Have Progressives Won “The Culture War?”

Mises Institute ^ | March 17, 2018 | Hunter Lewis

[amihow]

That little seed may sprout in both those who heard it.

[caseinpoint]

The Boomer Generation (of which I am part) decided to remodel the House of Society by knocking down cultural walls and creating an open floor plan. Unfortunately, a lot of those walls were load-bearing and the consequences are beginning to be felt. I don’t think it’s too late but I do think conservatives need to start rebuilding those walls asap and unapologetically.

[Alberta's Child]

I disagree with your last statement. Sometimes it’s just best to just move into a tent in the back yard ... and let the roof collapse on the @ssholes who removed the walls in the first place.

[granada]

Yes, liberals have won a series of battles.

[loveliberty2]

Brooks says: "Self-marginalized"????

How ridiculous, if one considers the people who live in the large land mass beyond the fringe acreage of big cities on the East/West coastlines as being that "self-marginalized" populace! Hillary Clinton, on foreign soil, recently acknowledged that her supporters were centered in those population centers, which she described in terms of the GDP.

Such so-called "progressives" as the Clintons and Obama also portray themselves as the "intellectual" elite, although they appear to be totally bereft of any real knowledge or understanding of the great ideas which were the seedbed of Ameria's successful 200-year experiment in liberty.

Today's liberals, especially these so-called "progressives," with all of their domination of academia and Far Left politics, seem to fit into a category described in an essay by T.S. Eliot on Virgil:

"In our time, when men seem more than ever to confuse wisdom with knowledge and knowledge with information and to try to solve the problems of life in terms of engineering, there is coming into existence a new kind of provincialism which perhaps deserves a new name. It is a provincialism not of space but of time--one for which history is merely a chronicle of human devices which have served their turn and have been scrapped, one for which the world is the property solely of the living, a property in which the dead hold no share."(Bold added for emphasis)

Without intellectual anchoring in the enduring ideas which provided the philosophical foundation of America's Declaration of Independence and Constitution, their vain imaginations of superiority only expose their limited world view.

Yet, the America which rose from obscurity to greatness, from crude hoes and axes to putting a man on the moon, and from oppression by King George to a symbol of liberty for millions all over the world--that America provides shelter for them, even as they attempt to "change" her into something unimagined by the Founders.

If they are allowed to succeed in their own little provincial experiment, their posterity never will know the "blessings of Liberty" proclaimed by the Preamble to America's Constitution.

Now would be a good time for conservatives to read Dr. Russell Kirk's "The Conservative Mind, which can be read online, by the way.

In Kirk's last chapter he reviews the works of poets and writers, quoting lines which now seem to bear a strikinig resemblance to the players on the stage in American politics today.

For instance, in Robert Frost's "A Case for Jefferson," Frost writes of the character Harrison:

"Harrison loves my country too
But wants it all made over new.
. . . .
He dotes on Saturday pork and beans.
But his mind is hardly out of his teens.
With him the love of country means
Blowing it all to smithereens
And having it made over new."

Yes, the pseudointellectuals who recently occupied the White House, and, even now, the media, and much of Congress fancy themselves "intellectuals."

By their words and actions, however, they display that provinciality Dr. Kirk recalls as having been described by T. S. Eliot (see above) as being one of time and place, seeming to have no intellectual grounding in ideas older than their own little experience in dabbling and discussing Mao, Marx, and other theoreticians.

America's written Constitution deserves protectors whose minds are out of their "teens" in terms of their understanding of civilization's long struggle for liberty.

It certainly deserves protectors who do not consider it a "flawed" document because that Constitution does not permit the government it structures to run rough shod over the rights of its "KEEPERS, the People" (Justice Story).

Blasting it "all to smithereens" seems to be the goal of the Far Left which recently had control of the Executive and Legislative branches of the government.

Their spokesmen, both legislators and media, rely on what they must believe to be the ignorance of the American people when they make their ridiculous claims. They have been outwitted, however, by an increasingly knowledgeable citizenry who are using the miracles of technology to study for themselves ancient and modern writings on the ideas of liberty versus those of tyranny. As Jefferson wisely observed:

"History, by apprising the people of the past, will enable them to judge of the future; it will avail them of the experience of other times and other nations; it will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it, to defeat its views."

[Vaduz]

Progressives have no culture they react to things like a teenager it’s all about me and my feelings they have a huge list of stupidity see MSM.

[mrmeyer]

I haven’t surrendered and they haven’t broken me so no.

[fuzzylogic]

It’s the opposite.

The left are at the point where they need to violently shut their opponents up. They do not want debate. Their anti-liberty culture can only implode. This goes hand-in-hand with their arrogance. This is what happens when you live in a bubble.

Conservative values embrace individual liberty, driven by Judeo-Christian ethics. This cannot be destroyed. It can be mocked, ridiculed, down-trodden, etc. but there’s a natural outcome to progressive thought. Tyranny. At which point it falls apart.

They cannot “win” - they just think they can and if they’re loud enough, violent enough, bully enough, they believe what looks like a “win”, as nobody is allowed to argue, is in fact a final victory...when it is only the beginning.

It’s just like trying to crush Christianity. It never works. The very concepts of Christianity are against tyranny and people always see it when they’re living under it.

[Pollster1]

The culture conflict is not a war; it's a pendulum. Freedom's enemies have certainly pushed that pendulum a record distance to one side, but it will swing back - probably faster and farther than ever before.

As for "getting better and more aggressive at silencing dissenting behavior", that means we no longer talk with elitist tyrants, not that we agree with them or are willing to submit. I certainly don't debate with them or even interact. When enemies don't talk, mistakes lead to a real war, and the thugs on the Left are not smart enough to understand what that means. Their idea of "war" is a petty terrorist wearing a mask and swinging a bike lock at an innocent person. They do not want to know what our idea of war is, but I am worried that they will find out the hard way . . . soon.

[caseinpoint]

I might agree with you if the a-holes were the only ones inside the house. Unfortunately there are innocent people killed by disasters everywhere and if we can prevent it, I think we should at least try, pray if nothing else.

[Mafe]

It certainly looks that way, but the “culture” is whatever popular culture, the media, and the education system decide. Progressives mostly control these institutions, but not completely, and there’s no other institutions that they dominate.

Besides, if the progressives have won, why do we still have the constitution, and why hasn’t FreeRepublic not been shut down and all of us put in a prison camp?

[DiogenesLamp]

With their sycophants in the media, they have the biggest bullhorn.

Sums up the problem right there. The bastards control the airwaves, and therefore they steer the stupid/gullible people into following the fads which they decree to be popular.

[DiogenesLamp]

And by controlling the airwaves. People get their opinions from television.

[DiogenesLamp]

Well, certain battles are lost. For example, the liberals won the battle over homosexual marriage.

I think that will eventually get reversed. It was a top down imposition on the people and the people did not want it.

[Jacquerie]

<>Society collapsed during our lifetime.<>

Quite right, and scotus collapsed it.

[Ransomed]

It was ultimately a judge based top-down decision, but check out the trend in the %s the state marriage amendments passed by region and time. There was a definite trend towards acceptance of state marriage. For example, Hawaii passed its marriage amendment by a lot early on, while more conservative areas passed it later by less. Also the 10% shift in Ca’s two marriage amendment referendums for ‘gay marriage’ in 8 years. If I recall, in 2102 NC was exactly where Ca was on the issue only 12 years before.

Freegards