Just as Democrats are wondering how they can win over culturally conservative red-state voters, some of those very same cultural conservatives are questioning aspects of their alliance with political conservatism.

In the January issue of Touchstone, Gillis J. Harp (sorry, article not online) critiques conservatives like Rich Lowry of National Review for thinking that tax cuts and less government are the solution to every problem. The issue at hand in Harp’s article is how advertisers and the consumer culture have interposed themselves between parents and children. Conservatives like Lowry, according to Harp, blame “high taxes” for the fact that mothers can’t stay home and tend to the moral development of their children. But this ignores the plethora of other economic issues (wages, health care) that make it difficult for families to survive on a single income, not all of which can be blamed on big government (Incidentally, Harp seems to assume something I find questionable: Why is it ideal that mothers be the ones to stay home? Why not dads?).

Traditionalist conservatives have often been wary of a society too imbued with the spirit of commercialism (see, e.g. the novels of Evelyn Waugh), but the going assumption for many years has been that the enemy of the family and traditional virtues is the State first and foremost. This was the assumption that held the “fusionist” movement of libertarians and conservatives together during most of the Cold War.

But, as I suggested the other day, it may be that some conservatives have elevated an empirical generalization, viz. that government can corrode traditional bonds and undermine virute, into an unquestionable universal truth: government is always the problem.

As a universal truth this seems eminently questionable, and it ignores the importance of what we might call the “moral ecology” of a society. It might be here – in resisting the encroachments of an ever-present commercialized culture on family and private life – that cultural conservatives could find common cause with certain liberals. Ralph Nader, for one, has long been a foe of “the commericalization of childhood” – of aiming advertising at children at ever-younger ages. He has also decried the fact that many parents are unable to tend to family and community obligations because they are working more hours than ever to make ends meet (Nader has also opposed euthanasia on the grounds that profiteering HMOs will use it as an excuse to cut off care).

If there’s one thing conservatives should stand for, it should be healthy families and communities, and these ends may sometimes require protection from the market, not just the government.