In the wake of the 2012 presidential election, I have seen overwhelming despair and pessimism on the part of conservatives.
“Our country has become morally vacant.” ”The land of the free has become the land of unrestrained licentiousness.” “President Obama is the incarnation and catalyst of the American decline.”
Well, what are we going to do about it? Hopefully not write more blog posts utterly devoid of a single flicker of hope for the future of our country or the Rupublican party. Yet neither should we, as my colleague Anna Williams mentions below, turn to proverbial warfare. We can leave the “war on [insert cause here]” verbiage to the Left.
Are we fighting a war on culture? Are we fighting a war on religious liberty? Perhaps. But I’m afraid that to go about declaring warfare with the Left seems particularly anti-conservative.
Rather, we should go about this the best way we know how: by conserving and upholding the values and ideals instilled in this country, second, by our Founding Fathers, but first, by God.
Practically speaking, we need to play what Andrew Klavan calls, “the long game.”
Some of our beloved values that have been lost in the political sphere are expressed with words like “responsibility,” “duty,” “honor,” words we seldom hear these days. We must bring these back first by practicing them. We now have a responsibility, a duty, especially young people, to step up and fill the gaps left in mainstream news media. Klavan asks:
How is it possible that the mind-boggling success of Fox News has failed to spawn half a dozen imitators at least—especially venues for the libertarian young with their antic sense of political incorrectness? Rupert Murdoch, God love him, can’t live forever. It’s time for others to step up.
This election demonstrates that liberals are by no means afraid of standing on a platform of blatant propaganda, and Obama certainly didn’t win by remaining hush-hush about his stance on social issues. But that goes for mainstream entertainment as well as news media. “It’s not that conservative ideas don’t make their way into popular entertainment,” Klavan says, “it’s that they always come in disguise.”
We don’t need more conservative artists. We need an infrastructure to support them: more funding, more distribution, sympathetic review venues, grants and awards for arts that speak the truth out loud.
We need to support events like the San Diego Christian Film Festival in a market that is “not hungry, [but] starving for good quality films” to raise artistic and moral standards in entertainment.
We need more organizations like Makoto Fujimura’s International Arts Movement with lectures, performances, exhibitions, screenings, projects, and workshops that seek to “rehumanize our world” through the good and the beautiful.
We have a duty to bring truth into the world in attractive ways so that the Truth may draw others to himself, not so that we may beat others over the head with it.
The results of the 2012 election are not cause to lament the Republican party’s crushing electoral defeat, but rather a call to act—with urgency but not hostility—with honor and truth so that for ourselves and future generations America may be, in its fullest sense, the land of the free.
November 13th, 2012 | 9:40 am
I think perhaps what conservatives (and liberals) need to do is recognize that politics is the art of compromise, that liberal and conservative strains run through America all the way back to its founding, that both political philosophies—sometimes working separately and sometimes together—have made this the great country that it is, and that the party that is out of power is the loyal opposition, not the government in exile.
However much the Democrats and Republicans disagree, the Democrats are not on the side of evil and the Republicans on the side of good, or vice versa. This does not mean, of course, that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans ever take a stand on an issue that may legitimately be regarded as evil.
Precisely what we do not need is a proliferation of Fox News (or MSNBC News) imitators. It’s a cliche, but nevertheless I think it is true that when Americans elect a Democratic president and senate and a Republican house, they want them to work together. We’ve had enough hyperpartisanship over the past four years. We need to look for common ground and areas of agreement. We need to turn compromise back into a respectable word.
I just finished reading a biography of Benjamin Franklin, and I was struck by the willingness of Franklin and all the Founding Fathers to work together and to hammer out compromises. The Constitution itself was the product of one compromise after another, without which we would not have a United States of America.
I don’t think this is the time to plot victory in 2014 or 2016. It’s time to look to the needs of the country right now and do what needs to be done to take care of them.
November 13th, 2012 | 10:20 am
[...] First Things this morning, a thoughtful piece by Katherine Infantile on what next for social conservatives. She’s not much interested in the language of culture [...]
November 13th, 2012 | 3:20 pm
David, if you are looking for a good compromise, may I suggest a compromise that gives same-sex couples civil unions with all of the security and protections and rights of marriage except the right to conceive biological offspring together, while preserving marriage’s approval and right to conceive biological offspring together and prohibiting attempts at reproducing with someone of the same sex?
It’s a compromise in that both sides agree to give up something in return for the things they really need and agree that the issue is resolved for good, but it is not a compromise in that the solution is unprincipled or “compromised” – indeed it is the most principled and palatable solution, any other resolution is unacceptable.
November 13th, 2012 | 5:05 pm
the right to conceive biological offspring together
John Howard,
Are you talking here about the possibility of a same-sex couple having a biological child to which they are both biologically related? I don’t believe that is possible currently. Or is your proposal that same-sex couples may enter into unions but, say, a lesbian couple couldn’t have a baby by artificial insemination?
One problem I see with your proposal, as I understand it, is that it takes away the right (to reproduce) of people who form civil unions when they would be free to do so outside of a same-sex union.
Another is that a number of states already have same-sex marriage, and presumably your proposal would annul all existing same-sex marriages!
any other resolution is unacceptable
I don’t think by “compromise” is meant that one side offers the other side the one and only proposal it finds acceptable and tells that side to take it or leave it! That’s called a nonnegotiable demand.
November 13th, 2012 | 6:28 pm
What is missing, above, is attention to the problem of compromise as a means or compromise as an end. David’s comment suggests that compromise is some sort of end in itself. Politics isn’t an end, it is a means to achieve other ends we deem worthy, and as such, you can’t argue that equating politics with compromise is somehow a legitimation of compromise in itself.
A bit like Popper’s falsifiability principle, if you can’t envision a set of circumstances in which compromise would, in/on principle be impossible, then arguing for compromise in particular cases is, frankly, pretty lame.
During the Bush/Kerry election, Alasdair MacIntyre argued that not voting was the only right thing to do. I thought, and still think that he jumped the gun a bit, but I can perfectly well envision a scenario where compromise on key issues of the day is impossible, having dug down to the aquifer of core principle (not to say “First Things”), and so I’ll be forced into some degree of intentional non-participation in politics.
Like all things, the US (or the US as we know it) will also pass away, and the sanctity of compromise is a pretty shallow basis on which to build an argument that a regime explicitly opposed to any number of Christian first principles deserves our participation so we can avoid factionalism.
Philip Rieff argued that the creed of modernity is movement. Remind me to buy ground next to his grave, as the notion that compromise is an end will surely set him drilling for oil inside it.
November 14th, 2012 | 12:09 pm
David, yes I’m talking about same-sex couples attempting to have biologically related children, using stem cells or some other method. It might never be possible, but attempting it is possible right now, and it should be prohibited ASAP so children are not confused about their future. Even if it becomes possible it will be unethical and expensive and bad public policy and should be prohibited. We shouldn’t say that same-sex couples have an equal right to have children together that a married man and woman have, because if we prohibit it someday then it would mean married couples can be prohibited from conceiving offspring together. On the other hand, if same-sex procreation is allowed, then so should same-sex marriage be allowed, but neither should be. Marriage should always approve and allow the conception of offspring.
And these Civil Unions would be defined as “marriage minus conception rights” but the people would still have whatever right to have children unmarried people have.
November 14th, 2012 | 2:45 pm
John Howard,
I would think all reproductive cloning plus genetic engineering (which is what I assume producing offspring from a same-sex couple would require) should be banned independent of whatever is done about same-sex marriage. If it’s wrong, it’s wrong. I tend to think it should not be done, although I would have to hear arguments from both sides.
November 14th, 2012 | 7:11 pm
Yes it would be better public policy to ban people attempting to reproduce with someone of the same sex for many reasons. And no compelling reason not to ban it, it’s not necessary and there is no right to do it.
It’s not independent from marriage: marriage has always meant the couple is allowed to reproduce offspring and society approves of them reproducing offspring. If we don’t let a same-sex couple attempt to create offspring together, we cannot let them be married without changing the essential meaning of marriage for everyone.
You had said you were looking for a good compromise. Federal recognition for Civil Unions that are defined as “marriage minus conception rights”, while prohibiting creating people by any method other than joining a man’s sperm to a woman’s egg, and affirming the effect of marriage as approving and allowing the couple to have sex and procreate offspring, is a good compromise.
November 15th, 2012 | 2:23 pm
I find the space taken up in the political field by homosexuality and birth control to be incredibly tedious, since ultimately both issues are to be decided in the private realm – the politics simply follows. Christians can accomplish more by example and explanation than by rhetoric and power – but if the High church hasn’t figured this out yet, it is understandable that its fans have neither. Christ is not yet present in these debates.
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