Ignoring The Culture: The Fatal Flaw Of Conservatism
[Writer’s Note: This was originally posted on my website on 1/30/2020. There is a full podcast in video and audio format covering this article.]
Conservatives love to talk about economic policy, foreign policy, and every data point they can cite. I know this because it is often what I do. Do not get me wrong, using empirical evidence and statistics is a great way to show progress or decline. Proving your case without data does make your case weaker in many instances, but this should not come at the expense of social appeal. This is what the American Left is so good at. Appealing to the human element instead of the computational element. Too often does the American Right, especially conservatives, stick their noses up at arguments that lack the sufficient statistical backing. The Left is much better at winning the “Culture War” which is why they hold so much influence in politics.
Andrew Breitbart has a popular saying, “politics is downstream from culture.” I have cited this quote many times in other articles because it is simple but powerful. And even though a well-known conservative came up with the phrase, the Left understands it better than conservatives. Culture is a collection of social norms, habits, and traditions of a group of people. Politics is a set of positions associated with the governance of a population. Politics and culture directly affect each other, but the influence normally travels in one direction, as Breitbart explained. When forced in the other direction, politics influencing culture, the battle upstream often ends in the opposite outcomes the political activity intended. This is why the battle for the culture is so important to politicians.
The United States is a very diverse nation with a large, overarching culture with many sub-cultures. This can make it difficult to influence all sub-cultures at once which is another reason why social policy often ends in positive results in one sub-culture and negative results in other sub-cultures. This is why social and economic policies should not be created to benefit a specific group of people at the expense of others. In fact, no policy should be created with the purpose of creating a healthier culture.
Culture, much like the economy, is a difficult concept to grasp. It is non-tangible, invisible directly, and manifests in behavior of the people within it and can be traded with other cultures. Traditions from one culture can be adopted by another. This is often called “cultural appropriation” which is often seen as a pejorative term. The modern day American Left weaponizes this idea to lift some cultures and highlight how appropriating them is a form of oppression but can also be seen as them trying to gain votes. The American Right mostly rejects the concept of cultural appropriation as a pejorative because they see it as paying the ultimate respect from one culture to another to adopt traditions they find useful or fulfilling. The mirror image of cultural appropriation is cultural preservation. This is refusing to tolerate cultural traditions outside of one’s own culture. This is more common with the Right because they recognize there are good and bad aspects to every culture. The Left sees this as intolerant and even racist in some cases because they believe culture can be directly linked to race. Although culture can often be seen as traditions by a group of people who typically look the same, race has no influence on culture unless you believe there are biological causes to this link. In some cases, there might be a link between biology and culture. For example, some ethnicities digest certain foods better than others which causes certain types of foods and dishes to become tradition in their culture, but we do not find biological links like this often. So even though culture has no direct link to race, but more indirect, it is the driving force of any society, and therefore, is a very strong political tool.
The Left almost has a complete monopoly on culture. They are disproportionately represented in media, entertainment, and education which are all strong influencers on the culture. The Right has long fought this battle by pointing out how these institutions have a strong liberal bias, but they have done almost nothing to engage with these institutions or to create their own until recently. The Right has found a stronghold in talk radio and podcasting but are not largely represented outside of Fox News on cable television. Any columnist who expresses right-of-center views or analysis in any major publication like The New York Times or Washington Post is often torn apart or mischaracterized the same publication they were published in. The Right has again fought this by creating their own publications like the Daily Wire or The Blaze, but then labeled as an extremely biased and damaging to the public discourse site by media evaluators who also claim CNN and MSNBC as fair interpreters of the news. Closeted right-wingers in Hollywood and media are too afraid to come out as non-progressive for fear of losing out on future opportunities. Dave Rubin, a popular commentator of culture and host of The Rubin Report, had a conversation with political analyst Rob Smith on how it is harder to come as conservative than it is to come out as gay. And I know I am not alone in saying, if I have to see one more clip of celebrity awards shows of a rich actor or actress lecturing the public on how to live and vote, I will write a strongly worded letter and send it to Narnia where I assume these people live. All jokes aside, there is a case to be made that conservatives and non-progressives are being shut out by bad-faith evaluators of biases, but it took decades for the Right to figure out they must begin to make their own content so another viewpoint can be heard.
A question I hope the reader is asking themselves by now is, “how do we correct this?” Even if you are of the Left, you should always want to find out what the other side is actually thinking so you do not build strawman of your opposition in your head. Some balance must be struck before we split into two different countries.
We correct this by supporting the arts and media who reflect our values (values meaning honest debate, reason-based thinking, tolerance of opposing views, and intolerance of authoritarian views). In an age of subscription services and select content, this has been made much easier. Support podcasts, radio stations, and books created using your value structure. This does not mean you only support conservative film makers or writers but support their content when the message aligns with your principles. The same goes for right-wing creators who begin to oppose your principles to let them know you do not like the direction they are going. By supporting the values someone conveys and keeping them honest on the direction they are going, more people will hear your message. On the flipside of this, make sure to support good-faith creators who oppose your views but align with you values. For example, I personally support many people who align very closely with my cultural and political views, like Ben Shapiro and David French, but I also support people who do not align with all my cultural and political views, like Sam Harris and Dave Rubin. This way you can get the whole spectrum of cultural and political commentary but still amplify your voice.
By amplifying the best parts of our culture, we push the best possible policy options forward. A healthy culture will create healthy governance because there is less need to restrict liberties of a populous with a strong tradition who condemn bad actors themselves. We are all contributors of the culture. We have an obligation to continue the American tradition of freedom, liberty, and ability to make a better world for ourselves. Those obligations cannot be achieved through top-down governance. By bringing the best out of the culture, hopefully that will bring the best out of the Left and make them the classical liberal party they once were. To do this, the Right must stay on track and appeal to the human side of people and less on the analytics side. Humans are social creatures, not computers.
P.S. If you are still reading, and I hope you are, I will be republishing my writing from my website on Medium so there may be some older stories I cover, although I do not often cover current events. I shut down my website because I have changed my main resource of communication and content hosting to Locals.com. Although I will be publishing my long-form written content on Medium, you can find my more regular content, podcasts, and interactive community at engineeringpolitics.locals.com. Please feel free to join this growing community if you want to stay up to date and/or support this content. Thank you for your consideration!
Note: None of the persons, podcasts, or books referenced above reflect my ideas and personal beliefs, nor should they be held accountable for anything published on this site in the future.
