There is a strange argument emerging from some prominent voices: The Right must embrace socialism to win.
The argument generally goes like this: If conservatives support any government action whatsoever — a tax credit, school choice program, tariff, family policy, infrastructure spending, or Social Security — then they have forfeited the right to criticize socialism.
Oh, you support that government program? Congratulations. You’re a socialist too. No. That isn’t how any of this works.
If every government expenditure is socialism, then the military is socialist. Highways are socialist. Courts are socialist. Police departments are socialist. At that point, the word “socialism” has ceased to mean anything.
Conservatism has never meant government does nothing. That would be anarchism, not conservatism.
The conservative question is much more important: What is government legitimately authorized to do — and where must its power end?
That question exposes the fundamental difference between conservatism and socialism.
Socialism, despite considerable variation among its cohorts, is fundamentally concerned with collective or public ownership or control of economic resources and the means of production. Conservatism begins from a very different premise: private property, individual liberty, free enterprise, family, civil society, and limited (but not nonexistent) government.
Government protects the country, enforces moral and civil laws and contracts, maintains courts, protects property rights, and performs other constitutionally authorized functions necessary to preserve an ordered and free society.
The branches make a difference
Importantly, in our constitutional republic, powers are both limited and separated across three federal branches of government and three vertical agencies (federal, state, and the individual).
The existence of government is not socialism. Nor is the mere movement of taxpayer money.
Every tax-and-spending system moves resources from one place to another. If a taxpayer in California helps fund a naval base in Virginia, resources have technically been redistributed. But nobody seriously argues that aircraft carriers are socialism.
The meaningful question is what government actually does with its power.
Who owns the property? Who makes the decisions? Does the policy preserve private ownership and individual choice, or replace them with centralized direction? Does government strengthen the ability of families and private institutions to act, or supplant them?
And, perhaps most importantly: What is the limiting principle?
Consider school choice.
Under a traditional government-school model, government collects taxes, operates the institution, assigns children according to government-created rules, and largely controls the service being provided.
A school-choice system can take existing education funding and put the decision about where a child is educated into the hands of parents.
You can debate the merits of either policy. But pretending they are philosophically identical because taxpayer dollars appear somewhere in both systems misses the entire point.
One centralizes decision-making. The other decentralizes it.
The same distinction matters with tax policy.
There is a conceptual difference between government taking your money and deciding how to spend it and government allowing you to keep more of what you earned through a deduction or tax credit.
Conservatives can debate whether particular credits and rebates are wise or whether government should be spending on specific programs that may go against their limited power. But not taking your dollar in the first place is fundamentally different from nationalizing the factory where you earned it.
Conservatism also isn’t libertarianism with a flag pin.
It’s not only about the government
Traditional conservatism recognizes that liberty exists within an ordered society and that government has legitimate responsibilities. But it also recognizes something modern politics too often forgets: Government is not the only institution capable of solving problems.
There is the family. There is the church. There are businesses, charities, neighborhoods, communities, and voluntary associations.
A healthy society has institutions standing between the isolated individual and the massive power of the state.
That distinction is especially important for Christians.
Scripture unquestionably commands care for the poor, the widow, the orphan, the vulnerable, and our neighbors. But a moral obligation to care for someone does not automatically answer the political question of which institution should provide that care.
“Love your neighbor” does not translate into “therefore Washington must administer the program.” Being pro-family doesn’t mean that Christians should support welfare. And it also doesn’t mean that supporting school choice means that we are socialists.
Individuals have responsibilities. Families have responsibilities. Churches and communities have responsibilities. Government has responsibilities. Those categories are not interchangeable. In a well-ordered society, these responsibilities are limited, sometimes overlap, but do not overreach.
Conservatives should also apply their principles consistently. Slapping the word “conservative” on a massive government program does not magically make it conservative.
There are legitimate debates on the Right over tariffs, industrial policy, family benefits, entitlement reform, economic populism, repurposing current funding, and the proper reach of federal power. Conservatives need not reach identical conclusions about every policy. We should agree on the principle and debate which and whether a policy fulfills the principle best.
But we should always be able to answer one question: What stops government power here?
If the principle becomes, “Government should control economic activity whenever our side thinks it can produce a better result,” that is no longer much of a limiting principle.
Or if the policy is, “Government should spend here because we prefer this outcome,” we haven’t first answered whether a limited government can spend here or there.
The question is about control
But the point is this: the dividing line was never government versus no government.
It is limited government versus centralized control. Private property versus collective ownership. Individual and family agency versus bureaucratic direction. A flourishing civil society versus a state that gradually assumes the functions of every other institution.
So the next time someone responds to a conservative policy proposal with, “But that’s socialism!” don’t argue merely about whether government is involved.
Ask the questions that actually matter: Who owns? Who chooses? Who controls? And what limits the power of the state?
Those are the questions that force us to have the debate that actually matters — not whether government should exist, but what government is for and where government must stop.
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