Throwing off all moral conventions, the counterculture believers of the 1960s and ’70s thought that they were embracing freedom. Instead they have turned into the establishment of the 21st century, and their calling card is tyranny. Mike D’Virgilio writes.
My, what a difference a few years can make. The once-mighty counterculture, which reflexively questioned authority and wanted to die before they got old, now demonizes anyone that dare question their authority (see The Rush Limbaugh Media Lynch Mob) and will do anything to live forever. But there is a new counterculture in the land, and their calling card is liberty, as James Hudnall at Big Hollywood argues. And a persuasive case he makes:
The counter-culture wanted to be free of what they considered a constricting, conformist society. Yet what did they turn it into when they got old and assumed power? They created a society more restrictive and conformist than that “evil” repressive 50s culture they love to vilify. They have become the new scolds. They have ushered in an “Age of Unreason” where you have to do what they say or else. They tell us what we can eat, what we can say, what kind of car to drive, what kind of light bulbs to use, on and on. They lecture us about our “carbon footprint” and “sustainable lifestyle”. They claim that the government, which they have spent the last eight years railing against, can solve all our problems if we abdicate what’s left of our personal freedoms, without question.
He puts it at its concise best here:
It’s not a conservative vs lefty argument. It’s freedom lovers verses the statists. It’s liberty vs tyranny.
Indeed it is. And the answer is not to sit on the sidelines and criticize, which conservatives have done since, well, since the original counterculture reared its drug-addled head. Instead, it is to encourage young liberty-minded individuals to feel free to make careers in professions of cultural influence, as Mr. Hudnall has done as a writer.
We’ve founded an organization, The Culture Alliance, toward that end. Imagine some of the energy and money and focus that the right has poured into politics over the last 50 years focused on culture. We’d better, because if not, tyranny’s noose will only grow tighter.
–Mike D’Virgilio
Daniel, I think we are all having a bonding moment here. 🙂
Edmund let me second Mike’s response and add my two cents. You are correct that we need a “new generation, imbued as it is with conservative values, to enter politics.” Allow me ask the question your call for conservatives in politics begs, where will this “new generation” get those values?
A culture the feeds a new generation’s moral imagination is desperately needed in order to get a majority of politicians who believe in liberty, personal responsibility and limited government.
If the new generation is fed a steady diet of art, entertainment, education and journalism produced entirely by liberals then the likelihood of politicians who do not mouth the liberal party line is slim to none (and that dust you see is Slim’s horse driving hard into the horizon).
This is not a chicken or egg argument. Without a culture that makes room for classically liberal ideas then the next generation won’t get them. Without individuals who value these ideas, working in the Cultural Influence Professions then the most of politicians we’ll get, when they are not outright liberals will be of the Snowe, Graham, McCain type.
Conservatives have been working on politics since Buckley created National Review. After all these years with nothing but a few short years of Ronald Reagan running herd on a liberal Congress to show for it, it is high time we take on and be part of the Cultural Influence Professions.
Indeed we are, Edmond. I like your term muscular. If we don’t think strategically about culture like we do about politics the left will continue to have their way.
Mike:
I think we really do see eye-to-eye on this. Far too often conservatives have been willing to cede the culture to liberals who’ve sold the idea that liberal cultural ideas are more sophisticated than are conservative ideas, thereby allowing conservatives to appear simplistic and naive. As you point out, we need as muscular an approach in fighting for a more conservative culture as we’ve taken (the Republican party often excluded) in fighting for conservative politics.
Edmond, thank you for your comments. We are not downplaying the importance of politics at all. In fact, politics is critical and will always need our attention. The problem is that the right for the last 50 plus years has focused almost wholly on politics and public policy and that simply is not sufficient to infuse American culture with America’s founding values .
Conservatives’ approach to culture has been to either ignore it or complain about it. Too many conservatives today who understand the importance of culture then want to politicize it. If the right took a fraction of its resources and put them into engaging and making culture it would do more to change the direction of our society than any election could.
Mike:
While I wholeheartedly endorse the points you make here (and Hudnall’s excerpts are spot on) I don’t think you should downplay the importance of politics here.
While culture is the stage upon which politics plays itself out, far too often politicians act in ways that are out of synch with the culture. While what is needed is a new generation dedicated to freedom in ADDITION we also need some of that new generation, imbued as it is with conservative values, to enter politics and vote those values into law. In other words a two-pronged approach is called for. Government always seeks to increase its power and without POLITICIANS dedicated to small government principles fighting against that tide, we will always wind up in the awful state in which we now find ourselves.
This is what I call “Reverse MaCarthyism”.
Mike — This is a real instance of chickens coming home to roost:
“The once-mighty counterculture, which reflexively questioned authority and wanted to die before they got old, now demonizes anyone that dare question their authority … and will do anything to live forever.”