It's a natural law: social issues and economic issues are linked

Adrienne over at Adrienne's Corner has a great post on the practical link between social issues and economic issues.  What joins them together, of course, is the issue of culture.  In order for economies to flourish, they have to be built on stores of human capital.  Without a robust culture of responsibility and virtue, that human capital gets depleted.  The more a society moves away from virtue, the less and less social capital it will have.  If the social capital gets to a low enough point, the economy will start to suffer.  And that isn't even counting the drag on the economy posed by large welfare and entitlement programs.

Some fiscal conservatives and many libertarians unfortunately seem largely immune to this truth.  Without social conservatism -- without a political, legal and social order that builds social trust, reinforces the rule of law, upholds contracts and (importantly) defends people from arbitrary deprivation of their rights to life, liberty and property -- the economy won't function very well.  It is simply a natural law.  And while we can choose to live for awhile off the social capital acquired by our forebears, if we don't make deposits of social capital into the bank of our society, that social capital will eventual run out.  That won't be a pretty day.  And the way our culture is currently going, that day isn't far off.