OPINION:
It’s the culture, stupid.
This adaptation of the famous phrase about the economy may as well be the call to arms for 21st-century conservatism. Virtually everyone on the right is deeply disturbed by the rapid fraying of American society.
The nuclear family is falling apart, education is corrupting the next generation, our fellow citizens no longer have shared values or vision, and our future seems one of anger and even violence. Conservatives of all stripes understand that if we hope to save our country, we have to start by reforging our culture.
The question is how. Not all answers are created equal.
In the past decade, and especially the past two years, a new strain of conservatism has burst onto the scene. They call themselves National Conservatives, and like the rest of the right, they deplore the state of the culture and desperately want to revive it.
As they put it in their 2021 Statement of Principles, “traditional beliefs, institutions, and liberties … have been progressively undermined and overthrown.” So far, so good. Yet while they correctly identify the problem, their solution is a departure from longtime conservative principles.
The consistent thread that runs through National Conservatism is this: The only way to bring back our culture is to bring the awesome power of government to bear. This belief is perhaps clearest in the 2021 Statement of Principles: When “lawlessness, immorality, and dissolution reign, national government must intervene energetically to restore order.”
This is more than a reference to stopping crime. It’s ultimately about imposing a vision of culture through government power — i.e., legislating morality, dictating individual decisions, and molding society in accord with conservative values.
Is such blatant coercion justified? The National Conservative response is essentially: We’ve tried other ways, and nothing has worked. Despite our best efforts, key institutions — business, the media, universities and beyond — are getting more extreme, not less. The shapers of culture are actively attacking the principles, practices and values that undergird American life.
In the face of this concerning campaign, we’re told, we need to go for government, with all its force.
The argument is no doubt appealing. It promises a relatively straightforward, even simple, solution to the massive problem of cultural decay. Yet that simplicity is precisely why it’s doomed to fail.
For all its strength, government is a blunt instrument. It can easily destroy, but it cannot create. It can easily sow division, but it struggles to cultivate unity. When government tips the scales one direction or the other on some cultural issue, it typically stokes the fire of polarization — even when attempting to defuse it.
The left’s longtime abuse of Washington is proof. Our country has become significantly more divided as power has accumulated in our nation’s capital. No wonder: More control in D.C. means less control for Americans, leading to an ever-worsening war over who holds the levers of power.
If liberals have driven a massive wedge between Americans by expanding government, what makes National Conservatives believe that the same approach, just under different leaders, will bring us together? To “intervene energetically” is far more likely to divide us further, worsening our crisis of national cohesion and cultural decline.
Culture is too complex and multifaceted to be dictated from on high. No combination of right-thinking politicians, policies and programs will make this effort work.
If the conservative movement is going to renew our culture, we can’t put our hopes in the dream of top-down government action. Instead, we should look to the lessons of history, and shape our society from the bottom up.
Culture springs from the interplay between individual people and institutions. It’s shaped by the discussions our families have at the dinner table as much as the debates our society has about the issues of the day. Conservatives can’t ignore any of it, nor should we overemphasize any one part of it. We need a whole-of-society effort.
Make no mistake: This work is much harder than the go-for-government call of National Conservatism. Renewing our culture requires an unprecedented investment from those of us on the right — an order of magnitude more, at a minimum.
We must contend for every institution that influences our culture, either co-opting or creating competitors to Hollywood, higher education, Broadway and big business. We must also contend for government, too. But if that’s all or even most of what we focus on, conservatives will continue to lose cultural battles, and eventually, the cultural war.
Most of all, we must defend the individual liberty that enables us to work together and through other institutions. That is perhaps the greatest danger of National Conservatism: It seems willing to abandon freedom in pursuit of order.
As history attests, the more power government has, the less liberty the people have. Why would we be so foolish as to limit or abandon the very thing that enables us to promote morality, defend our values, and advance our vision in every facet of life?
If we truly want to save our culture and our country, we need to adapt another phrase: It’s the freedom, stupid.
• John Tillman is CEO of the American Culture Project. He is a signatory of Freedom Conservatism: A Statement of Principles.
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