This year's Edsall

The conservative vision is not "crass". What it is, is simplistic, reactionary, and artificially uniform, with a significant potential to lead to coercive conformity.

He's right, though. The conservatives will lose the culture wars. Not because the liberals, the Democrats, or the progressives necessarily win, but because any attempt to maintain statis in a complex dynamic system is doomed to failure. Change is the only constant.

So there will be a new culture, someday, that looks very different from what we've had historically. What it looks like will depend on what people choose to do.

If we embrace the inevitability of change, then we can choose which elements of the past are worth keeping, and which should be abandoned. We can choose our future.

Or we can insist on cleaving to a vision based in the past, at which point we are pissing directly into the wind. We can exhaust ourselves fighting, on one side to maintain stasis, and on the other to overthrow stasis. Neither side then has a positive vision for what the future should be, only for what it shouldn't be. The result will then be a culture that arises from accident rather than vision, from circumstance rather than choice.

Change is scary. Most people don't like it. The appeal of traditionalism is very easy to understand in that light. Unfortunately, or otherwise, we simply don't have a choice in the matter: culture will change, and it will change dramatically. We can either work together to envision a positive future that works for as many people as possible, or we can fight ourselves to a standstill and let the cards fall where they may.>

I just sent Claes Ryn an email asking for some clarification on the piece you linked to.

I felt the article was a bit of a cop out. While it's easy to write a polemic saying conservatives haven't focused enough on culture, it's probably a lot harder to spell out what a conservative artistic movement would look like.

Ryn never mapped out the shape of what a new conservative literary movement or filmmaking approach or a new conservative school of art would be.

What sorts of stories would a conservative film
auteur tell? How would a painter interested in creating some new school of painting grounded in conservatism do so as an answer to silliness like abstract expressionism, and so on?

The novelist John Gardner wrote about the need for aspiring fiction writers to have a moral vision in "On Moral Fiction," but without falling into the trap of tedious moralizing. "The traditional view is that true art is moral," he wrote. "It seeks to improve life, not debase it." That's a sentiment with which I wholeheartedly agree.

So how would conservatives go about sparking a revived conservative movement in films, poetry, painting, fiction -- to essentially create a new overriding vision for pop culture that can be taken as serious and not schlocky -- and what is your idea of the outlines of such art?

Anyone have notions or ideas?>

How can half of the voters be "out of touch" with the rest of the country??

Isn't that saying the same thing as "the Republican vote is out of touch with the rest of the country?"

It's a meaningless statement. You're not talking about some small cabal of elites, you're talking about fully half of the nation.>

"You know, of course, that I think conservatives ignore how the GOP's free-market-uber-alles individualism harms traditional values and society, but let's leave that aside for now"

But you really can t leave this out of the equation. Individual freedoms, which oppose larger government, also come in conflict with 'family values' on fundamental levels, and I m not talking about abortion, gay marriage and the other buzz issues. IMO these are actually quite irrelevant to the perceived decline of the nuclear family institution of the last century or so. The real cause and effect relationship has to do with the decreasing responsibilities of the family in the market place, and thus in society. It is the individuals responsibility, not the family s to go to college and get a job, and to be entrepreneurial, and to create jobs, and so on and so forth. As a result there isn t as great a need for individuals to stay married if they don t want to, and why some people don t even think about having children.

Not to get too off subject, but I think this is the fundamental reason why social conservatives have been largely disappointed with the lack of progress on the so-called family values issues. Its not so much because liberals speak a different language, or because the current Republican regime is more concerned with politics, show me a politician who isn t; but because the foundation of American society is progress and liberty. Even if you could wave a magic wand and make abortion illegal and outlaw gay marriage for good, our culture would still be the same and the effects felt would be minimal at best. However I am probably wrong and totally full of it.>

>So how would conservatives go about sparking a revived conservative movement in films, poetry, painting, fiction -- to essentially create a new overriding vision for pop culture that can be taken as >serious and not schlocky -- and what is your idea of the outlines of such art?

>Anyone have notions or ideas?

Just a few groundclearing habits for starters:

End at once three things:

1. The siege mentality and self- ghettoization that locks "conservatives" into a self-defined "movement". Any conservative not ten times more familiar with, and at home in, the cultural world of Goethe, Blake, Turgenev, the Metaphysical Poets and the Cambridge Platonists, the great tradition in American literature, the great social critics of the prewar (Mencken, Nock, Brooks, Krutch, Mumford) and, say, THE COLUMBIA ENCYCLOPEDIA and TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT, than with today's Tom Foolery on the right, is dropping the ball on honoring and renewing his patrimony, and turning in far inferior literary performances to boot. These days, David Remnick, editor of THE NEW YORKER and author of LENIN'S TOMB, is far more an inheritor of polished anti-totalitarian urbanity than anyone at the right-wing rags.

2. End the cults of personality forever. Anyone who remembers the promo ads inside the NATIONAL REVIEW of old fawning over WFB, and the sentimental attachment toward Reagan, has seen one aspect of rightward self-destruction from the outset.

3. Burn off any residual default clinging to the GOP and switch off TV "news" forever. Unless it's noncommercial, e.g., LinkTV.

Then when you've done that, you can think about either launching a better daily than THE NEW YORK TIMES along the lines of the German quality dailies (the FAZ, say), and a better general-interest weekly than THE NEW YORKER, or a better noncommercial TV network than PBS - or at least send "the talented tenth" of your sons and daughters deep within the sanctums of those precincts, the better to outwrite, outthink, and outcraft their regulars.

Hayek famously said many years ago that one reason the advocates of liberty had not made more headway in the world lay in the inferior intellectual caliber of its ranks
compared to that of the best of the mainstream.

We are each of us human beings first, artists second, and "conservatives" (or insert chosen tag here) third, if at all. We cut ourselves off from the larger streams of culture, past and present, at our peril. And congratulate ourselves on having the "courage" to defy the "liberals" in our midst.

Sadly, too many of us still persist in seeing the "liberals", or the Democrats, or the mainstream media, as the focus of evil in our world.

They're not, and to grasp the real crisis you have to unearth the deeper roots of modernity itself. In other words, There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio - by a hundred orders of magnitude - than are dreamt of on the op-ed pages of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.>

Here's crass for you: Six Flags Great America [...] is daring customers to eat a live Madagascar hissing cockroach in exchange for unlimited line-jumping privileges.

Anyone who chows down the entire 2- to 3-inch horned cockroach gets a pass for four people to cut to the front of ride lines through October 29.>

Oops, I meant to include the URL to the cockroach story: ">http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/09/21/eat.roach.ap/index.html.>

Why does the debate have to be about "conservative" or (gasp) "liberal"? How about moderate, competent, and, most importantly, reasonable? How about moderates working to secure America, and leave a fiscally responsible future that is as peaceful and safe as possible to our children and grandchildren? If I were Republican and/or "conservative," I would refrain from voting in November rather than vote for that crowd of corrupt and extreme incompetents in Washington. Shame on any "conservative" that votes for that spendthrift crowd.
Diane>

That word "positive" is loaded. What I as a social conservative would consider positive change, you would probably consider negative. And vice versa. Thus the culture war.

I'm sorry that you feel that way, because I think that we actually have more common ground than you are crediting here. I suspect that we would react similarly to, for example, changes in agricultural policy.



Be that as it may, I think you misunderstand what I meant by "positive". When I call for a "positive vision", I am asking for a sense of what we want and why it makes sense to seek that particular end, and how that vision can be made to work for the majority of the population. This is in contrast to an agenda that consists of "no gay marraige" or, for that matter, "no coal power plants".

I was originally drawn to this blog because I got the impression that the posters here were, at least in part, seeking a common, compatible vision of the future.

That is really how it seemed to me, before Israel/Lebanon and the most recent spate of militant Muslim grandstanding. Since then, both the topics and the associated dialog have been steeped in fear. This is not constructive.

I agree that the world we live in is a fearful place, albeit not for all the same reasons that Rod or others here do. Be that as it may, it's not useful to focus overmuch on that fear.

Lots of really bad stuff is going to happen in the future, no matter what we say or think here, or what the US does abroad. That die has been cast. The actions of our people and our country do have the ability to determine whether the future is merely bad, or really, really bad, but either way, there's more than enough to be afraid of.

We have a choice. We can live in and act from fear and anger. Or we can discipine ourselves to put aside the fear and the anger, and talk about possible solutions, compromises, and visions to unite ourselves around.

Rod, as the blog author, you have a great deal of influence in setting the tone of these discussions. You exert this influence both by what you choose to post, and how you choose to comment upon it. So, please, consider the impact you want to have and the kind of dialog you really want to create, when you choose what to link, and what to say about it.>

Brent says: When I call for a "positive vision", I am asking for a sense of what we want and why it makes sense to seek that particular end, and how that vision can be made to work for the majority of the population.

Hear, hear. In other words, convince people of the wisdom of drilling in ANWR, or coal-fired power plants, or gay marriage, or what-have-you. If you can convince them, great -- if not, then you lose.

But the problem all too often is that it doesn't stop there. Especially with 21st Century Liberals, who refuse to lose. When the politics decide one way or the other, then it is off to the courts to force down a judgment despite the will expressed by the voters or legislatures (gay marriage being the most recent example; Roe v. Wade. The issue is removed from the political processes as a result, but without reducing the political debate. Instead, the debate becomes more emotional and divisive.>

Actually, pik thinks that questions about what laws we should have ought to be handled by the legislative branch. And pik thinks that disputes between parties, the conviction or acquittal of persons for crimes, and matters ancillary to those actions about whether certain enacted laws are within the Constitution, ought to be handled by the courts, interpreting the Constitution as written and amended -- not according to policy preferences of the judges and justices.

Otherwise, Susan, you and I agree.>

Chuck,

Before I had kids and I had more time in a day, I sacrificed driving for many years because I believed that is was a better social choice. There were 8 years when I probably drove to work less than 10 times in those years. And I don't have good public transit available.

I live in a smaller house than I could afford and I have often sacrificed my immediate happiness for ideals. I'm hardly alone. You're picture of humanity is a little too small.>

Hey, me too -- the Family Tall lives in a flat much smaller than we can afford, and we ditched our car years ago (it's easier to do this here in Hong Kong). But do three of us in this thread a movement make?

I fear that Chuck's statement, although a bit over-sweeping, is more or less correct. American culture really does seem to me to have a great deal to do with comfort. This may be why people from cultures that enjoy comfort, but don't value it as highly -- like the East Asians SiliconValleySteve has mentioned -- do so very well when they become a part of a 'comfort culture'. It's easy to save money when you are willing to forego the highest possible level of comfort you can afford. I'm witness to the opposite effect, i.e. many western expats here in Hong Kong going crazy spending money to try to recreate the level of comfort they're used to in their home countries.>

Are you sitting down, M_David? You're starting to make sense to me there.

It's not that I agree with you any more than I did before. It's that your definitional statements are making connections to things I recognize.

I'm going to let Scott Lahti's long post speak for me, for the most part. One thing I wish to emphasize in my own way is in response to Edsall's text:

...the party's most influential wing is not populist; it is elitist--affluent, well educated, urban, indifferent (or hostile) to organized religion [to religious diversity], and, on the controversial social issues of abortion and gay marriage, well to the left [right] of the general public. The values of this elite tend to prevail in party debates and in the crafting of Democratic [Republican] platforms.

It's amazing, with the insertion of a choice at each bracketed word or phrase, that we are indicting both primary political parties. We, the grunts in the trenches, are truly being hoist by our own leaders.

If I ever get around to stablizing the major aspects of my life (hah!!), I'm going to start a political party. It'll be local, it'll find ways to get its message out other than with buckets full of money, and it'll thumb its noses at the establishment elite's hypocritical attempt to paint itself as servants of the people.

Yeah, that's the ticket. ;)>

Bush has already made Liberals out of you, and you surprise me by not seeing it. His Administration certainly is "spend and spend" (true, not tax and tax, but local state and county and city governments make it up by taxing us all the more; look at your total tax bill and weep), more than any other known government, putting your childrens' children in debt; and "create big government", again more than any before. Those are the Liberal threats and they have all come true on Bush's watch. "Slow descent" is a misnomer; if you don't vote Democratic this time around, you will see even more of the same "spend and spend" and "create big government" as well as the continued incompetance and cronyism that has turned Washington into a sty of pigs, all feeding at the trough, spending like you wouldn't believe on Homeland Security (which hasn't brought us security) and Defense (which hasn't made us safer). No, I don't think the Democrats will "save" us this time around, but the will act as the necessary balance to this unending march to Liberalism and Incompetance. The Democrats will accomplish the "slowed descent"; in the long run they can be as corrupt and stupid; but in the short run they offer the only alternative to the Madness that is King George.>