The Next Conservatism: Winning the War for Western Culture

The next conservatism understands that the basis for any society is its culture. The reason our country was so successful for so long was our traditional, Western, Christian culture. If that disappears, everything it created will disappear along with it: our liberties, our prosperity, and our hope of living rewarding, satisfying lives.As everyone knows, Western culture is under assault, and many of the wise ways of our ancestors have already been lost. The thug assailing our traditional culture is commonly known as "political correctness", which seeks to make all the old virtues sins and all the old sins virtues.But the next conservatism knows something everyone does not know: what PC really is. It is cultural Marxism, Marxism translated from economic into cultural terms. That intellectually difficult job of translation was mostly done by a Marxist think tank established in Germany in 1923 called the Institute for Social Research or, informally, the Frankfurt School. Cultural Marxism's objectives since its initial conception have remained unchanged: the destruction of Western culture and the Christian religion.A column does not offer enough space to lay out the full history of cultural Marxism. Let me instead recommend a video documentary that does so: The History of Political Correctness. If every American watched this video and learned that political correctness is a variant of Marxism, it would be in serious trouble.In fact, the next conservatism knows that if cultural Marxism is to be defeated and our traditional culture restored, our first task is to tell our fellow Americans what political correctness really is and what its hidden objectives are. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.Beyond revealing PC as cultural Marxism, we also have to defy it. Just criticizing it is not enough; we have to break its rules. That starts with having honest discussions of two issues it uses to beat up our traditional culture: race and sex. Cultural Marxism's two favorite words of condemnation are "racism" and "sexism".But calling a fact an "ism" and those who dare speak facts "ists" are nonsense: facts cannot be nullified by calling them names. The overwhelming race problem in America today is not "white racism"--most whites wish blacks well--but bad behavior by far too many urban blacks, especially young black males. The black rate of violent crime is twelve times the white rate, and most of that is committed by young males, who are avoided not only by whites but by other blacks. Beyond violent crime, the urban black community is also overrun with illegitimacy, drugs, and welfare dependency.This did not used to be true. As recently as the 1950s, the black urban community was a safe, good place. 80% of black children came home from school to a married mother and father; no other fact is as important for a child's future. The problems in black schools were running in the halls and talking in class, not drugs and guns. The breakdown in the black inner city comes from abandonment of its traditional, Christian values, morals, and culture, and is in part caused by the same cultural Marxism that condemns whites as evil "racists".Similarly, cultural Marxism's cry of "sexism" is also phony. Differences between the sexes, physical and mental, are real, and traditional social roles reflect those inherent differences. Most women who work outside the home do so because they have to (free trade having destroyed the middle class jobs their husbands used to obtain), not because they want to. They would rather stay home and take care of their families. Children need full-time mothers, not day care.Unlike the conservatism of the Republican Establishment, conservatism offers a way to reverse the course of the culture war, which conservatives have been losing, and restore a culture that works: our old, Western, Christian culture. The next conservatism calls for Retroculture: rediscovering the old ways of living of our forefathers and returning to them in our own lives. Retroculture is not about politics. It should not and cannot be created by government. It is something individual conservatives do in their own lives and the lives of their families. The next conservatism works for Retroculture to become a movement, like the home schooling movement. Once other Americans see the old ways work while the new ways don't, they will be drawn to Retroculture themselves. The only safe form of power is power of example.