The Conservative Mistake in the Culture War

While conservatives have lost the culture for now, liberalism is not sustainable.

Taylor Lewis

Whenever conservatives get down in the dumps about their seemingly nonstop string of losses, they take solace in a simple trope: politics is downstream of culture.

Coined by the late Andrew Breitbart, the phrase excuses political failure by elevating culture as the predominant mechanism for societal change. Gay marriage legal in all 50 states? Well, that’s because the public has shed its Christian faith. The national debt $19 trillion and counting? Well, that’s because the culture is too myopic. A decline in trust of civil institutions?

Well, the culture is far too individualistic. Since Roe v. Wade legalized the practice of infanticide, the Right has been stuck fighting the last battle in the culture war. Outspoken conservative Christian presidents like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush failed to repel liberalism’s social tide. The rise in the popularity of Rod Dreher’s “Benedict Option” shows that conservatives (specifically Christians) are no longer fighting to win, but merely negotiating the terms of their surrender.

National Review blogger Jim Geraghty thinks differently. In a recent edition of his “Morning Jolt” newsletter, he expounded an interesting theory: “This Year the Right Is Winning the Culture Wars.”.... More