribute to Annual Giving. Without getting into the merits of her arguments, I think that her column provides a useful starting point for a broader discussion about our obligations toward one another, whether as Princetonians or as citizens of a particular nation.

There are two diametrically opposed sides in this debate. On the one hand are the egoists, who argue that we have no non-consensual obligations; all acts of beneficence are supererogatory. On the other are the cosmopolitans, who argue that we have obligations that apply equally to all human beings; thus, I have no special obligations to my countryman that do not apply to foreigners.

Each of these views seems flawed to me. The egoist claim denies any sense of shared humanity or shared responsibility. At the very least, I think that there exists an obligation to help those in dire need when we are in a unique position to help. For instance, if I encounter a man wandering about the desert dying of thirst, I should be obligated to provide him with water, since only my intervention can save his life. There are, of course, limits to this principle of rescue, but it does establish grounds for obligation in certain cases.

The cosmopolitan claim, in its universality, is both impractical and contrary to human nature. There is a valid reason why we are inclined to help those in our own backyards rather than those in distant places– we can have a greater impact at a lower cost. Taken to its logical extreme, cosmopolitanism demands that we refuse to spend large amounts of money caring for sick relatives, on the grounds that such resources might be better utilized elsewhere. I doubt whether anyone, when pressed, would be willing to make that decision.

I think that there is a middle ground between egoism and cosmopolitanism. Our obligations to others can be arranged hierarchically, on the basis of the intimacy of the relationship. This means that we have the strongest obligations to our immediate family and close friends, and minimal obligations (but not a lack of obligations) toward a person we’ve never met before.

In this schema, common identities, like a shared alma mater or nationality, provide a basis for obligations that exceed those owed to a complete stranger. Princeton University is not merely a collection of buildings scattered around 500 acres in Central New Jersey; it is a vibrant, dynamic institution with its own unique culture and ethos. In the same way, the United States of America is not merely a tract of land lying south of Canada and north of Mexico; it is an exceptional nation, proud of its history and its character. By choosing (implicitly or explicitly) to become students at Princeton or citizens of the United States, we enter into a bond with those who made the same choice. Out of this connection arises an obligation to take an interest in the well being of one another that goes above and beyond that which is owed solely on the basis of shared humanity.

With that in mind, we must look to our University and our country not simply as providers of services, but as objects of loyalty. Likewise, we must look to our fellow Princetonians– and fellow Americans– not merely as accidental neighbors, but as partners in a collective project. For this reason, I intend to continue cultivating ties with Princeton University after I depart from campus. I hope that the rest of the Class of 2012 will do so as well.

Sincerely,

Sam Norton ‘12

“If we’ve learned any lessons during the past few decades, perhaps the most important is that preservation of our environment is not a partisan challenge; it’s common sense. Our physical health, our social happiness, and our economic well-being will be sustained only by all of us working in partnership as thoughtful, effective stewards of our natural resources.”

Sentiments like the one above have, increasingly, become popular. As politicians have shared images of polar bears on melting ice caps, the media have warned of global warming, and NGOs have published reports on pollution, the impetus for protecting the environment has increased.

However, as the proverb goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. As with many other problems, the problem of preserving biodiversity has been met with prescriptions for regulation, which often go against conservative and libertarian conceptions of property rights.

But protecting the environment need not require this obstruction of rights. The author of the opening quote wasn’t a hippie bent on violating private property in order to save the Skunk Frog Nor was he a tie-dyed “granola crunchy” destroying the economy to ensure the salvation of the humpback whale. In fact, the author was probably the furthest thing from it: he was the 40th President of the United States, Ronald Reagan. And his quote illustrates something that conservatives, libertarians, and other defenders of property rights often forget: the market solves more than just economic problems. “Saving the planet” doesn’t require government regulation – often, good old-fashioned market solutions work just fine.

How the Right surrendered the environment

Why is it popularly supposed that the solution requires regulation? To find the answer, we must understand the historical roots of the environmental movement.

At first, the goals of environmentalism were not always so far away from the right’s heart. Former Republican president Calvin Coolidge, a perennial favorite of the Right, exhorted the Boy Scouts to “[r]emember that nature is your great restorer.” Conservatives and libertarians across the nation favored protection of Mother Earth through private conservation efforts.

For a long time, though, environmentalism remained outside of the public eye. That all changed in the 1960s. Some of the liberal activists of the 1960s, like Rachel Carson and Paul Ehrlich, decided that the status quo wasn’t enough; the planet needed saving. Environmentalism and the “back-to-nature” movement became associated with the Left just as much as sexual liberation and banning mandatory school prayer.

But then, the environmentalists went a step further: they blamed the system of property rights for environmental problems. Like most of their other crusades, such as the war on poverty, environmentalists believed the problem was rooted in private individuals acting wrongly; as Leonard Cohen put it, “private property rights have been emphasized, often at the expense of our environment.” Pollution, for example, was blamed on private individuals (especially bigger businesses) selfishly dumping waste into rivers. As a result of these private problems, it was assumed that the cure was to restrict those individuals – and, thus, their rights.

Certainly, there is an argument for government intervention. Since no one person has an incentive to protect a public good, public goods like the environment will be less protected – something that economists term the “tragedy of the commons.” But while there is a case for government intervention, that intervention does not require abandoning respect for private property.

This is not to suggest, of course, that the free market is a silver bullet for saving the planet. We can certainly debate the limits of market solutions to environmental problems, just as we do with other areas. What I argue, however, is that if we decide to intervene to protect the environment, conservatives and libertarians must begin arguing for viable, effective, rights-based policies – and that policymakers must begin to listen.

The philosophy of property rights

Conservatives and libertarians don’t, or at least shouldn’t, defend property rights solely on ideological grounds. Certainly, the Right defends natural, inalienable, individual rights under a deontological framework. For ethical and moral reasons, private property rights are still widely recognized as something all humans deserve.

But at the same time, there is a strong pragmatic argument for the free market. When conservatives oppose “free” government health care, they do so because they believe that market incentives will resolve the health care crisis better than the bureaucracy. When libertarians oppose government regulation of business, they do so because they believe market incentives resolve economic crises better than the bureaucracy. And when the Right opposes welfare, they certainly don’t do so because they hate the poor. They do so because they believe that market incentives work better than wealth redistribution.

The classic argument against bureaucratic regulation that applies most directly to protecting the environment is the Hayekian “pretense of knowledge.” This is Nobel prize-winning economist F.A. Hayek’s theory that the social engineer can never possibly calculate all the variables. As Hayek explained in his Nobel lecture, “While in the physical sciences it is generally assumed, probably with good reason, that any important factor which determines the observed events will itself be directly observable and measurable, in the study of such complex phenomena as the market, which depend on the actions of many individuals, all the circumstances which will determine the outcome of a process… will hardly ever be fully known or measurable.”

At the end of the day, then, conservatives and libertarians may agree with some of the goals of liberalism, but disagree on the means. Rather than government regulation, the Right believes that, often, the best way to get things done is through respecting private property rights. It should be the same for the environment.

The property rights solution

An excellent case study in property rights-based environmentalism is the preservation of wildlife. Endangered species are often used in the main argument against conservatives – that conservatives hate wildlife. But upon further examination, we can see that, oftentimes, respecting property rights provides better conservation efforts than attacking property rights.

The liberal solution to conservation centers on the Endangered Species Act, regulated by the almighty Fish & Wildlife Service (F&WS). Certainly, the bureaucrats at F&WS are good people who do what they believe is best. The problem, however, is the Hayekian pretense of knowledge. By attempting to restore species through centralized regulation, the government has failed to foresee unintended consequences. In order to protect habitats, the government restricts landowners from doing any development that could damage the wildlife’s habitat. Partially because of the act itself, and partially because of the bureaucratic enforcement, landowners now see endangered species as threats to their profit. How have they responded? As Brian Seasholes of the National Center for Policy Analysis noted, landowners respond to these negative incentives in two different ways: “either directly, by killing them… or indirectly, by applying a ‘scorched earth’ policy that makes actual or potential habitat unsuitable through such activities as plowing, prematurely cutting trees or clearing brush.” One researcher from the Western Economic Association found that, “a landowner is 25% more likely to cut forests when he or she knows or perceives that a [red-cockaded woodpecker] cluster is within a mile of the land than otherwise.” By promoting regulatory policies, environmentalists, ironically, create a larger problem. And the tighter the regulation, the more perverse the incentives.

Conversely, conservatives and libertarians believe that protecting the environment requires taking property rights into account. Not only do these types of mechanisms better uphold individual rights, they also better protect wildlife because they give property owners incentives to cooperate. If a landowner is ensured that his property will be secure, he will be more likely to cooperate. For example, in the early 20th century, private conservation groups partnered with landowners to help preserve the endangered wood duck. Since the landowners never had to fear punitive regulatory measures, they were more than willing to cooperate. As the Center for Private Conservation’s R.J. Smith noted, “Landowners were not afraid to help the wood duck recover. However, today under the Endangered Species Act, if someone devised a nest box for spotted owls and asked landowners to deploy them, nobody in his right mind would say yes.”

Other examples of smart, rights-based solutions to conservation abound. In particular, fishing conservation through market mechanisms has become extremely popular. In the United States particularly, overfishing is a serious problem; as one scholar put it, “the current management regime for U.S. fisheries is dangerously unsustainable.” But the solution isn’t more government regulation. In fact, government caps on fishing were the problem in the first place. The government shortened the fishing season, which led to a “tragedy of the commons”: an increase in haste, a decrease in caution and a lack of incentive for fishing under quota. To fight this, some government fisheries have rejected pure regulation and instead implemented a private property solution: “Individual Transferable Quotas,” or ITQs. Instead of hard quotas, ITQs divide “[divide] the quota up and [give] shares to fishermen as a long-term right.” Fishermen now have incentives to conserve and underfish, rather than overfish, because it increases the value of their ITQs – their property. And the program has been met with applause from everyone: even fishermen now support lowering fishing quotas because they have long-term private property assurances.

Conclusion

The conclusion that conservatives and libertarians must take away, then, is that we should protect the environment. At the same time, however, we must recognize that saving the planet does not necessarily conflict with ideals of limited government, free enterprise, or private property. In fact, Hayekian ideals often work flawlessly in tandem with environmental protection.

And we need not restrict free-market environmentalism to the right side of the aisle. After decades of regulation, even some environmentalists have begun realizing the multitude of problems with centralized solutions; the Environmental Defense Fund, for example, currently advocates ITQs to help conserve fish.

At the end of the day, both the Left and the Right should want to protect nature. Often, the best way to protect natural life is through another natural solution: Adam Smith’s “natural course of things.” Adding in artificial devices like bureaucratic regulations just makes things messy.

By Brian Lipshutz ’12

One prediction can be offered with great confidence about the 2012 presidential elections: debate moderators will not be at a loss for questions about policy differences.  But that is only the surface of the division between conservatism and liberalism right now, and there is a real risk that Americans will wake up on Wednesday, November 7, without having had a true discussion of our disagreements.

Aside from the prediction above, it is difficult to say just how this election will play out, let alone whether it will resemble 1948, 1980, or another past election.  Still, we would be remiss not to take valid lessons from history as they come.  One of the most important, from 1964, was only partly related to the candidate that year.   I refer, of course, to “The Speech,” in which a Californian named Ronald Reagan laid out the very terms of debate that we ought to have today: an unabashed contest between progressive liberalism and constitutional conservatism. The arguments of constitutional conservatism should be familiar to everyone.  It holds that our liberty is natural and pre-political, not a gift from government.  It defines equality not as a function of outcomes, but as an equal right to self-government and what Lincoln called “an unfettered start, and a fair chance, in the race of life.”  The people are sovereign, but the forms of our written constitution and the virtue of true statesmen must check passion and corruption.  Yet no matter how basic these ideas are, the American Left contests every single one.

The real risk for conservatives is that this election turns into a referendum on which candidate can better manage an ever-expanding welfare state.  Such a campaign would leave conservatives at a disadvantage against a president as charismatic as Barack Obama, but more importantly, voters deserve a better debate between Left and Right.  Reagan cautioned in 1964 that “they want to make you and I believe that this is a contest between two men—that we’re to choose just between two personalities.”  But he insisted that Americans ought to make it a question of both principles and results, because the former drives the latter.

Although the Cold War is over, the domestic questions that Reagan discussed are still with us today.  He warned, “I have an uncomfortable feeling that this prosperity isn’t something on which we can base our hopes for the future.”  If anything, our plight today is much worse; the deficit numbers he cites ($17 million a day more in spending than government revenue) are dwarfed by today’s figure of roughly $3.5 billion.

The first step to fixing this imbalance is recognizing the proper role of government. Yet the left, then and now, has an idea at least as old as President Woodrow Wilson (’1879) that liberty is whatever the government deems it to be.  Reagan offered Americans a different conception:  “Government is beholden to the people [and] has no other source of power except the sovereign people.”  The issue today is the same one he identified, namely, “whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a small intellectual elite in a distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.”

From these principles, we get to the policy issues.  We can do so because, as Reagan said, the Founding Fathers understood that “outside of its legitimate functions, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector of the economy.” Obamacare, for instance, is an economically unwise expansion of government power, and the immense regulatory powers it gives to unelected bureaucrats can reach deep into our personal lives and choices.  Liberals deny it, but there comes a time when we must choose between what Reagan called “our constitutional safeguards” and “these proliferating bureaus with their thousands of regulations.”

The same pattern applies to entitlement reform.  Reagan’s model still serves conservatives well.  Senior citizens should have a safety net, but the American people ought not to continue to accept a system that promises money to our generation that it never will have.  The solution to Social Security and Medicare reform is, as Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels said in his response to the State of the Union, a question of arithmetic and principles.  One without the other simply doesn’t do the job.

Constitutional conservatism does not mean a return to stagecoach travel and powdered wigs (or Whigs, for that matter).  Constitutional conservatives defend the equal rights of blacks, women, and religious minorities.  We are bound to fully realize those principles enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and safeguarded by the Constitution, even if the Founders did not fulfill the pledge of equal liberty under the law to certain groups in their lifetimes.

As for economic progress, which liberals claim as their own, I would submit that it is actually conservatives who offer the best path to growth.  Most liberals are more concerned with redistributing existing wealth than creating new wealth.  Perhaps the greatest expositor of constitutional conservatism since the Founding was Abraham Lincoln, who talked about a government that “clears the path of laudable pursuit for all.”  Today, statesmen like Paul Ryan correctly frame the issue as a choice between a government that keeps things the way they are and one that enables Americans to make the best use of their natural talents and willingness to work hard.

No doubt this call for true debate will summon forth accusations of fostering incivility from far and wide.  I agree.  Let’s have a civil debate.  But let’s make it one about principles.  The claim that deep disagreement necessarily causes incivility is simply a canard.  In fact, grounding our debates in principle should, if anything, minimize the knee-jerk reaction to build up a straw man and knock it down with an ad hominem sound bite of no real substance.  Both sides should make good on their professed admiration for Reagan, who was himself a paragon of civil but serious debate.

Nearly half a century later, we still have what Reagan called “a rendezvous with destiny. “ In a free society, every election is a rendezvous with a noble destiny given to only a few people over the millennia.  That gift, however, obligates us to defend not only policies conducive to freedom, but the principles of freedom itself.  As in 1964, “we’ll preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we’ll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.” This year’s election is about nothing less than what Reagan called the idea “that you and I have the ability and the dignity and the right to make our own decisions and determine our own destiny,” no matter what President Lyndon Johnson or liberals today might say.  In fact, there is nothing greater that we could possibly contest.