Former News-Sentinel columnist Nancy Nall Derringer gets a nice Washington Post byline. With a little help from former Mayor Paul Helmke, she takes a run at defining Indiana's brand of conservatism:
In other states, they say, 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it,'" said Paul Helmke, executive director of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, and the former three-term mayor of Fort Wayne. "In Indiana, we wait until it's broken, falling down and lying on the ground rusting. Then we fix it." Maybe.
Indiana is, in many ways, the most conservative state in the country, stubbornly resistant to change of any sort.
I think they're right about the basic nature of Indiana's conservatism, which is just, simply, opposition to change. (I might argue that such "stubborn" resistance to change is a necessary counterbalance to the current rabid impulse to change for no good reason, but, come to think it, I have, extensively, so never mind.) The terms "conservative" and "liberal" have become so intertwined with our political conversation that we've lost their more basic meanings of husbandry (as in conserving what's good in our traditions) and generosity (as in being liberal with our praise). Too bad.
I would quibble a little with a later observation that people in Indiana "aren't as libertarian as other conservatives." But "other conservatives" aren't that libertarian, either; there's a lot of tension between those two philosophies. And Hoosiers at least have the foundation of libertarianism, which is "leave me the hell alone." They just need enough of a communitarian spirit to also say, "And as a matter of fact, leave us all the hell alone," but perhaps that is a bridge too far.
