Have Progressives Won “The Culture War?”

In a recent article, David Brooks (New York Times “conservative” columnist who — surprise — writes as a “progressive”) suggests that “the culture war” is over or close to over: progressives have already won. Their opponents, “the … less educated ... tribalists” have “self-marginalized over the past two years.”

In addition, progressives “are getting better and more aggressive at silencing dissenting behavior. ...” As a result, they could now “be on the verge of delegitimizing their foes, on guns but also much else, rendering them untouchable for anybody who wants to stay in polite society … [avoid being] morally illegitimate or socially unacceptable … [or just avoid having] your career … end[ed].”

How then does Brooks account for the Trump election, the dominance of Republicans in national and state legislatures, and the millions who are fed up with elite if not polite society? He calls this politics and tries to separate it from culture. He says that: “Conservatives … [representing 40% of the country] have zero cultural power, but they have immense political power.” The idea seems to be that this is just temporary, that cultural losses will eventually turn the tide politically as well.

Hmm. Are progressives really waging war against atavistically tribal conservatives? What could be more tribal than the group identifying with politics progressives espouse? Moreover, human thought and action do not fit neatly into categories such as culture and politics, and even if they did, one cannot omit economics. The most plausible explanation for the Trump victory is that Barrack Obama and the Democrats badly miscalculated on immigration. They thought they could sew up millions of present and future Hispanic voters without creating a backlash among other voters. They may have been right initially, but went too far, and a massive backlash resulted.

Immigration is indeed a political issue, but also a cultural issue, and an economic issue, and one cannot pretend to understand it without looking at it from all these and other angles. It is especially easy to overlook economics, as Brooks does, because on many economic issues (trade and immigration notably excepted), Trumponomics is no different than Obamonomics. This is not surprising, since similar Wall Street figures have dominated both administrations. In monetary policy in particular, there is absolutely no difference between Trump and Obama.

Are opponents of immigration simply “cultural" racists, as most progressives seem to assert? Joseph Epstein, distinguished essayist writing in the Weekly Standard about the dire situation of blacks living in Chicago, a city run for decades by progressives, offers one possible rebuttal of this charge. He writes: “it could be argued that the left generally has contributed as heavily to the condition of contemporary blacks as lingering racism. In fact, encouragement in the belief that all black problems are at root owing to racism is certain to keep blacks in their place, and might itself just be the ultimate racism.”

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."

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.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.