SO PUT ANOTHER DIME IN THE JUKEBOX, BABY. I said I was gonna talk about “rock’n’roll conservatism.” And here it is.

RNRC is the result of a five-way friendship and alliance: The Rat, Shamed, Russo, me, and a blogless law student. We’ve known each other for six years now: lots of vigorous debate (and french-fry theft) in pizza parlors, lots of common-room discussions lasting ’til the slate-grey hour of dawn. We started in very different places, both politically and philosophically: two Objectivists, two secular Jewish liberals, and a relativist punk feminist. We’re still in different places philosophically. One of us is an atheist, one is a Gnostic/atheist, one is a Conservative Jew, I’m Catholic, and I don’t know what the heck to call Russo. (Deist? Platonist?) Politically, though, we’ve converged. Here I’ll lay out some principles and some practical applications that I think all five of us could sign our names to. Most of it will probably be pretty familiar to regular readers of this site, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to have it all here for easy reference.

Notes: I haven’t vetted this with the gang yet; it’s the result of lots of discussion with them, but they may well write in to say that actually they won’t sign their names to some fool thing I said. In which case I’ll let you, the readers, know. Also, although I may not have time to reply as fully as I’d like, I’d definitely welcome your responses on this.

PRINCIPLES: 1) View political questions from the vantage point of the needy, the oppressed, the unwanted, and the poor. This doesn’t mean that the least powerful person, or the biggest victim, is right in any given situation. Victimhood isn’t a contest and suffering isn’t an excuse. Nonetheless, rock’n’roll conservatism focuses on poor people and treats them as agents of their own destinies, not statistics in bureaucratic machinations. (Here’s another statement of principle that gets at some of these issues.)

2) Policies that promote responsibility are essential. Personal responsibility is needed as much by the rich as by the poor–and vice versa. Policies that promote dependence or dissolve loyalties should be scrapped.

3) The family–consisting at least of a married couple and their children, with the possible addition of various extended family members–is the foundation of a free society and the best way to teach individuals to love and trust. Not the only way–we’re not fatalists, and we know lots of children of divorced parents who have built strong relationships (both friendships and marriages). But the best way.

4) Dynamic, freely chosen, spontaneously organized solutions are, in general, preferable to top-down governmental solutions.

5) Property rights are human rights.

6) Judges should avoid, to the extent that this is possible, making law from the bench. Judges are not to gauge and implement societal “moral evolution” (which somehow always seems to evolve the way the judges want it to!). If popular morality has changed, let the people express that at the ballot box–don’t paste Gallup polls, or your own policy preferences, into the Constitution.

7) War is a just and sometimes necessary response to attack. War can sometimes, but very rarely, also be an instrument of liberation that the U.S. should use even when our interests are not directly threatened. We reject imperialism, even when it’s cloaked as “nation-building.” The U.S. government, and also ordinary citizens, need to think creatively about how we can best protect ourselves, preserve our freedom, and combat jihadist Islam. “Regime change” is needed trhoughout much of the Middle East, but that change must build on an internal liberalizing movement. Ways to promote that liberalization include but are not limited to free trade, human rights activism, negative international publicity, spreading Internet technology, pressuring governments to allow missionary work, arming those internal resistance movements that are pro-freedom and non-terrorist (although this is not something the U.S. has historically been stellar at doing, viz. Aristide, the KLA), and, where prudent, assassination and invasion. The last, especially, is rarely the best option, especially when seeking long-term change.

8) We embrace America–neither grudgingly, as some hyperconservatives do, nor uncritically.

9) We love rock’n’roll. Popular culture is not some vast wasteland clearly fenced off from lush, vibrant High Culture. Not every TV show we like is conservative just because we like it; the attempt to wring wholesome values out of every pop-cult pleasure is doomed to both failure and condescension. But popular culture, from “Malcolm in the Middle” to Nirvana, can offer pleasure, artistic accomplishment, and insight. We’re engaged with pop culture because a) we like it, b) it’s fun, and c) it’s often much more aesthetically and philosophically acute than its detractors acknowledge. In that order.

10) All neighborhoods should be policed as intently as rich ones, criminals should serve more of their sentences, and defendants’ and prisoners’ human rights (including the right to competent counsel) should be protected (which they aren’t now, not nearly enough). We need serious reform efforts against rape and other violence in prison. We need a greater emphasis on rehabilitation. And we need safe streets. These goals are not mutually incompatible.

PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS: 1) Free trade is the default position, even with dictatorships. Trade is generally preferable to sanctions because it helps expand opportunities, gives people at least one aspect of their lives where they have greater control, and helps build a middle class, often the group most resistant to tyranny. I’m not sure if we all agree as to specific cases like Cuba, China, and Iraq. I oppose sanctions on all three (but have no idea what I would have thought of sanctions on apartheid South Africa–I honestly just don’t know enough about it), but I would add that the U.S. needs to seriously step up our enforcement of our laws against importing goods made with slave labor. Oh, and tariffs are beyond lame.

2) Basic policy stuff: Welfare reform should be extended, not curtailed; farm subsidies should be ended as fast as is politically possible; corporate welfare should be scuttled as much as possible. (I’m not naive enough to think that it can be done away with completely.) The government should not prop up ailing enterprises or (especially!) industries. We support school vouchers.

3) Marijuana should be legalized, and the War on Drugs (with all the attendant warping of our criminal justice system–“no-knock” raids and the rest of it) should be ended. I’m not sure we all agree on which other drugs should be legalized.

4) We’re all pro-life (even though all five of us supported legal abortion when we met). We may differ on exactly what legal restrictions on abortion we support (I’m not sure whether we differ or not), but the basic anti-abortion stance is an integral part of our advocacy for those in need. If we kill an unborn child because she’s “unwanted,” how can we advocate for abused children, prisoners, the homeless, the mentally ill, and others who are often deemed “unwanted” by their families or society?

5) Marriage should be strengthened. Although this is mostly not a governmental task, marriage is one of the areas where we’re not libertarians–we don’t want the separation of marriage and state. You can see one take on marriage reform, which I think all five of us would sign on to (and which doesn’t expand state power, by the way) here; most of the proposals in the “how we can save marriage” sections of The Case for Marriage and The Abolition of Marriage also are good, though Gallagher supports some state-run solutions (like marriage counseling) that we don’t support.

6) Most of what should be done should be done by private groups–pregnancy centers, prison ministries, immigrant support networks, entrepreneurial-assistance groups, marriage mentoring, helping prostitutes leave the streets, ROSCAs, and much more. Like punk rockers, we believe in D.I.Y.–Do It Yourself.

AREAS OF DISAGREEMENT: We don’t agree on the death penalty, war with Iraq, and various gay rights things (I support ending the miltary ban on gays but disagree with most other gay rights stuff). And probably lots of other stuff I’m forgetting.

This post is just a start–I know we’ll flesh out many of these points, together and separately, if the Messiah tarries.