{"id":280,"date":"2009-03-25T02:04:16","date_gmt":"2009-03-25T02:04:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/cityofbrass\/2009\/03\/who-killed-culture11.html"},"modified":"2009-03-25T02:04:16","modified_gmt":"2009-03-25T02:04:16","slug":"who-killed-culture11","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2009\/03\/who-killed-culture11.html","title":{"rendered":"who killed Culture11?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Daniel Larison implies<\/a> that RedState<\/a> may have killed Culture11. Reading the piece on C11’s founding<\/a> to which he refers, I can’t help but think that the conservative movement as a whole is imploding, and C11 simply got caught in the detritus. Movement status, especially as promoted by sites like RedState that espouse nothing more than ideological litmus tests that are bereft of any linking narrative of values or philosophy, has largely inverted conservatism. Where before you might expect that a conservative would be a staunch defender of the constitution, you have cheerleading for warrantless wiretaps and indefinite detention of American citizens without trial; where you might expect a conservative to stand up for the working man, you have a preference for bailing out banks instead of blue-collar industry; where you might expect a conservative to revere the Legislative Branch, you have them cheering on the Executive essentially legislating from the bully pulpit (while condemning the Judicial branch for the same). It’s a chaotic mess now, with standard bearers like Rush instead of Burke.<\/p>\n

Case in point – the newfound “conservative optimism<\/a>“. Is the following a statement that conservatives are supposed to utter?<\/p>\n

We are built – as Rush Limbaugh talks about regularly – to be happy
\nand to have fun in this world by focusing on what we can accomplish
\nthrough Faith, freedom, hard work and self-reliance. This, as opposed
\nto the liberal – who wants to focus on all that is wrong and bad in the
\nworld, and what government needs to do to “solve problems.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think they have this backwards; it’s supposed to be the conservative who focuses on the pragmatic business of improving our society and the liberal who is the slacker layabout focused more on his immediate happiness than any broader social responsibility. Larison wrote at Culture 11 some time ago about how Optimism itself is a destructive force<\/a> (as far as the conservative is\/should be concerned). As the standard bearer for Republicanism, RedState is a glaringly obvious case study in how the GOP is anything but conservative nowadays. <\/p>\n

I’ve long thought that the Big Tent philosophy of the Democrats provides for a more genuine debate on policy and issues than the narrow, parochial litmus tests of the Republicans. If conservatism is to prosper it can only do so in a venue where it is permitted to stray off the reservation. Culture 11 was one such haven, but perhaps the Democratic Party is the more natural home. Crunchy and Paleo conservatives like Rod Dreher and Daniel Larison alike are starting to come around<\/a> to this view as well. Ultimately, the political divide need not straddle party lines but could map onto our existing geographic and social diversity. Debates on policy simply move down to the primary level rather than in the final election.<\/p>\n

Perhaps it’s best that C11 went under; the smart voices who wrote for it can do more to advance their cause by working within the existing media rather than trying to create a niche of their own. This paves the way for conservatives to start interacting with the (liberal) world rather than standing apart from it, yelling futilely, “stop!” <\/p>\n

Related: the 30th Anniversary of Optimism<\/a> at The American Conservative, a fascinating piece and insight.<\/p>\n

UPDATE: Rod Dreher also weighs in on conservatism’s failure<\/a> to adapt:<\/p>\n

\n

All this makes me wonder how I would see the conservative movement,
\nsuch as it is, today if I were a college student. I came to
\nconservatism as a liberal undergraduate, because in large part
\nconservatism made sense<\/i>. If you weren’t there, it’s hard to
\nconvey how stultified and self-deluded 1980s liberalism was, especially
\non campus. Coming to it as a sneering liberal, I was taken by how liberating<\/i>
\nconservative thought was — something that became even more clear to me
\nwhen I graduated and entered the Real World of crime, taxes and
\npersonal responsibility. <\/p>\n

Mind you, I’ve learned a lot since then, and the kind of
\nconservatism that engaged my imagination and converted me in the 1980s
\nisn’t the kind of conservatism that engages my imagination and holds my
\nloyalty in 2009. The world has changed, and so have I. One gets the
\nidea that today’s mainstream conservatives have not substantially
\nchanged a thing since the 1980s; I imagine that if I were on campus
\ntoday, the conservatives would seem as irrelevant and stiff-necked as
\nthe liberals did in my undergraduate youth. <\/p>\n

As Claes Ryn put it in a penetrating TAC essay,<\/a> organized conservatism finds itself wrecked today because it abandoned the culture, and taught itself to see the culture only in political terms.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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City of Brass is his weblog, which was founded in 2002 under the name UNMEDIA. He is a co-founder of the annual Brass Crescent Awards. The name City of Brass refers to the Story of the City of Brass in the Thousand and One Nights, and the poem by Rudyard Kipling of the same name: Here was a people whom, after their works, thou shalt see wept over for their lost dominion; And in this palace is the last information respecting lords collected in the dust. -- Thousand and One Nights, Story of the City of Brass IN A land that the sand overlays, the ways to her gates are untrod, A multitude ended their days whose fates were made splendid by God, Till they grew drunk and were smitten with madness and went to their fall, And of these is a story written: but Allah Alone knoweth all! -- Rudyard Kipling, The City of Brass (1909)"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/165"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}