The Republicans’ massive victory on all levels of American politics requires them to be more than anti-Obama or anti-progressive. They must implement policies that will contribute to the flourishing of all of American life. “Reform conservatives”–such as Ramesh Ponnuru and Yuval Levin–have taken the lead in showing that Republicans have to do more than cut taxes for “job creators” and embark on maximum conceivable deregulation. It’s not enough to say that economic growth alone will obliterate the relational issues connected with our struggling, broken families and our sinking middle class. Sure, most genuinely conservative and therefore “progressive” policies—policies attuned to the transformational effects of the 21st-century global competitive marketplace—will be market-based and decentralizing. But Levin in particular reminds us that economic and political liberty should help individuals find their personal significance as parents, children, creatures, citizens, and friends.
Ponnuru and Levin, quite admirably, have quickly turned our attention to how Republican reform might make higher education better. Republicans, it’s true, haven’t thought much about that. Meanwhile, our liberal educational leaders, Silicon-Valley foundations (Gates), and government bureaucrats have. So, although any libertarian conservative is inclined to begin with the thought that the national government ought to leave our colleges and universities alone, it’s too late to embrace such a simple solution, at least for now. What I’m about to say both supplements their empirical analysis and, I hope, tweaks more than a little the policy stand of us reform conservatives. One point worth emphasizing up front: Ponnuru and Levin think our colleges can use some more market-based discipline, and that’s true in some ways. But we shouldn’t neglect the fact that a lot of what they’re already doing is in response to that discipline.
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