Inequality and "conservatism"

We've discussed, many times here at MOJ, the issue of economic "inequality".  Is it the existence of large gaps between the richest and poorest what matters, or the economic well-being of most people, or the economic well-being of the poorest (considered apart from the gap between the poorest and richest), and so on. 

In today's NYT Magazine, David Frum has an interesting piece on related questions and he suggests that conservatives (or, more specifically, Republicans) in particular might want to worry more about inequality, i.e., the gap between the rich and the poor, than they sometimes have:

My fellow conservatives and Republicans have tended not to worry very much about the widening of income inequalities. As long as there exists equality of opportunity — as long as everybody’s income is rising — who cares if some people get rich faster than others? Societies that try too hard to enforce equality deny important freedoms and inhibit wealth-creating enterprise. Individuals who worry overmuch about inequality can succumb to life-distorting envy and resentment.

All true! But something else is true, too: As America becomes more unequal, it also becomes less Republican. The trends we have dismissed are ending by devouring us. . . .

Equality in itself never can be or should be a conservative goal. But inequality taken to extremes can overwhelm conservative ideals of self-reliance, limited government and national unity. It can delegitimize commerce and business and invite destructive protectionism and overregulation. Inequality, in short, is a conservative issue too. We must develop a positive agenda that integrates the right kind of egalitarianism with our conservative principles of liberty. If we neglect this task and this opportunity, we won’t lose just the northern Virginia suburbs. We will lose America.

Now, Frum is not writing as a Catholic.  It is not even clear he is writing as a moralist.  His worry seems not so much that a hollowing out of the middle (or, perhaps, upper-middle) reflects injustice, but that it bodes ill for the electoral fortunes of Republicans (because the very rich and the very poor tend to vote Democratic).  Such fortunes (whether of Democrats or Republicans) are, of course, not a subject of direct interest to this blog.  What is such a subject, though, I suppose, is how we ought to think about the role of law in facilitating, or remedying, this hollowing out.