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Conservatives Must Build Their Own Culture or Be Exiles Inside Their Own Society
Townhall.com ^ | June 4, 2018 | Kurt Schlichter

Posted on 06/04/2018 1:10:36 AM PDT by Kaslin

Liberals want to win the victory they can’t achieve at the ballot box by using their cultural power to systematically marginalize and exclude Normal Americans from every aspect of society – and we can’t let them. From the business world to Hollywood, we are seeing them react to their utter repudiation in recent elections by trying to intimidate us into silent conformity as the price of us being allowed to participate in the non-governmental institutions of society. We must therefore have a two-part response to this act of cultural warfare – not only must we get right back in their smug little faces, but we must also build our own cultural institutions, ones that they can’t control.

The militant Normals built this country; they can build their own institutions too.

Now, of course we can’t always build parallel institutions right away. Sometimes we need to force the existing ones to behave. Social media platforms like Twitter (in which I own stock) and search engine institutions like Google are so humongous that they are difficult to replicate (but Gab and engines like Duck Duck Go are trying). The fact is that social media is becoming our society’s primary public forum, and excluding conservatives is essentially excluding conservatives from participation in politics. That’s unacceptable, meaning we will not just sit there and accept it.

So when the social media companies start deplatforming conservatives, and engines like Google start up with antics like listing the GOP’s ideology as “Nazism,” we need to respond to their exercise of their power with the exercise of our own power – via our elected representatives. A GOP bill requiring social media platforms to explicitly and clearly explain their content policies, to disclose to banned people their exact violation, to provide a rapid, meaningful appeal process, and to provide for lawsuits (with fee awards to prevailing plaintiffs) to remedy violations is just the first step toward a regulatory solution.

The Fredocons will whine that this is not a conservative solution. Oh. Well, we tried submission and that doesn’t work for us. My conservative principles include fighting fire with a firestorm. Don’t want none, don’t start none – if you exercise your power, we’ll exercise ours. I don’t want to do it, but the two choices are 1) open, free, and unregulated platforms, or 2) platforms regulated to protect our rights. Maintaining platforms that exclude Normals is not an option. So, choose wisely Silicon Valley.

But for most institutions, we have alternative options that don’t necessarily involve leveraging our government power. When companies start deciding they want to modify our behavior by refusing to do business with people the libs hate, like NRA members, we can boycott them. We can also choose to support businesses that don’t disrespect us. There are lots of banks that don’t discriminate against those exercising the Second Amendment. By supporting companies that respect us – and not patronizing ones that diss us (like Dick’s Sporting Goods) – we are effectively building parallel institutions. But we can also create our own businesses from the ground up.

And we need to. Who isn’t sick of Starbuck’s and its insufferable limo lib condescension? There’s a space for a coffee house chain that doesn’t tolerate druggies, vagrants, and bums – “I’ll have a venti hobo with an extra shot of bindle.”

How about someone starts an objectivist coffeehouse chain called Galt’s? You can order, but the barista will make you a cup of fancy joe according to his personal vision of what your drink should be, and if you complain he will give you a 50,000-word lecture on how he won’t ever compromise his heroic java artistry. Plus, not just conservatives will love its restroom policy. Who’s in Galt’s john? Paying customers only!

Insurgent coffee houses can distinguish themselves from woke bean water joints by welcoming all Americans, not just the ones who are assimilated into the Samantha Bee hive mind. That goes for every kind of business. How excited would you be to patronize a company that has the mob show up and says, “Yes, some of our customers are outraged by what [whoever] said. We sell [whatever] and we think you can make up your own mind about politics. We are not excluding anyone. Thanks!”

Hollywood is likewise willfully alienating customers by taking sides. Think what you want about Roseanne herself, but her show touched millions of overlooked people – and the show employed hundreds of people who are now out of work. Solo, which was not woke at all, was wokeness-fatigue collateral damage because many of us expected it to be another boring lib lecture with ray guns after the last three iterations of Jedi Girl Ghostbusters in Space.

Luckily, technology is breaking down the barriers to entry into the entertainment field. Networks are no longer gatekeepers – heck, they are barely relevant. We can make our own entertainment, and we need to. How about Adam’s 12, a gritty crime procedural with conservative superstar Adam Baldwin as the grizzled leader of a dozen elite cops and prosecutors? The best part would be how the criminal always turns out to be the gangbanging scumbag everyone originally thought was guilty, instead of having the hackneyed Law & Order twist where the villain is revealed to be the rich businessman, the conservative radio host, or the pro-life activist. You know, just like in real life.

Or perhaps we could do a show about a guy on a mission worthy of Superman – patriotic actor Dean Cain starring in Dean Dean Cain, about the new conservative head of a liberal arts college fighting for free speech and campus carry against student SJWs and a commie faculty led by a bitter, lonely gender studies professor played by Alyssa Milano. Yeah, she’d take the role – she needs the cash.

Certainly Normal Americans would binge watch Nick of Time, where acting legend and bane of Twitter liberals Nick Searcy could play a conservative avenger who wanders the Red states, stepping in at the last minute to save Normal heroes like gun makers, born-again Christians, and people who work to support their own families, from oppression by wicked villains like uppity hipsters, angry atheists, and malevolent bureaucrats.

The truth is that the walls really are coming down – what good is a gatekeeper if you can just walk around the gate? Technology makes production accessible at a fraction of what it used to cost, and the ravenous Internet is starving for content. There’s nothing to stop us conservative from stepping in and doing it ourselves.

The same is true in the world of publishing. While some traditional publishers will take a chance on conservative books (like my Militant Normals, dropping in October and Derek Hunter's excellent Outrage, Inc, out in two weeks), technology like Amazon’s Kindle and publishing on-demand has let me reach many thousands with my conservative action novels about America torn apart and patriots fighting back against tyranny. And more conservatives are taking advantage of this opportunity because they are being systematically driven out of the public sphere as the old players refuse to meet the needs and wants of the Normal Americans they hold in contempt.

The best solution would, of course, be a free market in which the cultural and commercial producers supplied content solely in accordance with demand – that is, where their goal is the laudable one of just making some bucks. After all, conservative money spends just like liberal money, so there’s no incentive to discriminate. Freedom happens when the motive is profit, not ideology.

But as we keep seeing, money is not the only motivation to those temporarily holding sway over our cultural institutions. They will take a hit in the pocket book to score their cheap little points against us. We need to confront that nonsense, hard, and raise the cost of liberal virtue signaling high enough that they will think twice before trying it. But we also need to build our own institutions, institutions that meet Normal Americans’ needs, not the needs of some Silicon Valley socialist or Hollywood pinko. And if we don’t, we may well find ourselves exiled from our own society.



TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: entertainment; schlichter
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1 posted on 06/04/2018 1:10:36 AM PDT by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

A free society is one in where people get to live the way they want.

I always thought the ban on gays serving in the military made no sense because I have a libertarian view that what consenting adults do in the bedroom is no one else’s business.

Unfortunately, I don’t see that tolerance reciprocated on the Left for people who believe in traditional marriage, want kids raised in a home with a father and a mother, people who believe in our flag and in standing up for our national anthem, people who believe our Second Amendment right guarantees our First, people who believe in religious liberty and people who believe a nation is a place with borders and common values.

That’s what most of us believe. The Democrats are minority party today because they have chased out every one who doesn’t toe the leftist litmus test. When you can’t build coalitions with people who think differently, your ability to government is non-existent.

Conservatives may not be able to overcome the pervasively liberal culture. But they will gradually find a way to make themselves heard. Because we know who we are and what we believe in and our idea of tolerance is respecting how other people choose to live their lives even if its not how we prefer to live.

Liberals may think have won our culture wars hand down. They should think again.


2 posted on 06/04/2018 1:29:22 AM PDT by goldstategop (In Memory Of A Dearly Beloved Friend Who Lives In My Heart Forever)
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To: Kaslin

This is the best assessment I have seen of the
cultural persecution conservatives are under in
this bureaucratic, judicial and institutional
dictatorship. It has to stop or the US will go the
way of dinosaurs sooner than we can imagine.


3 posted on 06/04/2018 2:50:31 AM PDT by jazzlite (i)
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To: jazzlite

We have the better argument: freedom and diversity. Theirs is coercion and regimentation.

I don’t think there’s any dispute about which side represents American values.


4 posted on 06/04/2018 3:04:08 AM PDT by goldstategop (In Memory Of A Dearly Beloved Friend Who Lives In My Heart Forever)
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To: Kaslin

>>The Fredocons will whine that this is not a conservative solution. Oh. Well, we tried submission and that doesn’t work for us.

Bingo.


5 posted on 06/04/2018 3:34:02 AM PDT by Bryanw92 (Asking a pro athlete for political advice is like asking a cavalry horse for tactical advice.)
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To: goldstategop

On homosexuals in military forces, combat MOS (specialty) soldiers on duty all share the same bedroom and in close proximity, whether in barracks or in the field. And there’s no freedom.


6 posted on 06/04/2018 3:35:00 AM PDT by familyop ("Welcome to Costco. I love you." - -Costco greeter in the movie, "Idiocracy")
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To: goldstategop

>>I always thought the ban on gays serving in the military made no sense because I have a libertarian view that what consenting adults do in the bedroom is no one else’s business.

Becuase they DON’T restrict it to their bedroom because the military doesn’t get bedrooms. No one wants to wake up to a surprise hand job when you suddenly realize that you are at sea...on a submarine...and the homo cook got confused and thought he was doing his boyfriend a favor and reached behind the wrong curtain.


7 posted on 06/04/2018 3:42:23 AM PDT by Bryanw92 (Asking a pro athlete for political advice is like asking a cavalry horse for tactical advice.)
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To: familyop

You bleed the same on duty no matter how you live your private life.

The Left has a vision society should affirm other people’s values by whether they bake cakes or who goes to the bathroom.

Conservatives have a different view. Your values and how you live them, is your business.

That’s the difference between forcing people to endorse values they don’t agree with to allowing people to decide the values they want to live by.

And we believe individuals and families - not the state - should make those decisions for themselves.


8 posted on 06/04/2018 3:43:09 AM PDT by goldstategop (In Memory Of A Dearly Beloved Friend Who Lives In My Heart Forever)
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To: Bryanw92

That’s the point.

You have a right to reject unwanted advances and its the reason we have laws in place against sexual harrassment and sexual assault.

People who don’t behave decently around other people forfeit my sympathy. I expect every one to respect others whether they’re straight or gay, Period.


9 posted on 06/04/2018 3:48:23 AM PDT by goldstategop (In Memory Of A Dearly Beloved Friend Who Lives In My Heart Forever)
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To: Kaslin
"The Fredocons will whine that this is not a conservative solution."

I ran a search on the word (or non-word), Fredocon. No definition. After following the link from the word in that line and watching the video, the term apparently has something to do with television or movie fiction. So, term dismissed and on to something real.


10 posted on 06/04/2018 3:50:20 AM PDT by familyop ("Welcome to Costco. I love you." - -Costco greeter in the movie, "Idiocracy")
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To: goldstategop

The ban on gays in the military had to do, as Norman Schwarzkopf said, with homosexuality’s incompatibility with close order drill and dozens of other situations unique to the military. As it turned out, ‘we just want to serve’ was the usual anodyne thin end of the wedge and now we see Pacific naval bases having Drag Night and so forth.


11 posted on 06/04/2018 3:50:21 AM PDT by relictele
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To: Kaslin

I usually agree with Schlichter but he is, in effect, saying that we must build a house because the lefties knocked our old one over. What does he think will happen to the new one?

We HAD a culture. We still do. We must retake it rather than go for some Amish or Muslim cloistered society.


12 posted on 06/04/2018 3:52:52 AM PDT by relictele
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To: relictele

Its unfortunate its come to that because in my view, we should accept other people as they are. That’s only human and humane to do.

I never thought it meant we should accept their values and their lifestyle. I can’t see myself condoning a sin. For me it does mean accepting gay people as created in the image of God who should be treated decently.

Leftists will interpret my view of toleration as consenting to the notion all values and lifestyles are equal. Not at all - I simply believe that in a free society we have to get along with people who happen to live differently from us.

Tolerance does not mean we have to agree with them.


13 posted on 06/04/2018 3:56:58 AM PDT by goldstategop (In Memory Of A Dearly Beloved Friend Who Lives In My Heart Forever)
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To: goldstategop

>>That’s the point.

>>You have a right to reject unwanted advances and its the reason we have laws in place against sexual harrassment and sexual assault.

No, that’s not the point. Libertarianism is like Communism: they both make perfect sense in a classroom or coffee shop, but fail to understand human nature by making really bad assumptions about how people will behave.

Nothing in the military is libertarian. NOTHING!


14 posted on 06/04/2018 4:02:49 AM PDT by Bryanw92 (Asking a pro athlete for political advice is like asking a cavalry horse for tactical advice.)
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To: Bryanw92

Libertarians and conservatives agree freedom is the organizing principle of society.

Conservatives part company with libertarians by insisting freedom has to be bounded by laws and values. No society can exist for long without the latter.

No one has said the military is libertarian. But people’s off-duty lives are their business. The two are different things. Its also true its free people who give their lives so the rest of us can enjoy our freedoms.


15 posted on 06/04/2018 4:10:38 AM PDT by goldstategop (In Memory Of A Dearly Beloved Friend Who Lives In My Heart Forever)
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To: Kaslin
So the Left's anti-culture or absence of culture, is a culture?
Conservatives have values and cultures (not just one) because we believe they work.
The Left only seeks to be controversial.

16 posted on 06/04/2018 4:18:19 AM PDT by BitWielder1 (I'd rather have Unequal Wealth than Equal Poverty.)
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To: Kaslin

Silicon Valley + Corporate Media = The most dangerous threat to our freedoms since the founding of the American Republic.

They MUST be destroyed.


17 posted on 06/04/2018 4:20:57 AM PDT by TTFlyer
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To: goldstategop
"And we believe individuals and families - not the state - should make those decisions for themselves."

You don't understand or are ignoring what I said again. Neither individuals nor families decide how soldiers live, train or fight. There's no privacy for a combat specialty soldier who must live with the others in his squad or platoon. There's no freedom. They are subject to a different system of laws. I've lived it. All who've done so would agree with me except for a very odd few who, for their own selfish and pathological reasons, betray the lives and efforts of men in service now.


18 posted on 06/04/2018 4:22:24 AM PDT by familyop ("Welcome to Costco. I love you." - -Costco greeter in the movie, "Idiocracy")
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To: Kaslin

“Who’s in Galt’s john? Paying customers only!“

That’s funny.

L


19 posted on 06/04/2018 4:23:18 AM PDT by Lurker (President Trump isn't our last chance. President Trump is THEIR last chance.)
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To: BitWielder1

You can push the envelope.

To the extent that happened in our society, most of us want to set limits. We’re not comfortable with all the changes that have taken place.

You can say the Left is the culture. We’re the counter-culture.

And we won’t change even if they force us to. Their values are not ours and we have confidence in our own path and what America should be.


20 posted on 06/04/2018 4:25:01 AM PDT by goldstategop (In Memory Of A Dearly Beloved Friend Who Lives In My Heart Forever)
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