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Mark Steyn: Why the real battle for America is over culture, not elections
By Mark SteynOctober 19, 2014 | 12:00am
Though his new collection of essays, “The Undocumented Mark Steyn: Don’t Say You Weren’t Warned” (Regnery), recounts many of the biggest political events of recent history, bestselling author Steyn says that’s not the real battleground. While everyone is focused on the 2014 midterms, the question about where our country is headed is being decided in our entertainment and our schools. Here, in an excerpt from the book, he explains how culture is king.
WHICH WE ARE PRESENTLY ON TRACK TO EXPERIENCE.
By Mark SteynOctober 19, 2014 | 12:00am
Though his new collection of essays, “The Undocumented Mark Steyn: Don’t Say You Weren’t Warned” (Regnery), recounts many of the biggest political events of recent history, bestselling author Steyn says that’s not the real battleground. While everyone is focused on the 2014 midterms, the question about where our country is headed is being decided in our entertainment and our schools. Here, in an excerpt from the book, he explains how culture is king.
Over the past few decades, I’ve seen enough next-presidents-of-the-United-States for several lifetimes: Phil Gramm, Pete Wilson, Bob Dornan, Bob Dole, Elizabeth Dole, Orrin Hatch, Gary Bauer, Lamar Alexander, Tom Tancredo, Tommy Thompson, Alan Keyes. . . .
Would it have made any difference to the country had any of these fine upstanding fellows prevailed? Or would we be pretty much where we are anyway? Aside from a trade agreement here, a federal regulation there, I’d plump for the latter.
You can’t have conservative government in a liberal culture, and that’s the position the Republican Party is in.
After the last election, I said that the billion dollars spent by the Romney campaign on robocalls and TV ads and all the rest had been entirely wasted, and the Electoral College breakdown would have been pretty much what it was if they’d just tossed the dough into the Potomac and let it float out to sea. But imagine the use all that money and time could have been put to out there in the wider world.
Liberals expend tremendous effort changing the culture. Conservatives expend tremendous effort changing elected officials every other November — and then are surprised that it doesn’t make much difference.
Culture trumps politics — which is why, once the question’s been settled culturally, conservatives are reduced to playing catch-up, twisting themselves into pretzels to explain why gay marriage is really conservative after all, or why 30 million unskilled immigrants with a majority of births out of wedlock are “natural allies” of the Republican Party.
We’re told that the presidency is important because the head guy gets to appoint, if he’s lucky, a couple of Supreme Court judges. But they’re playing catch-up to the culture, too.
In 1986, in a concurrence to a majority opinion, the chief justice of the United States declared that “there is no such thing as a fundamental right to commit homosexual sodomy.” A blink of an eye, and his successors are discovering fundamental rights to commit homosexual marriage.
What happened in between? Jurisprudentially, nothing: Everything Chief Justice Warren Burger said back in the ’80s — about Common Law, Blackstone’s “crime against nature,” “the legislative authority of the State” — still applies. Except it doesn’t. Because the culture — from school guidance counselors to sitcom characters to Oscar hosts — moved on, and so even America’s Regency of Jurists was obliged to get with the beat.
Because to say today what the chief justice of the United States said 28 years ago would be to render oneself unfit for public office — not merely as Chief Justice but as CEO of a private company, or host of a cable home-remodeling show, or dog-catcher in Dead Moose Junction.
What politician of left or right championed gay marriage? Bill Clinton? No, he signed the now notoriously “homophobic” Defense of Marriage Act. Barack Obama? Gay-wise, he took longer to come out than Ricky Martin. The only major politician to elbow his way to the front of the gay bandwagon was Britain’s David Cameron, who used same-sex marriage as a Sister-Souljah-on-steroids moment to signal to London’s chattering classes that, notwithstanding his membership of the unfortunately named “Conservative Party,” on everything that mattered he was one of them.
IF THE CULTURE’S LIBERAL, IF THE SCHOOLS ARE LIBERAL, IF THE CHURCHES ARE LIBERAL…ELECTING A GUY WITH AN ‘R’ AFTER HIS NAME ISN’T GOING TO MAKE A LOT OF DIFFERENCE.
But, in Britain as in America, the political class was simply playing catch-up to the culture. Even in the squishiest Continental “social democracy,” once every four or five years you can persuade the electorate to go out and vote for a conservative party. But if you want them to vote for conservative government you have to do the hard work of shifting the culture every day, seven days a week, in the four-and-a-half years between elections.
If the culture’s liberal, if the schools are liberal, if the churches are liberal, if the hip, groovy business elite is liberal, if the guys who make the movies and the pop songs are liberal, then electing a guy with an “R” after his name isn’t going to make a lot of difference.
Nor should it. In free societies, politics is the art of the possible. In the 729 days between elections, the left is very good at making its causes so possible that in American politics almost anything of consequence is now impossible, from enforcing immigration law to controlling spending...
Why the real battle for America is over culture not elections New York Post
Concluded at the link with Steyn's assessment of how this nation will be turned into a 21st Century real life version of some 1950's dystopian film scenario future.Would it have made any difference to the country had any of these fine upstanding fellows prevailed? Or would we be pretty much where we are anyway? Aside from a trade agreement here, a federal regulation there, I’d plump for the latter.
You can’t have conservative government in a liberal culture, and that’s the position the Republican Party is in.
After the last election, I said that the billion dollars spent by the Romney campaign on robocalls and TV ads and all the rest had been entirely wasted, and the Electoral College breakdown would have been pretty much what it was if they’d just tossed the dough into the Potomac and let it float out to sea. But imagine the use all that money and time could have been put to out there in the wider world.
Liberals expend tremendous effort changing the culture. Conservatives expend tremendous effort changing elected officials every other November — and then are surprised that it doesn’t make much difference.
Culture trumps politics — which is why, once the question’s been settled culturally, conservatives are reduced to playing catch-up, twisting themselves into pretzels to explain why gay marriage is really conservative after all, or why 30 million unskilled immigrants with a majority of births out of wedlock are “natural allies” of the Republican Party.
We’re told that the presidency is important because the head guy gets to appoint, if he’s lucky, a couple of Supreme Court judges. But they’re playing catch-up to the culture, too.
In 1986, in a concurrence to a majority opinion, the chief justice of the United States declared that “there is no such thing as a fundamental right to commit homosexual sodomy.” A blink of an eye, and his successors are discovering fundamental rights to commit homosexual marriage.
What happened in between? Jurisprudentially, nothing: Everything Chief Justice Warren Burger said back in the ’80s — about Common Law, Blackstone’s “crime against nature,” “the legislative authority of the State” — still applies. Except it doesn’t. Because the culture — from school guidance counselors to sitcom characters to Oscar hosts — moved on, and so even America’s Regency of Jurists was obliged to get with the beat.
Because to say today what the chief justice of the United States said 28 years ago would be to render oneself unfit for public office — not merely as Chief Justice but as CEO of a private company, or host of a cable home-remodeling show, or dog-catcher in Dead Moose Junction.
What politician of left or right championed gay marriage? Bill Clinton? No, he signed the now notoriously “homophobic” Defense of Marriage Act. Barack Obama? Gay-wise, he took longer to come out than Ricky Martin. The only major politician to elbow his way to the front of the gay bandwagon was Britain’s David Cameron, who used same-sex marriage as a Sister-Souljah-on-steroids moment to signal to London’s chattering classes that, notwithstanding his membership of the unfortunately named “Conservative Party,” on everything that mattered he was one of them.
IF THE CULTURE’S LIBERAL, IF THE SCHOOLS ARE LIBERAL, IF THE CHURCHES ARE LIBERAL…ELECTING A GUY WITH AN ‘R’ AFTER HIS NAME ISN’T GOING TO MAKE A LOT OF DIFFERENCE.
But, in Britain as in America, the political class was simply playing catch-up to the culture. Even in the squishiest Continental “social democracy,” once every four or five years you can persuade the electorate to go out and vote for a conservative party. But if you want them to vote for conservative government you have to do the hard work of shifting the culture every day, seven days a week, in the four-and-a-half years between elections.
If the culture’s liberal, if the schools are liberal, if the churches are liberal, if the hip, groovy business elite is liberal, if the guys who make the movies and the pop songs are liberal, then electing a guy with an “R” after his name isn’t going to make a lot of difference.
Nor should it. In free societies, politics is the art of the possible. In the 729 days between elections, the left is very good at making its causes so possible that in American politics almost anything of consequence is now impossible, from enforcing immigration law to controlling spending...
Why the real battle for America is over culture not elections New York Post
WHICH WE ARE PRESENTLY ON TRACK TO EXPERIENCE.
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