Twenty-First-Century Conservatism, by R. R. Reno.
The French Revolution …, which eventually implicated the entire West, exaggerated the importance of the political realm, deifying the modern nation-state. …
Although I started on the left, over time I came to see that progressivism, even the moderate progressivism of American liberalism, invariably seeks to increase the power of the state. The cultural wars of my lifetime — the war on racism, the war on sexual inequality, and the war on poverty — fell into the same pattern. The state needs to be empowered to make the world anew. …
As a young man, I could see that our social ecology was changing. … Most liberals were committed to “social change” but presumed that a good life needs to be anchored in marriage and oriented toward the transcendent. By the time I reached the age of majority, those presumptions were on the way out. Feminism was turning every aspect of the male-female dance into a stark political question. The culture war for sexual freedom made religion, especially Christianity, into the archenemy of justice. …
In the face of progressive attempts to displace family and Church with politically orchestrated cultural change, we needed to defend limited government and a free economy in order to restrain this tendency. …
The culture war is upstream of big government and politics:
[Many have noticed lately] that progressives were once again ramping up the power of the state, in this case their favored instrument when they lack votes, the judiciary.
That analysis was not so much wrong as shortsighted. We failed to see that judicial usurpation is a symptom of something much more powerful. The real peril of our time does not rest in the fact that the state has become so powerful that it can “find” new rights and force us to acknowledge them. Instead, the danger comes from what Hittinger calls the “revolutions from below.” By this evocative term he means the multifaceted cultural, economic, and technological forces that encourage us to believe we don’t need any of the necessary societies. …
To a degree unimaginable two or three generations ago, people in the West no longer assume that marriage and children are integral to what it means to be an adult. …
Today’s “revolutions from below” threaten our political institutions and undermine collective sovereignty. Identity politics is an obvious example of communally destructive anti-politics, but we should not overlook the fact that childless adults lack the traditional basis for a long-term interest in the body politic. …
Punching down at Trump supporters:
During the various phases of Trump’s candidacy, I wrote about the way in which establishment commentators, left and right, were “punching down.” They derogated and denounced Trump supporters. I explained how this hauteur and disdain are symptomatic of an establishment in the thrall of economic, meritocratic, multicultural, and libertarian ideologies that divide our society into the righteous and productive and those who are guilty of various sins against political correctness or are too stupid and undisciplined and insufficiently “creative” to flourish in the new global system.
hat-tip Stephen Neil
