Conservatives have to dig deep
It's not just about the external
What is the point of conservatism? For a conservative, The question is stupid. Really, really stupid, not to mention self-evident. But to quote Gary McCaleb:
You can’t have a self-evident truth when everyone can declare their own reality.
It never occurred to conservatives that ‘declaring your own reality’ was even a possibility. This is the gap between people who are fundamentally conservative and people who revel in new experiences. The Big 5 Personality test shows that conservatives are less open to new experiences than liberals, and that conservatives are more conscientious than liberals. People with high openness are usually more creative. They excel in novel ideas, art, problem solving, and divergent ideas.
That kind of thought process isn’t going to allow its owner to stop asking questions and get on with life. Creative people have to know WHY, and if they don’t get an answer, they’re going to look for one or make one up.
Or get captured by something that sounds good, like marxist/intersectional/queer ideology. Not all left-leaning creatives get captured. The trend of the last 20 years to make sure EVERYONE went to college probably put many people in an environment where they should never have been. Indoctrination received in HS could be countered by a real job even before graduation, and not everyone has the temperament or IQ to resist the DEI classes most colleges require now.
Creativity is what brought the US to a place of economic world dominance. But until recently, that creativity was still harnessed to the real world with its limitations. Those limitations are hard, and the cultural structures that conservatives maintain without having to think about them are the guard rails that have kept the creatives types in check.
Those guard rails have been thinning, and conservatives - who generally value good manners - let it happen. Liberals also come up with some clever ways to funnel money from taxes into individual pockets. That lure captured some people on the right as well. Conservatism might equate with conscientiousness most of the time, but not always. [It’s obvious that some Republicans are benefiting somehow from that flow of money through USAID.]
But liberals don’t have license to plunder reality. Stealing tax money is the least of their crimes, the crimes that conservatism should have prevented. Jordan Peterson says that the conservative’s big failing is to have not articulated WHY the guardrails matter. So here’s a few articulations.
Even though women are as smart as men, and able in a modern Western economy to hold a job that gives her more financial independence than average women ever in the history of the world, they still have biological limitations based on being physically weaker than men, and lacking male predatory nature. The feminist idea that men should act like women, and women like men, was plundering reality.
We don’t have the technology to change sex. Even if we did, some things should be held sacred. While many conservative are clear on the latter point, there is no attached ‘why,’ a question that liberals will always ask. Conservatives need to dig deep enough to have an answer that goes beyond a feeling.Telling young people that they might be a different sex was plundering reality.
Marxist ideology is never a valid basis for an economy. Hand-outs are never ‘nice.’ They are never kind. Human creativity may seem endless, but we all have limited time. People who don’t pull their weight in a culture are a drag upon it. That probably wasn’t obvious before the fall of the USSR. It’s obvious now. People expecting to get something for nothing are plundering reality.
Conservatives in CT can moan about how strong the leftist government in our state has gotten, or they can have a good hard look at where we dropped the ball. In order to reclaim Connecticut, we have to reclaim the CT GOP. In order to do that, we need to convince Republicans to get involved in RTCs, and conservative independents to join the party. We need to inspire action as the Founding Father’s did, and it’s not enough to talk about the ‘what.’ We need to know the WHY, and be able to talk about it.
Complaining about how weak we are isn’t inspiring.
In Maps of Meaning, Peterson talks about how humans must must assume causality. Without causality there is no story, and without story we cannot organize our minds. But which causality matters.
If we assume the cause of anything is something outside ourselves, then at best, we can only see ourselves as helpless. This isn’t a recipe for meaning. If we assume, even in the face of the terrible, that we have some responsibility, then we can choose to act. If what we’ve always done isn’t working - by definition, in the current state of rapid change, it won’t - then seek the WHY. Pray. Inspiration comes if we ask and then have faith the answer will arrive. Find some creative conservatives, or some right-leaning creatives. Brainstorm, and don’t don’t stifle the seeming madness with critique until the flow of ideas stops.
If we’re going to save our country and reclaim our state we need dig deep. That’s not trivial. It requires letting go of deeply held beliefs and examining new possibilities. This is necessary. Our institutions may or may not be recoverable and many will need replacing. We cannot build new things with old concepts that no longer fit the world in which we now live. We cannot go backwards in time.
Letting go of ideas feels like death. It’s hard. That’s the digging deep part. The advantage that conservatives often have is faith in god, in knowing we are not alone. This too is a choice. There is no reason to think that ANY action we take will lead to a better outcome. Stepping into the unknown is an act of faith. But conservatives should trust themselves and the natural guardrails that are part of who we are. How we were made.
So, start digging my friends. We have foundations to build.
Got a story to tell? A reason you love CT? Want to help make CT healthy again, or are you looking for something you can do to help? Talk to us!