Dictating the terms of this fight will require conservatives to shift to an offensive posture that we’ve been lacking for years. Battles that affect all institutions must involve those institutions’ active participation should they wish to have a chance at resisting their own degradation.
“What is it that I’m truly fighting for?”
This is the first question each conservative ought to ask himself when contemplating the function of this movement. It’s a sensible question, and it’s also one that most should be able to answer with relative ease. Conservatives hope to preserve elements of our society that are endangered by progressive social change. Sometimes, we even dare to resurrect traditions that have been relegated to the memory of our collective conscience. It’s for those tenets of Western society which were once customary — widespread adherence to the Christian faith, respect for the family unit, love for one’s community and country, among other ideals — that we fight. Our knowledge of their good compels us.
But the first question only reveals one-half of the contemporary conservative movement’s story. To understand how the movement currently operates, and perhaps to correct that function in anticipation of its arduous future, one must ask, “Where should I fight these battles?”
The “where” in that question isn’t a physical location. It denotes places that are abstract, yet equally real: the various constituent institutions that make up the whole society. How could we adequately confront our enemy without any knowledge of where they currently hold power, let alone without an understanding of where our allies on the Right might still hold ground?
For far too long, we’ve attempted to fight our political battles with no real understanding of the institutional power backing each side. Because of our lack of diligence, the Left has managed to carry out its “long march” through those institutions largely unnoticed. Public education, the corporate world, the tech industry, and other foundations of modern public life are all striking examples of institutions we’ve lost any significant control over.
The consequences have been catastrophic. Without institutions from which to project our ideals, we’ve given progressives a green light to shape the pillars of society in their image. In the end, our absence from domestic power politics nullifies any protests we might make against the Left’s decisions, regardless of how principled our arguments might be. Action cannot exist without a vehicle for its enaction.
Many argue that to solve this problem by embracing a pragmatic approach to institutional recapture, such as rethinking our political loyalty to everything “small-government,” would mean an abandonment of our principles. That argument shouldn’t inspire discomfort, though. It should serve to spur introspection. Are the political principles we espouse aligned with the higher ends our movement hopes to seek? Or have procedures, like the liberal-democratic political systems that were designed to work only within healthy, Christian, societies, wrongfully become ends in themselves?
In an ideal world, our movement could win over the hearts and minds of all Americans and others in the West, citizen by citizen, by the merits of our ideas alone. The Left has unfortunately taken advantage of the reality of power politics. Allowing them to succeed in their show of force for the sake of maintaining a degree of separation between politics and other social institutions would constitute nothing more than a “principled defeat.” Although that concession might initially sound honorable, such a defeat would destroy our chance to preserve any of those principles for posterity. The true ends of our movement are not worth forfeiting.
The conservative movement across the West must always aim, first and foremost, for what is ordered and beautiful — beauty being that which best represents the truth of God in the world — if we wish to save our inheritance. To do this, we must act for the cultivation of beauty in all instances where that opportunity might present itself. When we apply ourselves, all things can be made more beautiful because of beauty’s place as a centerpiece of reality, and this rule still applies to man-made institutions. All elements of the culture war revolve around whether beauty will be smothered or allowed to bloom.
The Right’s calling also presents us with a great challenge: we cannot orient ourselves and our society toward higher moral ends without taking active, aggressive stances in all areas of possible discourse. It’s a challenge that defines the terms of the culture war. All conflicts must become necessarily political, whether they originate from civil affairs in their immediacy, controversies surrounding social customs, or even how Western society physically expresses itself through its art and architecture.
Culture war is all-encompassing, and that should terrify anyone who wishes to take up the responsibility of engaging in the fight. The Right’s call to arms must extend to every individual or institution that risks immense loss should our civilizational crisis continue. The family unit, faith communities, and any other organs of society outside of our elites’ ivory tower must participate.
Societies are living things; they are not simply a collection of atomized human beings. Cultures are derived from webs of interpersonal relationships, and those relationships are best forged within the institutions that stand as pillars for an overarching civilization. If those internal structures fail to demonstrate their interests to the whole of society, no citizen will hold any power against his ruling elite.
If this conservative movement hopes to win the culture war, we must empower the citizenry by affirming their duties to the course of our politics in all spheres of public life. Accepting anything less would not just hinder our practical goals, but be a disservice to the civic culture any Western nation must strive for if it wishes to thrive.
