Dmitrii Z. Manuilskii
Lenin School of Political Warfare
Moscow, 1931
They have accomplished this. Take a look at the list, then ask yourself how many of these things listed the Democratic Party stands for.
Where is our answer to Hollywood? Where is our answer to the post-modern literary/arts establishment? Why do we always complain about the tripe they put out, and yet fail to put out anything better? Why are we playing by *their* rules, toadying up to their producers, studio executives, galleries, music critics, etc.?
The only way to win the culture war is to actually FIGHT one--and not merely by protesting what is there now, but by superseding and replacing it. *We* conservatives have the scholarship, *we* have the vision, *we* have the timeless values that will be here long after the idiocies of the modern era have passed beyond memory. Then by all means, let's DEVELOP them.
I am sick and tired of hearing conservatives complain about what's out there artistically. Are we mice, and not men? Are we complainers, and not doers? Are we destined to become a movement of crotchety old men, forever condemning, and never constructing? Have we become post-modernists and nihilists ourselves?
If we don't band together on this, the liberals and their feckless "art" will win by default. Cry havoc, conservative artists... and let slip the dogs of war.
Thank you for the ping and thread.
Skousen confuses some things. There were a lot of actors and screenwriters with Communist leanings in the 1930s. There has also been a long-standing hostility in Hollywood to religion and traditional social values. But this doesn't mean that Hollywood is Communist. They just make too much money for that. True, they don't like religion or small-town America. They don't hesitate to villify right-wingers. They give to the Democrats and gush over Clinton-types. But any socialism in Hollywood is more dilettantish than anything else. Like the Democratic Party, Hollywood knows what side its bread is buttered on. There are plenty of reasons to hate Hollywood, but Skousen was as much wrong as right, if not more so.
Militant generations tend to see everything in terms of war, revolution, liberation, struggle. That's why the "culture war" became such a powerful image. People were still fighting about the 1960s. A lot of those fights continue, but subsequent generations don't approach them with the same passion. What's come out since 9/11, if not earlier, is that we are more one country than we thought we were. It's the nature of activists to see everything in terms of a struggle always in progress and never stopping, but most people recognize that the country is less divided than it sometimes seems -- if for no other reason, then because real war has overshadowed our political and cultural conflicts. Political disagreements persist, as one would expect them too, but confronted with the Taliban and al Quaida we find that patriotism and law and order or modernity and cultural freedom aren't so alien to our own make-up or that of our opponents.
The development of new media and promotion of new artists is all to the good, as is the desire to bring conservative voices to art and media, but the culture war doesn't reflect what's going on now. Look at history. The "culture war" was very divisive in the 1920s, as conflicts over prohibition, evolution, immigration, modern art, theology and sex showed. For the next 30 or 40 years that culture war was dormant as depression, war, and cold war took center stage. We may be seeing a similar development now.
The second thing we need to do is to stop funding the left with our tax dollars.
(if those are the objectives.. it would appear that we have lost the war ya know..)
I do like this title. Thanks! It's got a nice ring to it.
BUMP
In brief, I see the truth being revealed moreso every day. I see fewer people at local bars. I see more people at church. I see more people speaking out about their faith. I see Conservative voices growing like never before. I think that it's only a matter of time before Liberalism meets its death, and that the Left is spewing on the fumes of a degenerate agenda that fewer and fewer people believe.
While we need to all work for the good, we also need to be patient. Things will turn around, granted the Lord doesn't come back soon.