Democratic capitalism requires, at a minimum, political and cultural leaders who elevate and ratify the public’s common sense and morality as a check against the shameless pursuit of unproductive or downright harmful profit. Embracing a laissez-faire attitude unmoored from virtue would be bad enough; a White House that actively cheerleads for ways to ruin your life will accelerate our social decay. Placing vice on a pedestal is its own road to serfdom.
[…]
The conflicting views of free-market libertarians and social conservatives on the legitimacy of regulating vice was one of the most obvious tensions in the coalition that shaped the Republican Party from Ronald Reagan’s rise until Trump’s. But the libertarian influence is in sharp decline, and its replacement by an ethos that takes seriously the downsides of unfettered markets is key to constructing a more robust and effective conservative coalition for the years to come. Who is all this vice for?