It’s encouraging to see that more and more people are catching on to a fact I’ve done my best to publish far and wide, viz. that so-called Conservatives have no intention of conserving Western culture.
Superversive SF blogger Dawn Witzke calls out Conservative media figures who complain ad nauseam about the degenerate state of contemporary arts yet will not lift even their smallest finger to improve the situation.
They claim that they want the culture to change. There are a ton of nonfiction books scolding the society for the state it’s in and ranting about how it needs to change. There are commentators on the radio and television going on and on about how horrible things are today in society. Well, what do they expect?
The Right cannot ignore art and literature and then expect the culture to change. Politics alone will not do that. You can’t legislate morality. You have to change society through many different avenues, politics being only one of those.
Or to quote Andrew Breitbart, “Politics is downstream from culture.”
A small correction: Conservatives are not, and never have been, of the political Right. Their movement originates from the same Enlightenment Liberalism that spawned the Left. When a Conservative tells you he’s a Classical Liberal, he’s correct. The problem is that X + ism means “treating X as an absolute”.
Liberalism is the absolutization of freedom. If we start from the premise that freedom is absolute, we can’t abide any external limitations on the pursuit of individuals’ personal preferences while staying internally consistent. That’s why Liberalism–yes, especially Classical Liberalism–is inherently progressive.
Conservatives are just Liberals who’ve found a particular license they don’t feel comfortable extending culture-wide. Be it pot legalization, judicially mandated fake marriage, or state-sanctioned infanticide, every self-styled Conservative has found one or more issues that disincline him to treat freedom as absolute–at least in regard to said issue.
But Conservatives still use Liberal language, framing their positions in terms of civil rights, fundamental liberties, and personal choice. This arbitrary picking and choosing makes Conservatism intrinsically incoherent. It’s why yesterday’s liberal is today’s Conservative, and it’s why Conservatives always lose.
Back to Dawn:
When you neglect society, eventually, society changed the laws. Which is exactly what has been happening over the past 50 years. We went from a society with cohesive traditional values and work ethic to a hedonistic society where “if it feels good do it” and individuals aren’t responsible for themselves.
So why conservatives think that ignoring culture, art and literature in favor of ranting about politics is going to somehow miraculously change society? They’re daft.
“If it feels good, do it” is the credo of Liberalism. The reason that Conservatives have failed to prevent society’s degradation over the past 50 years is the same reason that Lina Inverse failed to defeat the god who created Dragon Slave using that same spell. To paraphrase the spell’s creator, “I won’t honor your request to help you kill me.”
If we want to return to a society of traditional values and morals, we need to focus on art and literature. We need to bring back the class and the morals that used to be intrical [sic] in our society. We need to feed the minds with good solid stories, art, television and movies.
Again, politics is downstream from culture. Later in the same article, Dawn specifies that she’s not talking about pushing Conservative message fic, and that’s a vital caveat. However, she mentions promoting books that contain conservative values. As we’ve seen, there are no such things as conservative values. The closest Conservatives get are attitudes, disgust reactions, and postures.
What’s truly needed is a culture-wide realization of the fact that Liberalism has been a disastrous mistake, that freedom is not and cannot be an absolute, and that Western Civilization must return to seeking the common good if we hope to survive.
But in the meantime, promoting fun, non-message fic stories couldn’t hurt.
My own thrilling SFF/horror series the Soul Cycle is 100% politics-free and available now!
This is a great followup article.
In my defense, it was late and I didn't care to nitpick all the different factions who claim to be on the Right. I just lumped them all together so I could go to bed.
Dawn and Brian,
The so called conservatives are really vulgar Gramscians. They've taken the blue pill and drank it with a koolaid shot. The mistakenly believe that by mirroring their rivals they'll be equals. They never will be.
What culture needs is to regress harder and recuperate Socrates Plato the Church fathers, the scholastics. We need to fork and replace as well as present an alternative esthetics and ethics that helps answer the big questions as well as giving them confidence in being morally responsible agents.
Not easy: unreason has fallen on the world. But we'll be victorious for death had lost its sting
xavier
Hear, hear.
We have to educate the masses that there are more than the two poles of Liberal and Conservative.
More by far in the political spectrum.
Best to get culture out of the hands of both of these groups if possible. Neither know how to handle that firearm, and the cost in human life so far has been astronomical.
Indeed. They aren't even two separate poles.