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Is the Culture War Worth Fighting? A Skeptical View
Obviously, I understand the approved answer: “Yes. We must fight because our cause is just and the thought of surrender unbearable. We must fight because our adversary’s mask has slipped off and we have seen his true face. We now know what we have long suspected: the other side is not interested in tweaking this policy or nudging that one. They are not interested in compromise, accommodation, or a negotiated peace. They mean to wipe us out. Upon this fight depends the survival of our civilization, our institutions, and our way of life. We must fight for these things, not only because they belong to us, but because — as conservatives — we know from the long, tragic history of human events that they are the best that can be built from humanity’s crooked timber, and the alternative is a chimera. Therefore, we must fight on the beaches and on the landing grounds, in print and in think tanks, in academia, on the airwaves and on Twitter. If we fail, then the whole world, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age.” (I am misquoting and misappropriating the patron saint of fighting against impossible odds.)
Another answer is that we must fight because the other side fights, so we have no choice. Culture has been the left’s main theater of operations since Antonio Gramsci identified it as such in the 1920s. As a result, his ideological descendants now control or dominate elite academia (the gateway to political and economic power), the education establishment (the mechanism of transmission for their worldview), Hollywood and pop culture, the prestige media, the legal bar and bench, and the state and federal administrative bureaucracies. Since Gramsci’s ideological spawn succeeded in taking over most of the institutions that matter, it seems hard to argue that his strategy of cultural hegemony has not been spectacularly successful.
Gramsci understood Mark Steyn’s point: culture is prior to politics, and therefore more important. In fact, Steyn’s basic insight is borrowed from Gramsci; i.e., conservative politics cannot exist in a liberal culture. Politics is merely an epiphenomenon of deeper complicated things happening below society’s surface. By focusing on politics, conservatives are merely chasing shadows projected on the cave wall. Culture is the main battleground.
It makes sense, therefore, for conservatives to look for a counter-strategy. Ricochet, National Review, Fox, The New Criterion, The Claremont Review, Hillsdale, AEI, Rob Long, Charles Murray, Mark Levin, Rush, J-Pod, Jonah, Steyn and all the other warriors on the front lines and in the trenches of this long twilight struggle are doing God’s work, and may He bless them all.
Unfortunately, no conservative I know of knows how to fix the culture. We often hear conservatives lament “If only we controlled the commanding heights! If only we had our own Daily Show, New York Times, or Ivy League!” But we don’t. And we won’t.
With that, I have three comments. Please accept them in the spirit of a combination of low conviction, devil’s advocacy, and skeptical inquiry.
One: Aren’t we kidding ourselves that we can win this war on the Left’s terms? The correct analogy may be Masada, not the Battle of Britain; the Alamo, rather than the Cold War. The truth is that there isn’t really a culture war; there is only the mopping up of pockets of reactionary rearguard resistance. Aren’t we wasting our time worrying about culture?
Two: Like the climate, human affairs are a complex, dynamic system with chaotic characteristics that respond unpredictably to shifts in policy. Therefore, the idea that the trajectory of the culture can be controlled and directed is slightly crazy.
Three: Because of Two, I suspect that both sides in the culture war seriously overestimate and overstate their own importance in shaping its outcome. In War and Peace, Tolstoy juxtaposes the two great military leaders of 1812: Napoleon Bonaparte and Field Marshal Mikhail Kutuzov. Napoleon is a blur of energy and activity who conceives of himself as a mover and architect of history, his own fate, and the fates of nations. Tolstoy mocks this self-conception and contrasts it with that of the serene Kutuzov, who understands that command is an illusion, and all great men are specks adrift on a chaotic ocean of history. Unsurprisingly, Tolstoy’s sympathies lie with his compatriot. It may be that the Culture War has something of this same character: what looks on the surface like the triumph of revolutionary cunning may in fact be more illusion than reality, and more effect than cause.
In normal societies, what propels culture in a particular direction is not the ideology of the elites, but impersonal, external forces that are effectively beyond any rational control. By far, the most important such force is technology. Compared with the cataclysmic forces unleashed by the wheel, the domestication of animals, agriculture, writing, the stirrup, gunpowder, the printing press, compound interest, the Bessemer furnace, the internal combustion engine, penicillin, and the integrated circuit, the scribblings of a few ink-stained Marxists are insignificant.
For example, the current head-spinning triumph of same-sex marriage was not the result of the persuasive powers of Andrew Sullivan and other propagandists, but rather the invention 60 years earlier of the most disruptive technology of the last century: the birth control pill. The pill made heterosexual relationships less unique and purged sex of much of its moral valence, leading to a tectonic psychological shift. This is the main reason why it is possible to think of same-sex marriage as anything other than a Vaudeville punch line.
Another manifestation of technology and its sweeping cultural power is war, which, among a myriad of other social effects, has been the main force driving government in the direction of a strong, centralized, bureaucratic state. It is also clear that no single technological shock has had a more direct and profound impact on the Western psyche than the experiences of World Wars I and II, which have brought us to the period of civilizational exhaustion of the present day.
Just as culture is prior to politics, technology is prior to culture. If so, conservatives are fighting the wrong war. Maybe we should focus less on fighting cultural skirmishes on the enemy’s home turf, and more on finding promising “conservative” technologies that favor individual liberty.
Published in General
It’s once a year, for the Gay Parade. Do what I did for that, for the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, and for the Puerto Rican Day Parade in NYC: Avoid them, if not flee the city. For whatever reason, all three events featured the worst-behaved participants.
It’s really not that big a deal.
It’s not a requirement to accept, it’s a requirement to tolerate. Two different things.
Are you proposing to bring back execution as punishment for homosexual behavior? That is what the Old Testament prescribes, it’s not just “forbid acceptence”.
No? Then, logically, your only other choice is tolerance.
Why all the same style shorts? Is this an advertisement?
Most shocking thing here is that forty years ago I could actually fit into size 32 briefs.
They’re all the colors of the rainbow, like the balloons. Gay parade, rainbow, get it?
A friend makes the following comment:
“Yes, and conservative technologies include:
1. The Internet (so long as not regulated as a public utility).
2. Fracking for oil and gas.
3. Sonograms and other technology showing pre-natal life and allowing pre-natal surgery.
4. Commercial technology for assault rifles (AR-15) and semi-automatic pistols.
Lock and load!”
What are some others?
Jim, thanks for the Marshall McLuhan tip. His Wikipedia article says the following about his book War and Peace in the Global Village:
“McLuhan used James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, an inspiration for this study of war throughout history, as an indicator as to how war may be conducted in the future.
[…]
McLuhan claims that the ten thunders in Wake represent different stages in the history of man:
* Thunder 1: Paleolithic to Neolithic. Speech. Split of East/West. From herding to harnessing animals.
* Thunder 2: Clothing as weaponry. Enclosure of private parts. First social aggression.
* Thunder 3: Specialism. Centralism via wheel, transport, cities: civil life.
* Thunder 4: Markets and truck gardens. Patterns of nature submitted to greed and power.
* Thunder 5: Printing. Distortion and translation of human patterns and postures and pastors.
* Thunder 6: Industrial Revolution. Extreme development of print process and individualism.
* Thunder 7: Tribal man again. All choractors end up separate, private man. Return of choric.
* Thunder 8: Movies. Pop art, pop Kulch via tribal radio. Wedding of sight and sound.
* Thunder 9: Car and Plane. Both centralizing and decentralizing at once create cities in crisis. Speed and death.
* Thunder 10: Television. Back to tribal involvement in tribal mood-mud. The last thunder is a turbulent, muddy wake, and murk of non-visual, tactile man.”
But culture itself is rather stochastic – or rather, appears stochastic to each individual because no one person has all the knowledge necessary to determine its course.
The processes we model as stochastic needn’t be literally stochastic. We find stochastic models so useful because of all we do not and perhaps cannot know. Assuming that models which accurately reflect our ignorance of reality are in fact models of reality itself is a kind of fallacy.
Anyhow, “might as well be an external force” is hardly limited to technology. It’s a cultural phenomenon, too. Fashions aren’t “technology” in any meaningful sense, yet they come and go. Cultural activities such as improvising or composing music often “feel” to the musicians as if they were driven by some outside force (“like taking dictation from God”).
Even within our own psyches, much of what we experience “might as well be an external force”. We say being able to “control” emotions and impulses is the hallmark of an adult, but rarely are we able to control them. Trying to force those emotions and impulses to change through sheer strength of will is typically a fool’s errand. Instead, letting them be as they are, but ignoring them, is the best approximation of “control” we can reasonably hope to achieve.
Truly.
Ryan Anderson’s (co-authored) book, What is Marriage: Man and Woman: A Defense, cites the social science studies (typically not conducted by social conservatives!) indicating that among the various combinations of couples, on average, gays are the least sexually exclusive in their practices; lesbians are the least permanent.
The law teaches. Same sex marriage is teaching that sexual exclusivity and permanence are “options” in marriage — and it’s teaching it to heterosexual kids whose innate power of procreation make the consequences disastrous for them, the children they produce, and society at large.
Even some gays “get it” and oppose SSM for the same reason I do. Nature will not be denied, even if truth often is.
Marriage ideally is permanent, but thank heavens for the divorces which made wonderful partners available for successful second go-rounds with first-timers. Sexual exclusivity helps make marriage permanent, but so does deep love, temperance with drugs and alcohol, financial stability, prudent family planning, religious compatibility or tolerance, and having other compatibility beyond the bedroom.
We’ll see how large numbers of same sex spouses to come will handle matrimony. Straight folks haven’t exactly been pitching perfect games on that playing field. I’m sure most of us know happy same sex couples who mated for life. Maybe some new couples in that tradition will adopt those kids of disastrous heterosexual liaisons who didn’t need SSM to learn about faithless, impermanent unions.
No, if you read what he quoted, and highlighted, it was a requirement to approve.
This is possibly the most horrifying thing I have read on Ricochet.
Did anybody else think that’s what it said?
This is possibly the most horrifying thing I have read on Ricochet.
Permanence and exclusivity are overrated.
The biological family is overrated.
Did anybody else think that’s what it said?
The horror of living in the real world, the horror….
Let me understand. You agree with the writer that permanence, exclusivity, and the biological family are overrated?
Traditional marriage advocates have been saying, if the biological family is not the basis of marriage, there is no reason for permanence and exclusivity. SSM advocates have been saying, no, no, same-sex couples want marriage because they value permanence and exclusivity; they are not displacing the biological family but paralleling it.
Somehow I am not surprised. The honest slogan, “Permanence, exclusivity, and the biological family are overrated! Same sex couples should be allowed to marry!” probably would not have been successful.
Clearly, that is not what it said. What a disingenuous technique, the “false synopsis.” Get back, Jojo.
Well, I hate when people do that to me, so I was a little hesitant, but really, that’s what it sounded like. You did not use those exact words but it seemed to be the meaning. Suggesting that a nice gay couple may have to come clean up the mess left by a child’s irresponsible biological family did come across to me as denigrating the biological family, and implying it is overrated.
Jojo, This is what the left does all the time. If you make a reference to an Islamic terrorist, the lefties immediately jump to the false assertion that you are saying that all Muslims are terrorists, and that you are “denigrating” Islam. False argument. There are such things as Islamic terrorists, and it does not denigrate all of Islam to say so. And there are such things as bad heterosexual parents, and it does not denigrate the biological family to say so.