Category Errors

Gordon Lloyd, Professor of Public Policy at Pepperdine University, has some lessons for conservatives and Republicans in the wake of the re-election of Barack Obama.  His main lesson for us is to avoid the trap that many conservatives have been falling into lately:  namely being the sociological trap of viewing people in categories such as race, gender, and ethnicity and acting as though those categories determine the thought or action of the people within those certain groups.  (This is beyond simplistic for the simple facts that the groups themselves are not static and people can count themselves into more than one of the groups.)

The main problem is instead the loss of political leadership in the Republican Party:

The age of the old white man is SYSTEMICALLY over! That is the message of INEVITABILITY we are hearing from the left. We suggest that is an erroneous explanation and prediction. It overestimates the lasting power of social forces. Certainly the persuasiveness of the old white man will decline if they don’t behave in a way that reflects what James Madison called the “genius of the people,” and the spirit of the electorate. The task of a leader is to lead by word and deed rather than to insult and abandon. Or to assume ahead of time that 47% of the people are unpersuadeable. I can see members of the four social categories voting for a conservative for President if the right candidate and the right public policy came along.

The task of the Republican Party moving forward should be the explication and application of the principles of the American Founding to the particulars of the situation of today.  But this is not enough. Political prudence, or practical wisdom, is also required so that the ends can actually be achieved given the circumstances of the world in which we live.  This is a lot to ask for, but it's why we choose, or are supposed to choose, the people we do for public office.