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Apart from logical consistency, there are three main reasons I believe the social liberalism/fiscal conservatism combination is best: Realism, freedom and sustainability.

Being a social liberal and fiscal conservative is realistic because it takes government as it is: very fallible

Being a social liberal and fiscal conservative is realistic because it takes government as it is: very fallible. Yes, government can sometimes do cost-effective things that benefit just about everyone. But it can also screw up big time. Worse, it often simply ignores the right thing and bows immediately to rent-seeking and electoral corruption — not go-to-jail corruption, but perfectly legal “Vote for me and I will give you money or other nice things” corruption of the sort that will be a staple at the federal level for the next 10 months.

My socially liberal, fiscally conservative corner of the philosophical Cartesian plane also privileges freedom. It believes freedom is useful, people generally being their own best judges of what’s good for them. But it also believes freedom is vital in and of itself, quite apart from how people exercise it. And if freedom is best in people’s personal lives, why not in their economic lives, too?

Finally, the fiscal conservatism side of social liberalism/fiscal conservatism worries constantly about the future — which you might think would make it attractive to anyone whose mantra is “sustainability.” As Financial Post correspondent Kevin Carmichael pointed out in a column this week, economists calculate that if interest rates stay low forever, higher government debt may never require higher tax rates. But beyond that big “if”: debt isn’t just about arithmetic. It’s also about morality. By what justification do we ask future generations to pay our way? If we’re ridding the world of Hitlerism or building a railway to secure their nation or if we’re stuck at the bottom of an economic abyss, OK, maybe our kids should help.

But if it’s simply more convenient for us if they pay for all the nice things we want to consume, well, we wouldn’t any of us do that in our personal lives. Why let government do it for us in our public lives?

I’ve got to think that if all the people who believe that stood shoulder to shoulder, they wouldn’t just fill an Acela train or two, they’d reach from one end of the transcontinental roadbed to the other.