Social Agenda Dead for Now?

Since we’re all gabbing about politics today—something I gab altogether too much about, I’m afraid—I figure I should link up to Joseph Bottum’s observations about last night’s State of the Union message, which is posted over at First Things:

Last night’s State of the Union address didn’t mention faith-based initiatives, which President Bush once claimed would be his great legacy. Of course, it didn’t mention abortion or stem cells, either—in part because such speeches are designed to avoid controversy, and in part because the social-conservative domestic agenda seems dead in the last years of this administration. The White House may hold the line on whatever gains it feels it has already made, but it also signaled last night that it won’t be pushing hard for anything. School choice and judges each got a sentence, the only elements of social conservatism to surface in the speech.

Obviously, the social conservative agenda is dead for the next two years. We will make no progress on anything meaningful. But the failure to follow through on faith-based initiatives mentioned by Bottom is the big disappointment here. It held so much promise in the early years. And now? Nothing, or next to nothing.

With our friends on the Religious Left daily appropriating Scripture to sell slow-motion socialism, I fear the idea that conservatism equals hating the poor will be back in fashion for a long time, despite the considerable research of Arthur Brooks.