How Valuable are Your Values? – Part 2

Original artwork by Marisa Draeger

When something loses its function it can be difficult to maintain, even when people believe it is important to be maintained.

Many bemoaned the demise of the Mom-and-Pop general store when retailers such as Wal-Mart put them out of business. What industrious virtue those tiny incubators of community bestowed upon the rest of us! How tragic that they’ve been replaced by the mindless, corporate gods of greed and consumption! And yet…

And yet, somehow these stores—which so many argued were far superior in so many ways to the corporate giants—went out of business. Why? I contend it is because the function they served in our daily lives—that of providing grocery and retail goods—was no longer necessary. Not because we no longer needed those things, but because they had been replaced by supercenters that could deliver the same—albeit somewhat inferior—products in greater variety and at cheaper prices. The virtues that some argued for so strongly did not outweigh the benefits of those super-retailers. We voted for virtue with our lips and convenience with our wallets. Virtue lost.

The function of an institution is vital to the wellbeing of that institution. As Russell Kirk brilliantly observed in his book, The Conservative Mind, “The family is disintegrating before our eyes not because of ‘sexual maladjustment’ and ‘family tension’…but because it has been deprived of its old economic and educational advantages. So it is with aristocracy, local government, guild, church, and the other elements which bound man to man for many centuries.” To the extent these institutions do serve some functional purpose for us they sputter on. But they are bereft of their vitality, leaving many bored, angry, alienated, and depressed.

What is most curious is that institutions can decay as they lose their function at the same time people insist louder and louder that they are worth preserving because they provide us important benefits. In 1977 psychologist and author Dr. James Dobson founded Focus on the Family, a ministry dedicated to the preservation of the traditional American family. Nearly four decades later, Dr. Dobson declared, “We lost the entire culture war.” Why? Because opposing forces hellbent on destroying the family were just too popular and finally prevailed? That seems unlikely to be the only cause.

The sitcom Modern Family captures the condition of the modern American family by including a blended family and a homosexual couple. From the perspective of shows from generations past, such as The Brady Bunch or The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, it’s an irreverent take on the family. And yet, the show consistently extols the benefits of the family as a place to find belonging, love, and acceptance. The traditional and modern views of family disagree sharply on the defining characteristics of the family. Yet, they have two things in common: 1) they both contend that their version of a family is good and beneficial and should be celebrated and 2) their version of a family is struggling.

The traditionalist may say that the modern family is struggling because it is introducing into the institution of marriage arrangements that nature and God did not intend, such as homosexual or no-fault-divorce couples. As a traditional Christian myself, I find this argument compelling and do believe the family can’t be sustained if it’s rooted in the flimsy notion of a popular social construct. And yet, it doesn’t account for the pitiful state of families in the U.S. that do abide by traditional definitions. My home state of Oklahoma consistently ranks in the top ten states with the highest divorce rate—taking the #1 spot in some years. Oklahomans are proud of their traditional, conservative values. And yet right here in the Bible Belt where so many professing Christians live the condition of the family is appalling.

The reasons for the disintegration of the family are complex and varied, and I am by no means suggesting it can be boiled down to a single cause described in a single blog post. But I am suggesting that the lack of function for the institution of the family is devastating.

In the ancient world, marriage was practically necessary for survival. At the very least, it opened the door to greater social acceptance, just as divorce was far more socially unacceptable. As equality increases between men and women in the workforce and at home, the traditional male/female roles diminish. Raising children together can reinforce the bonds of the family, just as waiting until later in life to have children—as has been the trend over the past several generations—can deprive a couple of that function of the family experience. The point is not whether these changes are good or bad, but that these changes result in a reduction of the original function of the family—which results in a strain on the family.

Take, as another example, the condition of the church. A recent article in the Cincinnati Republicentitled Why Millennials Need the Church begins by citing now familiar stats about the decline of religion among Millennials in the United States. It then goes on to “attempt to convey…how simply attending Church can have in incredibly positive effect on your life”—of which there are three explored: 1) an opportunity to impact the world in a positive way, 2) getting in tune with your true self instead your polished social-media self, and 3) meaningful relationships.

While I agree with the author’s position that these benefits can come through church attendance, what’s missing is a reflection on why church attendance is lacking. Are Millennials not interested in being impactful, healthy self-images, and meaningful relationships? Of course they are. Do Millennials not believe these things can be found through church attendance? Perhaps. But I would contend the primary reason church attendance is in decline is precisely because it is perceived—and often marketed to be perceived—as chiefly a place to attend because of the benefits it offers.

Free counselling services, Sunday school for the kids, community, spiritual worship, pragmatic teaching, and an outlet for serving others—all of these things and more are incredible benefits of church attendance. But none of them are the essential function of the church. A friend who attends a mega church here in Tulsa told me about a video that had played during service to encourage further attendance. The video depicts a man opting out of a party so that he can come to church. In the next scene a woman decides to go to church instead of meet up with her girlfriends at a bar. The final scene shows the man and woman—presumably both single—worshiping next to each other. The video ends with them each noticing the other for the first time.

To be fair, there are plenty of churches that don’t market themselves as an attend here and meet that special someone meet-up and they pride themselves on striving to preach the gospel and only the gospel. Well. But the fact remains, we live in a culture in which more and more people perceive church as a place to find various benefits, and the function of the church in our daily lives is becoming less and less evident. It’s one thing to attend church in hopes of finding your soulmate (a benefit.) It’s quite another to attend in obedience to the Word and to worship the God who has saved your soul from hell (the function.)

In a culture that rejects or downplays the doctrine of original sin, the function of the church withers away and all that remains are the benefits of church attendance. Which has the effect of fewer people going to church to realize those benefits, even as they acknowledge they would be better off with them. Professor Jordan Peterson, who doesn’t attend church, is at a loss for how to restore the benefits that church provides. So am I.

Conservative philosopher Sir Roger Scruton used soccer and education to illustrate a similar point:

“Those who join in a game of [soccer] are intent on scoring goals: if they neglect that purpose, then the game ceases to exist. But the incidental effects of their participation are many: exercise, companionship, delight. Good though those effects are they cannot be made into the purpose of the game, without destroying the game, so losing the good effects of it. In just such a way, the many good effects of education arise not because they are pursued but because they are not pursued: they arise as the by-product of pursuing something else, which is knowledge.”

Once the purpose, the function, the central core of a thing is lost, the thing itself is lost. Whether that’s the family, the church, government, education, or the game of soccer. We may go on bemoaning the lost and work for its restoration, but we are only fooling ourselves if we think that can be accomplished without the restoration of its function.

This series is on values—what are they, and what are they worth—and I hope that this divergence into the essential aspect of function in the preservation of institutions hasn’t come across as a frivolous aside. To the extent our institutions—the family, church, and government, to name but a few—are the instruments we use to exercise our values, it is vital we understand that we can’t claim to be in pursuit of values while ignoring the challenges in keeping them. That would be like saying we have a heart for the poor but no interest in what alleviates poverty.

So, now that we have that out of the way, in Part 3 we’ll turn our attention to what values are and what they’re not.

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How Valuable are Your Values? – Part 1

Original artwork by Marisa Draeger

Part of my motivation for launching Saving Elephants was the 2016 Republican presidential primary. Prior to the election, I believed the greatest risk for the long-term viability of the conservative movement to be the ability of the Republican party—the primary vehicle for instituting conservative policies—to survive the rapidly changing demographics in the United States. I was only half kidding when I’d tell people I could lower the median age of local Republican gatherings just by showing. I believed then—as I do now—that unless the GOP can find a way to appeal to Millennials they won’t be a viable party much longer. And since we Millennials are the most diverse generation in American history, appealing to Millennials includes offering a more inclusive message.

Let me be clear: when I speak of the need for inclusion and appealing to minorities I do not mean caving to the Left’s demands for thought-policing tolerance, open borders, or expanded entitlement programs. Much ado has been made about how Millennials are somehow inherently more progressive than generations past. Nonsense. No generation is inherently any more conservative or progressive than the next.

Had we transplanted a group of American Millennials to the Congo the day they were born and had them raised by Tutsi rebels, it is doubtful they would have come of age chanting “We are the 99 percent!” and demanding the use of gender-neutral pronouns. Time and circumstance may make some worldview more appealing to an entire generation over competing worldviews, but that doesn’t make the generations themselves any more or less “conservative.” Rather, historical trends and circumstance may make it more advantageous for one worldview or another. Conservatism—which promises no utopia and demands each individual take responsibility for their own lives and character development—can often start with a decided disadvantage; but this era is particularly rife with challenges for the Right.

Such as? Kristen Soltis Anderson, author of The Selfie Vote and polling expert with a special focus on Millennials, summarized it well:

“There are massive political challenges awaiting Republicans in the future. As a party, we have relied on older voters, white voters, religious voters, married voters, voters in rural or less-dense suburbs. All of these groups are shrinking. This is happening gradually, of course, but trends that have been in motion for years are slowly going to make it harder and harder for Republicans to continue to have the same coalition. They will need to win a new group of voters: today’s young voters.”

And as if that wasn’t bad enough, common conservative “branding” that has been used over the past half-century is an ill-suited marketing technique for today. Most Millennials weren’t born when Ronald Reagan—arguably the most conservative president of the last century—was in office. Yet his name was invoked over 45 times in a single Republican presidential debate during the 2016 elections. The Great Recession has led to widespread discontent with the free market among Millennials unable to find suitable careers. Yet the Republican party has failed to rise to the occasion and craft an appealing message for Millennials perplexed by the economic collapse—meanwhile, socialists like Bernie Sanders have filled the vacuum with a strong appeal to central, socialize control.

Perhaps the greatest disadvantage conservatives face with Millennials is the lack of a coherent adversary to engender them to the conservative cause of national defense and unity. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 it ended the Cold War. It also ended the single most unifying element in the conservative collision of the 20th century. The term neoconservative refers to 1960s liberals who became disenchanted with the Left’s stance on Communism and the Great Society and found a new home in the conservative movement. The term Reagan Democrat refers to 1980s Democrats who voted for Ronald Reagan who advocated a policy of defeating the Soviets. Millennials today face no such threat that would unify them towards this conservative impulse.

But none of this means that conservatism as a worldview or a philosophy is no longer valid. A worldview doesn’t become invalid when we turn the page of a calendar. At issue is whether or not the conservative worldview is right, not whether it’s currently pragmatic. As G.K. Chesterton put it: “You might as well say that a certain philosophy can be believed on Mondays, but cannot be believed on Tuesdays. You might as well say of a view of the cosmos that it was suitable to half-past three, but not suitable to half-past four. What a man can believe depends upon his philosophy, not upon the clock or the century.” The circumstances surrounding worldviews and the messaging that may appeal to each generation are constantly in flux. The worldviews in general, and human nature in particular, is not.

So here we sit, massive disadvantages at every hand and the largest, most diverse generation of Americans whose demographic changes are completely at odds with the voting coalition Republicans have long relied upon quickly coming of age, and the conservative must somehow convince this generation they have something to recommend it if the conservative movement is to survive and thrive in this century. Could things get any worse?

Enter Donald Trump.

I believe that conservatism, properly understood and articulated, IS the most appropriate means of appealing to Millennials. What I do not support is the hostility with which Trumplicans advocate a “conservative” agenda (quotation marks very much intended.) It’s not conservative for the Vice President to stage a political stunt to pressure citizens to stand for the National Anthem (for that is an inappropriate abuse of his power.) It’s not conservative to try to “save jobs” by giving a company tax incentives to stay in the United States at the expense of the taxpayer. It’s not conservative for a president to tweet that an American citizen should be in jail who isn’t on trial. It’s not conservative to announce “I alone” can fix America.

These actions represent an authoritarian enforcement of a red-state culture. The kind that smacks of Southern Baptist potluck dinners, Civil War reenactments, bluegrass and chili festivals, Branson-style entertainment, Blue Lives Matter police officers, gun-toting NRA members, Southern gospel quartets, blue-collar steel workers, large homeschooling families, Christian alternatives to pop-culture, and selfish country-music loving ladies. Yours truly is a product of this culture. It’s deeply rooted into my soul and I’m well versed in its complex web of shortcomings and merits and—as such—feel a strong sense of belonging to it.

But no amount of fine feelings for that culture means I confuse the defense of the culture with the defense of conservatism. The former is a cultural preference, the latter a worldview. The former prescribes adhering to the norms and customs of the culture, which may exclude certain demographics. The latter does not take into account your race, age, or gender, but instead attempts to persuade you to believe in certain truth-claims. The former says you must behave in this way and believe these things to belong with us the latter says it is in your best interest to behave this way and believe these things. The former is not a value.

Much of our modern political infighting isn’t a debate about values, but a debate about whose culture is the best. That is a very important and admirable debate; but it should not be a political policy debate. And political enforcement of cultural norms—being non-voluntary—is precisely the opposite of conservative values.

Conservatism has a much more difficult road ahead today than it did even a couple of years ago. For it must not only overcome the demographic challenges facing the political party that’s been sympathetic to conservative values, it must now deal with the fact that political party may no longer be sympathetic to conservative values. To be clear, Trump is not the primary threat to conservatism—the mindset that elected him is its primary threat. And, while the collision between the worldviews of your average Trumplican and your average traditional conservative are complex, I’d like to focus on one of those differences in this series: the weight of values.

To be fair, most of what the Trump administration does from a policy perspective is something I can support as a conservative. And many of my Right-leaning friends have expressed—some with belligerence—that I should simply be satisfied with that. They don’t understand why it matters what vile things Trump says or does, so long as the end result is the kind of policies we wanted. And that is a legitimate point.

But it begs the question, are conservative values the same as conservative policies? I contend that they are not. And, if they’re not, what is the appropriate thing to do when they’re not in harmony? That is, at what point is it no longer “OK” that Trump passes something like a modest tax reductionplan if he’s making a mockery of our values and eroding the confidence of our civil institutions and creating instability in our foreign affairs? At what point do values trump policy? And—here’s the real question—are values still worth upholding if they’re getting in the way of achieving those policy objectives? What are they good for if they don’t get us what we wanted?

These are the very questions I hope to address in Part 2.

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Bonus Episode - Is Taxation Theft?

It's tax day! The least wonderful time of the year.

So Let’s talk about the taxes you pay. What does conservatism tell us about taxes? Is taxation theft? Can we ever get rid of taxes? What did Arthur Laffer draw on a paper napkin that shaped tax policy for decades? How can we keep taxes direct, transparent, equal, and proportional? Does it ever make sense to raise taxes?

All that and more on Saving Elephant's first ever bonus episode:

LISTEN HERE

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Episode 4 - Russell Kirk's 10 Conservative Principles Part 1

In the 1950s, Russell Kirk almost single-handedly rescued conservative thought from oblivion and made it a force to be reckoned with again by writing The Conservative Mind. Since his intended audience was academia, much of his tome is a rather dense and difficult read. But that's what we're here for--to make highbrow conservative thought easily accessible and applicable for you. Kirk later summarized his basic arguments in the book into a list of Ten Conservative Principles. In today's podcast we'll be exploring the first five of those principles.

LISTEN HERE

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Judge Not!

Note – Most of the post below is comprised of variations of quotes I’ve seen on social media. In many cases, only the names/subjects have been altered for maximum irony.

Since the focus of this blog is the restoration of the conservative worldview in the Republican party, I don’t often digress into my religious convictions. But, as a practicing evangelical Christian, I have been appalled at a certain political trend within the American evangelical community that I strongly feel compelled to address. I dare not keep silent any longer for fear I’d be guilty of acquiescing to this sacrilegious behavior.

I’m speaking, of course, of those believers who disobey Christ’s command to “judge not” by publicizing the shortcomings of our elected officials. You know who you are. You believers from laymen to the mega-church pastors busily proselytizing your gospel of HATE on social media by denouncing some supposed sordid sexual scandal or accusation of someone caught in a lie. It seems like some “Christians” spend their day just hoping our leaders do something wrong so they can tell everyone they know.

In Matthew 7:1-5 Jesus tells us very adamantly NOT to judge. He knows no one is without sin—even you! Yes, even you, self-righteous believer! I sin, you sin, we all sin. Maybe you could sing that last bit to the tune of I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream. It’d be easier for you to remember.

I am so tired of these hypocritical better-than-you so-called “Christian” evangelicals constantly judging others for their sins. Hypocrites! Who are you to judge, to bring some railing accusation against the shortcomings of others? The Word says to remove the beam from you own eye, not get all carried away with the spec in your brother’s eye! The Word says there are NONE righteous. No. Not. One.

Don’t you know God appoints our leaders? He does. The Bible is very clear that God Himself appoints our leaders. Sure, they’re not perfect, but if you have a problem with the leaders God has appointed for us it sounds like you have a problem with God Himself! Beware, the Bible says to not touch the Lord’s anointed (Psalms 105:15).

There are so many examples of this hypocrisy I couldn’t possibly list them all, but here are some of the worst I’ve seen:

President Bill Clinton is a very religious man. He could quote scriptures with the best of them. As a child he walked a mile alone to attend a Baptist church. He is a bona fideSouthern Baptist.

That’s right, a Southern Baptist. But what do so many Baptists have to say about him today? They accuse him of being a liar, an adulterer, and a sexual predator. Do you know who has the nickname the Accuser of the Brethren? Satan! Do you know what Jesus said when the so-called “religious” people of His day brought a woman caught in adultery and asked if they should stone her to death? He said, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” Those aren’t my words, those are Jesus’ words! The Bible couldn’t be any clearer than that! When people cast their stones of judgment at Bill Clinton, where do you stand? With Satan or with Jesus?

I have news for all you quick-to-judge hypocrites out there who go on and on about Bill Clinton’s so-called womanizing: God isn’t as much of a nitpicking busybody as you’d like to think He is. Have you ever heard of King David? The Bible said he was a man after God’s own heart. Wow! What did he do to earn a title like that? He must have been some super-saint, right? Wrong! He did far worse than Bill Clinton ever did. Ever hear of Bathsheba? That’s the woman David lusted after. He had a child with her while she was married to another man named Uriah. Think that’s bad? There’s more. Not only did he sleep with a married woman, he went so far as to make sure her husband died in battle to try to cover it up.

I think that if CNN and Fox News had been around when King David was alive he would have been impeached, just as Clinton was. But God makes Kings; He appoints our leaders. His plans are larger than yours. But here you are, calling Bill Clinton names like liar and cheater and adulterer and whatever else enters your heart of stone. God called David a man after His own heart, and he did far worse than Clinton. And yet so many Bible-thumpers today just want to focus on that one little thing where they find fault. Just like the children of Israel murmuring and complaining on their journey to the Promised Land, you just aren’t satisfied with what God provides. Unbelievable!

And while we’re on the subject of Bill Clinton, what about his wife? She was quoting scripture in her concession speech but some of you can’t shut up about how you think she’s such a sore loser. LOCK HER UP you shout! Where’s the mercy? Where’s the grace? Where’s the love? We can’t claim to know what’s in someone else’s heart, only God can know. She will be judged by God just like we all will, so stop trying to judge her here on earth.

And then you go on about spewing hatred about things like Benghazi, and her private server, and alleged crimes and corruptions so numerous I doubt you could even keep them all straight. Well, you know what, none of that matters because it all happened BEFORE she even ran for President! Why should we care about what she was doing in her private life before she ran for office? Why is that any of your business?

You know who else Christians love to chide for the things he did BEFORE he became president? Barack Obama. That’s right, most of what so many Christians find fault with—his dealings with Bill Ayers, his Communist mentor, his pastor, Jeremiah Wright—all happened BEFORE he was ever sworn into office. It’s not anyone’s business what he did before he was president. Period. Who he had meetings with, or any wrongdoings. It’s life, and he’s a human just like you. Don’t worry about what’s in the past. Worry about what he’s doing now. Or, better yet, worry about your own life.

Some of you—and you know who you are—reach as far back into his past as possible to find some wrong. You claim he wasn’t a natural-born citizen—that his birth certificate was a forgery and that he was actually born in Kenya. Fools! You just don’t get it do you? Of course there’s no truth to it! He was playing the media like a fool and let them think all this and they fell for it—they and you, apparently. While he was busy giving us change you can believe in, you and the corrupt media were distracted by his brilliant strategy—and you bought it hook, line, and sinker!

I could talk all day about how hypocritical Christians just want to bash the Clintons and Obama and so many others and point out the specks in their brother’s eye instead of removing the beam from their own eye, but what’s the point? Hypocrites will indulge in their hypocrisy; he which is filthy, let him be filthy still (Revelation 22:11). If Jesus and the Word of God can’t convince them to stop judging others, I’m certainly not going to be able to do so!

No one is beyond forgiveness; no one is beyond redemption; no one is so far gone that they cannot be retrieved. Noah, Rahab, David, Mathew, Saul—these were all people that had transgressions in their past and unlikely people, so it would seem, for God to use to accomplish His will. Who's to say the Clinton’s and Obama aren’t trying to better themselves? Who are we to judge? Who are we to cast stones?

My prayer is that all these self-righteous “Christians” will see how foolish and hypocritical they have been. With God all things are possible. He could even soften their cold hearts of judgment and condemnation. Who knows, perhaps some day we’ll finally have a president who’s “perfect” enough for their tastes that they’ll actually have the good sense to support his good intentions rather than judge his wicked deeds!

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Bias isn’t Just a Four-Letter Word – Part 3

Original artwork by Marisa Draeger

“The conservative adheres to CUSTOM, CONVENTION, and CONTINUITY.” Russell Kirk – Ten Conservative Principles*

In Part 1 of this series we discussed the image problem conservatives have among a diverse generation of Millennials. Conservatives mean to conserve biases of the past; unfortunately, bias has become a four-letter word. In Part 2 we explored how unhealthy culture and crumbling institutions leads to unhappiness. If you’re reading this series for the first time, be sure and check out Part 1 and Part 2.

We might think of culture as a tool, but not just any tool—it’s not a hammer or a screwdriver; it’s a nail gun or a power drill. Properly used, the immense power of culture can spur a nation to face seemingly insurmountable challenges, lead to historic productivity and prosperity, or contribute to literature, arts, philosophy, and music that will inspire awe for centuries to come. But a culture can also be a significant stumbling block, leading to centuries of stagnation or regression.

Cultures are inherently logical, no matter how illogical cultural traditions may appear to a contemporary audience, because they were built by what worked over a period of time. Traditions may be thought of as the collective wisdom of those who came before us. Without cultural continuity connecting us to our historical heritage, we will become no wiser than the sum of those of us who just happen to be living. “The common man is not ignorant; but his knowledge is a kind of collective wisdom, the sum of the slow accretions of a thousand generations,” observed Russell Kirk, “This lost, he is thrown back upon his own private stock of reason, with the consequences which attend shipwreck.” Culture is a manual for life passed from one generation to the next. It would be the height of foolish arrogance, having identified some typos in the manual, to toss the whole thing and begin anew.

Few have contributed as much to the conversation of culture and its influences as the incomparable conservative scholar Thomas Sowell:

“Any culture—whether in or out of the mainstream—is not just a badge of identity or a museum piece to be admired by others. A culture is a tool for serving the many practical purposes of life, from making a living to curing diseases. As a tool, it has to change with the ever-changing tasks that confront every culture as time goes on…Unfortunately, in this age of "multiculturalism," there are too many outsiders who want all sorts of cultures to be frozen where they are, preserved like museum exhibits. Worse yet, too many multiculturalists want many groups to cling to their historic grievances, if not be defined by them. But among the many ways that various groups around the world have advanced from poverty to prosperity, nursing historic grievances does not have a promising track record—except for those who make a career out of keeping grievances alive.”

Generally speaking, the conservative is a proponent of Western culture as he believes the values found therein—the ideas embodied in the Enlightenment; the scientific method; contributions to the arts; social contract theory; freedom of religion, speech, and thought; equality of human value; sanctity of life; the rule of law; and representative governance among others—are worth conserving. This doesn’t always mean the West is best. But the only way we can call aspects of a culture right or wrong is to have some preconceived notion of right and wrong.

Rather than celebrate the achievements of our culture, Americans are often made to feel shameful for the transgressions of Western civilization. Instead of embracing the culture some have adopted multiculturalism as an ideological safe-haven from perceived ideas of racism or imperialism or being the protégé of white privilege. You can feel safe from the accusations of racism if you absolve yourself of the responsibility of making value judgments on culture and race altogether; all that is required is that you vigorously defend the idea that no culture is to be criticized (except, of course, your own). Author and political commentator Mark Steyn has built a career out of poking fun at the inherent folly in multiculturalism. “Multiculturalism is the slipperiest ism; it doesn’t invite an argument, it says there’s no point to having an argument. It says basically, if everything is of equal value, what the hell is the point in talking about any of it?” Steyn protests, “If the purpose of your culture is to celebrate multi-culture, you’re in effect saying that our bedrock belief is that we believe in everything, which is the same thing as saying we believe in nothing: our core value is that we have no core value.”

Multiculturalism is a unique privilege of the same white privileged culture the multiculturalist means to discredit. It is a view seldom expressed outside the West. “You can’t be a multiculturalist in Saudi Arabia,” Steyn observes. Expressing the idea that all other cultures are equally valid and that minority cultures should be afforded preferential treatment under the guise of some sense of fairness is liable to get you imprisoned, or worse, in most of the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin-American Communist regimes, large swaths of Asia, and the ever-expanding Russian Federation. But from the safe vantage point of Western civilization, which doesn’t imprison those expressing political views that differ from the ruling majority, it can be easy to lose perspective. Indeed, multiculturalism celebrates the loss of perspective. Mark Steyn further quips that a feature of multiculturalism is “it absolves you of knowing anything…[it’s] not about knowing anything about other cultures, it’s just about feeling warm and fluffy about them.”

Multiculturalism attempts to impose an unworkable burden on the majority culture and an unjust responsibility-waiver on minority cultures. Sowell observes, “The multicultural dogma is that we are to ‘celebrate’ all cultures, not change them. In other words, people who lag educationally or economically are to keep on doing what they have been doing—but somehow have better results in the future than in the past. And, if they don't have better results in the future, it is society's fault.” What we recognize on a personal level—that individuals who forgo taking personal responsibility are likely to lag behind their peers—is true of entire people groups. Yet the multiculturalist seeks to find fault with the majority culture where instances of inequalities are present. Both parties lose: the majority culture is made to feel “guilty” and perhaps reprimanded for perceived slights and the minority culture is trapped in a perpetual cycle of stagnation.

Of course, not all allegations of wrongdoing are wrongheaded—far from it. “Nothing has been more common in human history than discrimination against different groups, whether different by race, religion, caste or in innumerable other ways. Moreover, this discrimination has itself been unequal—more fierce against some groups than others and more pervasive at some periods of history than in others,” Sowell continues, “If there were not so many other powerful factors creating disparities in income and wealth, it might be possible to measure the degree of discrimination by the degree of differences in economic outcomes. Even so, the temptation to do so is seductive, especially as a means of reducing the complexities of life to the simplicities of politics. But the facts will not fit that vision.”

And therein lies the problem: the multiculturalist seeks to reduce the suffering of whole people groups to simplistic explanations that often prevent progress from taking place. The patient complaining of a cough is given cough suppressant without diagnosing the cause of the cough. It’s not that the cough isn’t real; it’s that it may merely be a symptom of a larger problem. No civilization has been without sin, so judging the merits of a civilization requires that we maintain a sense of perspective. As irksome as any instance of discrimination may be, it should be graded on a cultural curve. Western civilization has been far more tolerant of other races and cultures than many of its counterparts. That’s not to make an excuse for past grievances, but to maintain perspective in the hopes of a world free of race-motivated violence and oppression. The conservative believes it is better to build upon the culture headed in the right direction, comparatively speaking, rather than to tear it apart and start anew. If we are ever to make progress in reducing the harmful effects of racial discrimination, it would be best to begin by bolstering a culture with the potential for progress.

It is easier for a foreigner to assimilate into Western culture than almost any other. We don’t require that you denounce the faith of your ancestors or pledge allegiance to some autocrat. Citizenship “…has been freed from religious affiliation, from racial, ethnic, and kinship ties, and from the ‘rites of passage’ whereby communities lay claim to the souls of their members, by guarding them against the pollution of other customs and other tribes…nothing more is required of the immigrant than the adoption of the civic culture, and the assumption of the duties implied in it,” notes English philosopher Roger Scruton. And this value of inclusion is worth celebrating. But it can be taken too far as we traverse the murky waters of multiculturalism. The bare definition of multiculturalism is innocent enough: the presence of, or support for, several distinct cultural or ethnic groups within a society. But things quickly go awry when we overemphasize the support for diverse cultural expressions. When taken too far, multiculturalism is cultural relativism; the belief that no culture has anything more to offer than any other and that there’s no distinction to be made when one culture is replaced by another. From this lens, multiculturalism is one of the more destructive ideas en vogue in Western civilization today, because it threatens the very culture conservatives mean to conserve.

I said earlier that some may adopt multiculturalism as an ideological safe-haven from accusations of racism. Here they can take security in absolving themselves of the responsibility of making value judgments on culture altogether. But this line of thinking contains a fallacy: the untruth that culture and race are inseparable. You didn’t choose the race or the culture you were born into, but you can choose to modify or abandon the latter. “Once we distinguish race and culture, the way is open to acknowledge that not all cultures are equally admirable, and that not all cultures can exist comfortably side by side,” Scruton observes, “To deny this is to forgo the very possibility of moral judgment, and therefore to deny the fundamental experience of community.” Cultural relativism and an unwillingness to criticize culture destroys the glue that holds community together. If everything is of equal value, what’s the point in distinguishing between communities?

During a brief stint in Haiti, I met a retired Canadian carpenter who’d spent decades traveling to impoverished countries and working with local mission and humanitarian groups to build affordable housing. When Ukraine gained independence from the Soviet Union in the early 90s and it became more accessible to Westerners, he began to work in that country as well. He told me that back then—just after Ukraine had been freed from the shackles of communism—the rampant poverty one encountered in that country was on par with what he witnessed in Haiti. But, over the course of a few decades, much of Ukraine was unrecognizable from its past while Haiti remains the poorest country in the Western hemisphere. While reasons for such economic dissimilarities are many and complex, my Canadian friend was resolute that the primary culprit was the difference in culture. Both countries had been freed from the oppression of powerful foreign governments: one progressed within decades whereas the other has remained stagnant for centuries.

As impoverished as they were, I found much to be admired in the Haitian culture. I was impressed by their cheerfulness and openness. In spite of their lack of basic necessities they seemed more content and grateful than most Americans, not to mention their powerful devotion to their faith. And yet, their culture taught them that past grievances from outside powers were to blame for their poverty, past, present, and future. Having been mistreated by the American and European powers after gaining independence, Haitians charted their own course and have been struggling ever since. While material prosperity is not the only measurement of a healthy culture, it is noteworthy that the vast majority of immigrants have consistently moved from non-Western to Western cultures.

The Haitian response to Western civilization is nearly the opposite of the nation of Japan. Sowell notes that, upon learning of their own backwardness in comparison with Western powers “a major cultural transformation had to take place among the Japanese people. A painful awareness of their own backwardness spread through Japan. Western nations in general and the United States in particular were held up as models to their children. Japanese textbooks urged imitation of Abraham Lincoln and Benjamin Franklin, even more so than Japanese heroes. Many laments about their own shortcomings by the Japanese of that era would today be called "self-hate." But there were no cultural relativists then to tell them that what they had achieved was just as good, in its own way, as what others had. Instead, the Japanese overcame their backwardness, through generations of dedicated work and study, rather than redefining it out of existence.” Today Japan accounts for nearly 6% of the world economy. By and large, countries that reject the values of Western civilization regress compared to their Western counterparts.

Closer to home, Sowell has written numerous books, essays, and editorials on the history of his own race within the United States. The provocative title of his book Black Rednecks and White Liberals stems from his argument that the regressive culture of black ghettos in America originated in the culture of the Southern United States and don’t represent the cultural heritage of African Americans:

“By the end of the 19th century, the small numbers of blacks living in Northern cities had, over the generations, assimilated the culture of the surrounding society to the point where they lived and worked among the white population more fully than they would in most of the 20th century. In New York, Washington, Chicago, Philadelphia and other Northern cities, black ghettos became a 20th century phenomenon. It was after the massive migration of far less acculturated blacks out of the South in the early 20th century when a massive retrogression in black-white relations took place in the Northern cites to which the migrants moved. The blacks who moved to these cities were of the same race as those who were already there, but they were not the same in their culture, values, and behavior. No one complained of this more bitterly than the blacks already living in these cities, who saw the newcomers as harbingers of a worse life for all blacks.”

Being a critic of culture does not require one to be discriminatory of race. Nor does prejudice require one to be a bigot. “Prejudice is not bigotry or superstition, although prejudice sometimes may degenerate into these,” wrote Russell Kirk, “Prejudice is prejudgment, the answer with which intuition and ancestral consensus of opinion supply a man when he lacks either time or knowledge to arrive at a decision predicated upon pure reason.” It is imperative, therefore, that we carefully distinguish between the prejudice of cultural tradition and the prejudice of racial discrimination. To the conservative, bias isn’t just a four-letter word; it’s the lifeblood of cultural continuity.

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Episode 3 - What Conservatism (Actually) Means

It turns out the meaning of "conservatism" isn't just up for grabs. Here we'll learn what conservatism actually means by exploring the writings of old, dead, white guys like Burke, Kirk, Goldwater, and Buckley. And we'll discuss the three worldviews (economic, foreign policy, and social) that merged to form modern conservatism.

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Episode 2 - Why Save the Elephants?

Josh lays out the basic premise behind Saving Elephants: how the Republican party is soon to be endangered, why they're worth saving, and how to do just that.

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Episode 1 - Welcome to Saving Elephants

Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis welcomes listeners as he addresses what they can expect to hear and expect to not hear in future episodes and his motives for launching Saving Elephants.

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