It's not unusual for liberals to become conservative as they get older. And it certainly isn't unusual for them to write books. But Don Foy of La Crosse has taken the liberal-to-conservative path in a more atypical way than most.

Foy, the husband of Tribune reporter Joan Kent (I need to disclose any potential conflicts of interest here) came of age in the late 1960s, and was subjected to all of the cultural and political influences that shaped many baby boomers. His parents were Catholic and Democratic. They were New Deal liberals with conservative views on social issues.

Foy described himself as a "cultural hippy." He dropped out of college in 1970, and spent the next 20 years or more dabbling in this philosophy or that one. He took classes; he dropped in and out of college, and held a bunch of low-wage jobs. Along the way he got married; had a child, got divorced and then — much later — got married again.

He eventually went back to school for an education degree and took a job teaching at-risk high school kids for the Family & Children's Center's Holmen-based Leadership program.

Over the years, Foy has returned to the Catholicism of his youth, and has become much more conservative on issues such as divorce, abortion and family values.

But, unlike many conservatives, he continues to be very hard on the corporate world, which he believes puts money ahead of human and social concerns.

In short, imagine someone with the social views of such Christian conservatives as Jerry Falwell or James Dobson, and the economic vision of populist liberals Jim Hightower of Texas and Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa.

When Foy was a young man, he knew right away that political views on the right were not for him. But over the years, he began to see on the left a condescending view of ordinary people.

Then one day his father said to him, "These people protest the mistreatment of a dog, but they're for abortion?"

That statement stewed away in him for years.

Foy began to feel a need for more spirituality in his life, and began to investigate alternative religions. But he also began to read the Gospels in the Christian Bible.

As he read, he paid very close attention to the words of Jesus. He began to see the damage done by divorce and by the relaxation of standards and values since the 1960s.

He also began to read C.S. Lewis, the author and Christian philosopher who argued that there were "first principles" in life that included the types of moral standards we see in the Ten Commandments and in similar moral codes in other religions.

Foy wrote his thoughts down in an essay that he began to send out to publishers. Algora Publishing of New York, which prints philosophical works, was interested in the essay and wanted Foy to expand it. The result was "First Principles: A return to Humanity's Shared Traditions." In it, Foy attacks what he regards as "modernism," with its anything-goes social standards and its situation ethics and moral relativism. He defends what he regards as 'traditionalism," and sees the basic conflict in the United States today as being between the two.

Although we generally say that the left has "modern" values and the right has "traditional" values, Foy argues that the truth is more complex.

"For instance," he wrote, "the televised sex, violence and crudeness that traditionalists often decry is broadcast because of marketing decisions made in corporate board rooms, a very right-Republican environment."

He blames the business community and the "modernists" who slavishly believe         _ in the "invisible hand" of the marketplace, for job losses and the erosion of middle-class salaries, a trend he says has been going on since the 1970s.

Now that Foy has been published, he is going through the motions of trying to get his book out in front of the public. There's that pesky marketplace again. He will sign books from 1 to 3 p.m. Saturday at Pearl Street Books in downtown La Crosse, and he is trying to get on a regional talk radio show to discuss his ideas.

Meanwhile, the idea of criticizing both our social permissiveness and our business rapacity may seem odd to many people.

To that, Foy wrote, "There's really no difference between a major employer leaving a community to relocate where wages are lower, and a man leaving a middle-aged wife and relocating to the apartment of a young girlfriend. This is exactly the same case as a business that grows with a community, thrives thanks to the work and dedication of a community, and then abandons the community for another where it can start the cycle all over again, taking advantage of workers' eagerness to take any job under any conditions."

The answer, he believes, is adherence to basic values, which include honesty, doing good, providing for parents ' and children, taking care of family, being trustworthy in private and public life and restraining our appetites and desires for the sake of the good.

Those values are exactly what parents try to instill in young children and preachers extol from the pulpit.

Foy just wants them to be a real part of our lives, both in business and at home.