Donning Spandex – Part 1 (with great power comes great razzmatazz)

Original artwork by Marisa Draeger

“The conservative perceives the need for prudent restraints upon power and upon human passions.” Russell Kirk – Ten Conservative Principles

Ever since Hollywood discovered the money-making enterprise of cranking out super-hero movies, crime-fighting, spandex donning characters that were previously only known to the sort of people who attend Comic-Con International have become household names. As The Onion hilariously noted, “Green Lantern is a superhero with fans around the world who everyone certainly knew about before they saw the movie’s trailer.” Yeah. Right.

These capped crusaders are so ubiquitous that even in my profession—the unenchanting world of auditing and accounting—the Journal of Accountancy recently ran an article entitled Which Superheroes Would Make the Best CPAs?. I wish that were a joke.

While these films have ranged from cinematic masterpieces (The Dark Knight) to overhyped flops (Suicide Squad), the fact that some franchises have become billion-dollar box office hits practically guarantees Hollywood will continue to crank these films out for many years to come.

The reasons for the success of these films are doubtless numerous and complex. Though not a film critic, I believe I could take an educated guess at one of those reasons: to some degree we all want to be the heroes we see on the big screen. Who among us doesn’t find the idea of possessing superpowers appealing? In fact, our desire for power is as universal as the desire for nourishment, acceptance, and security.

While some people may have inordinate desires (such as the glutton has for food or the salacious has for sensual pleasures) I believe it can be quite difficult to know the true extent of your desires until you are made to do without. I’ve never had an uncontrollable desire for food—at least not in the sense that I’d be willing to risk my life for my next meal. But I’ve also never been in a position where I was starving and had no idea where my next meal would come from. The desire to eat is universal, but it is more apparent where people are starving.

I had never fancied myself to be the sort of person who desired power until I was put in a situation in which I was quite powerless. Not that long ago my girlfriend suffered a major health crisis that doctors were at a loss to explain or treat. A few weeks into the crisis—when it became apparent things weren’t just going to go back to “normal” and that they could easily get much worse—we grew more desperate. What I wanted in that moment, more than anything, was the power to make her better.

There were daily prayers for wisdom, strength, healing, or just some sign that God was in this somehow and everything was going to be “OK”—even if we had no concept of what “OK” actually meant. As time wore on the tone and tenor of my prayers went through the five stages as denial turned to anger which turned to bargaining which turned to depression which turned to some nominal form of acceptance which I still struggle to maintain. My faith was buoyed only by the realization that the question of suffering is one that theologians has wrestled with down through the ages.

I say this not to be macabre but to illustrate how this natural desire for power manifests itself in all of us under the right circumstances, even if we aren’t the sort of people who would otherwise desire it. What I wouldn’t have given for the power to control the situation! The yearning for power had indeed become an obsession. My girlfriend’s health ultimately stabilized enough for us to have confidence her life was not in danger. But what followed has been years of further recuperation as she continues to battle a debilitating illness and rapidly evolving symptoms.

Feeling powerless can be terrifying. And in those moments, unrestrained passions can lead a person to do things they’d otherwise think unthinkable. Even if you’ve never fantasized about possessing superhuman strength or speed or the ability to read minds, we all face challenges and misfortunes in life that we yearn to overcome and rise above. You don’t have to be a manically laughing, power-hungry supervillain for this to be true. We all desire power. And that is the single most destabilizing aspect of human nature to the other thing we all desire: peace and tranquility in our domestic affairs.

Like any other natural desire, the desire for power isn’t good or bad in and of itself. Ethics don’t enter in until we consider the extent or timing or spirit or purpose of the desire. It isn’t just superheroes who don caps and spandex costumes after all. A good superhero story needs a supervillain.

The idea that we shouldn’t entrust ultimate power to just anyone is hardly controversial. But agreeing upon prudent restraints on power certainly is. Not everyone deserves to don the spandex. And some powers should never be granted to anyone—no matter how good or wise we may judge them to be. Inventiveness and technology allows humans to conquer nature; but that power is fleeting, for human nature—which is a part of nature—means that the more powerful the invention, the more devastating its misuse when placed in the wrong hands.

The conservative believes prudent restraints are necessary for liberty to flourish in a just and ordered society in two broad areas: 1) the powers of the state and 2) the passions of the individual. In this series I’d like to explore both of these ideas, beginning with the prudent restraints upon the powers of the state in Part 2.

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How Valuable are Your Values? – Part 4

Original artwork by Marisa Draeger

In my view, there were two—and only two—legitimate reasons for voting for Trump: 1) because you believed he’d make a good president, and/or 2) because you believed he would at least be a better president than Hillary. In the runup to the 2016 presidential election a cast of characters as eclectic as that Star Wars cantina scene emerged to quantify the unquantifiable and defend their decision to vote for Trump on purely moral or ideological grounds. Their defenses ranged from bizarre to uninformed to bizarrely uninformed.

Trump wasn’t making their task any easier with his duplicitous personal background, race-baiting stump speeches, and refusal to offer coherent, consistent policies. Nevertheless, they persisted. Wayne Grudem’s “Why Voting for Donald Trump Is a Morally Good Choice” springs to mind. Grudem, a highly respected theologian, offered up arguments so uninformed I found them challenging to refute without coming across as dismissive. Other defenders went so far as to insist that criticizing Trump was on par with murdering Christ.

Focus on the Family founder Dr. James Dobson coined the phrase “baby Christian” in reference to Trump’s conveniently timed conversion to the Christianity under the proselytizing of prosperity preacher Paula White—which is kind of like claiming Trump became a Christian after watching Monty Python’s The Life of Brian.

It would have been one thing for Dr. Dobson to have said something to the effect of, “Look, I know I’ve made a big deal about electing Christians and people of integrity to higher office in the past, but I don’t really believe that any more. I think what’s important is that we elect someone pledging to work with us on prolife matters regardless of their morality or personal beliefs.” But he didn’t. What he did was radically water-down what it meant to be a Christian to allow for a “repentance” in which the converted can’t recall if he ever asked God for forgiveness.

My point isn’t that these individuals were morally in the wrong for voting for and supporting Trump. Rather, they were morally in the wrong to reframe the core convictions of a conservative worldview in general and of the Christian faith in particular to justify their decision to vote for Trump. Trump may have been the best candidate in 2016—why was it necessary to make allowances for the things he did and said as if they’re tantamount to what conservative Christians had believed all along?

Those of us who still profess an understanding that repentance is a necessary condition of the Christian faith must have missed the memo this antiquated notion had to be scrapped to allow for political expediency. Those of us who understood conservatism to have originated from a Burkean distain for radical revolution and suspicion of idealistic authoritarianism have woken up in a world where the “conservative” thing to do is pledge unquestioning fealty to the only man who can Make America Great Again!

Black is the new white and white is the new black and heaven help you if you dare to voice your concern that things have been turned upside down. There was an era—back in the dark ages circa 2015—when conservatives supported ideas, not individuals. And even further back in ancient times circa 1997 evangelicals popularized the phrase “character counts” and called for president Bill Clinton’s impeachment when news broke of his affair with a White House intern.

The Public Religion Research Institute conducted a series of polls over five years asking if “an elected official who commits an immoral act in their personal life can still behave ethically and fulfill their duties in their public and professional life.” The results are startling:

A 42% quantum leap in the number of evangelicals willing to “forgive” indiscretions when the political perpetrator in question claims to be on their side is an indication that “winning” is of greater value than actual values. The values that they care about are policies, not character traits or decency.

In all fairness, it’s possible evangelicals had historically placed too high of a premium on their politicians’ moral fiber and not enough on their abilities, and now recent political trends have made it advantageous to realign their thinking. Politicians, after all, exist somewhere in that middle-world between a pastor and a plumber in terms of how much their personal lives matter in whether we would select them to get the job done right.

This begs the question of exactly what aspects and how much of a politician’s personal life “counts” in discerning their ability to fulfill their duties in their public and professional life. And while that is a very important question, exploring it would involve a significant digression that I won’t be taking today.

The bigger issue, I believe, isn’t what aspects or how much, but whether we’re guilty of creating a double standard for those on “our side.” Those who do so are betraying the fact that the values they claim to uphold aren’t really their values after all. They are a means to an end—an effective tool for “winning” some political tug-o-war.

If an act is virtuous, it does not matter who is performing the act. Judge Roy Moore’s sexual exploitations of underaged girls don’t somehow because “innocent” because he ran as a Republican. If a murder is committed the weight we assign that evil shouldn’t depend on whether the murderer’s name is John or Hosea or Mohammad, or whether the defendant happens to belong to our political “tribe.”

As we explored in Part 3, when your values are based on nothing more than how they can benefit you, the only value you truly possess is the value of pragmatism. To some, pragmatism may be a value. But when the Apostle Paul was listing out the Fruits of the Spirit, “pragmatism” didn’t make the list.

I have been berating those political, civic, and religious leaders who found it necessary to “adjust” their values to defend their support of Trump. I recall another “defense” piece that—while written anonymously—was at the very least refreshingly sincere in its approach. The Flight 93 Electionarticle, posted on Claremont.org, gained notoriety when talk radio host Rush Limbaugh made a great to do over it in a September 2016 radio address. Limbaugh, who generally steers clear of intelligentsia conversations and writings, referred to the piece as a “home run” with “every paragraph.”

While the piece began with the tireless argument—“We know exactly what we’re getting with Hillary, at least with Trump there’s a chance he’ll behave”—it quickly turned to a rather lengthy, scathing diatribe of the failure of the Republican party or conservatism to win big at the ballot box and hold to suicidal tendencies, offering Trump as the last best hope for saving the Republic.

While the post was well written, I do not believe it accomplished the impossible task of advocating Trumpism as a friend to the conservative movement. The title of the piece came from the harrowing flight that crashed on September 11 when the passengers realized their hijackers were intent on crashing the plane into some building and decided to rush the cockpit in a courageous attempt at survival. The author portrayed our current political climate in the same light, advocating the cultural war calls for a do or die approach.

But this is the central error of the Trumplican: That the conservative impulse and civil society and liberties and vanquishing everything that’s “wrong with the world” is something that can be achieved by amassing enough power in political leaders dedicated to the cause. This explains, in part, why so many in the Republican party today demand unwavering loyalty and unquestioning support to Trump. Jonah Goldberg, host of The Remnant podcast, lashed out in a recent episode to those who demand he capitulate to the cause:

“I don’t see why someone who’s chosen the profession I have, which is to be a writer and to explain my views and make my arguments in as much good faith as I can and to try to persuade people by using facts, logic, reason, and maybe a little humor, that somehow I need to do more. And I’m not sure what that more is supposed to be…I don’t freak’n work for the Republican party. And it’s not my job to pretend to be a hack for the party. If they believe that if the last conservative—if me or Bill Kristol or David French, whoever it is—if we finally bend the knee too and join hands for this one final sort of Ragnarök confrontation with the libs that all will be right in the world. If your movement needs me to start acting like a hack to win, then your movement’s not going to win anyway, even if I did.”

My purpose in focusing on Trumplicans is not to hold them up as the archetype of hypocrisy. Rather, I believe 2016 and beyond has given us a rare opportunity to see out in the open what ordinarily exists hidden away in our hearts: that many of us—myself included—struggle to uphold the values we claim we believe in when push comes to shove. And while that’s not good, it is better when we recognize that for what it is and repent, rather than adjust our supposed “values” when circumstances make them no longer advantageous. Two wrongs don’t make a right, to borrow a familiar cliché.

We’ve chosen convenience over convictions, tribalism over patriotism, schadenfreude over charity, winning over dignity, and pragmatism over prudence. Desperation, impulsivity, duplicity—these are the maladies that plague those who only know how to treat “values” as a tool to score a “win.” How valuable are our values? We may soon find out.

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Episode 6 - Deep Thoughts with Bob - Education

President Bush once said, "Rarely is the question asked, is our children learning?" Actually, the question gets asked all the time with the resounding response NO! So what's the matter with kids today? What's wrong with education? Why is our children not learning? Is the problem not enough funding? Not enough parental involvement? No prayer in school? Too many guns? Not enough teachers with guns? Was John Dewey full of it and are waterfalls truly sublime?

Josh is joined by Bob Burch to discuss the conservative approach to education and to explore what's actually at the heart of our educational woes.

LISTEN HERE

For further reading on some of the books discussed in the show I'd highly recommend checking out The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis and John Dewey and the Decline of American Education by Henry Edmondson.

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Please Stand By...

Greetings dear readers...

Yours truly is taking a brief hiatus from our regular weekly Friday blog posts to spend some time completing the next podcast episode that will be available this coming Tuesday. Look for the blog to resume next week.

In the meanwhile, if you came here to satisfy a craving for quality conservatism, you might enjoy this recent article by Ben Shapiro on the gap that exists between young and old conservatives and how to potentially "win back" America's youth to the cause. While I find Shapiro's argument mostly compelling, I am far less optimistic about conservatism (or civil society, for that matter) existing and thriving in the West if we are witnessing the demise of our moral framework through our Judeo-Christian heritage. But that's a digression for another day.

If you don't have time for much reading, Fox News' Neil Cavuto has a video about how Trump is undermining his own efforts to drain the swamps that's worth a watch.

Lastly, here are some quotes that inspire me:

“Life does not ask what we want. It presents us with options.”

Thomas Sowell

“There is a line of obligation that connects us to those who gave us what we have; and our concern for the future is an extension of that line.”

Sir Roger Scruton

“Moderation is a virtue, not only amiable but powerful. It is a disposing, arranging, conciliating, cementing virtue…to dare to be fearful when all about you are full of presumption and confidence.”

Edmund Burke

“I am aware what ability is requisite to persuade the proud how great is the virtue of humility.”

Saint Augustine

“He is a very shallow critic who cannot see an eternal rebel in the heart of a conservative.”

G. K. Chesterton

“Broken promises are not the major causes of our trouble. Kept promises are. All too often we have put men in office who have suggested spending a little more on this, a little more on that, who have proposed a new welfare program, who have thought of another variety of ‘securities.’”

Barry Goldwater

“Men do not make laws; they merely ratify or distort the laws of God…men have no rights to what they please: their natural rights are only what may be directly deduced from their human nature.”

Russell Kirk

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Episode 4 - Russell Kirk's 10 Conservative Principles Part 2

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 Part 1 we discussed the first five of those principles. Today we cover the last five:

LISTEN HERE

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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.

from savingelephantsblog
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