"Like the Dadaists, we should forget everything" and start from scratch? That sounds to me like the opposite of what conservatives should be doing.
Go back to basics, remember true values, bring back beauty and Truth and defend our God-given rights. Not "forget everything" and wing it, moving forward with no template except the rejection of the current. That's just Marxism. Reject the current, reject the traditional, and shoot for the unidentified "new." Lather, rinse, repeat.
No, we need to clearly define our principles, and stand by them without fear. Sure, that involves a fair bit of rejection of the current gatekeepers and pseudo-moralists, but because we have a crystal clear and openly communicated standard to which we adhere, and which we must defend and return to.
Dadaism is a rejection of all standards, reveling in the vapid, inane, grotesque, vulgar, and pointless. It is a truly bad example to use if we're to reject the cultural capture achieved by the modern Marxisits. Indeed, a trend toward "conservative Dadaism" would be playing right into the hands of the deconstructionists and nihilists who are happy to watch it all burn.
Good point - I appreciate what you’re saying and you’re right. But Dadaism was also a reaction to the cultural inanity and frivolity or the First World War when artists were producing portrait after portrait of aristocrats whose regime sent millions of young men in their prime to their slaughter. Art was in service of power. Culture was an expression of the in-group. The Dadaists spat in the eye of the establishment.
So long as we don't give in to an "anything but this" mindset. We're not just *against* something we dislike; we're *for* something real and important. (Like reality, for instance. 🙃)
This is key. It’s the biggest weakness in fighting cultural Marxism - the Marxists have their One Big Thing, their ideological monolith, that filters everything. And opposing that there’s “free markets”? “Less government”? There’s nothing coherent and cohesive.
I beg to differ here, too. I know it seems like we're so diverse, those of us who aren't radical Leftists. The tent has indeed gotten increasingly bigger as the opposition has gotten more and more tyrannical and extreme, pushing all but the most radical adherents away.
But we don't have to agree on every little detail in order to agree on a core set of values. Things like free markets and government size are really quite surface level, compared to the nature of reality itself.
Do humans have individual worth? Can people be trusted to generally choose good, if given correct information and left to make the choice? Is there even such a thing as objective good or evil? Things like that, the very pillars upon which any civilization must be founded, are under attack by modern Marxists. I think we can sufficiently agree on those core tenets to make a united stand.
Before we can discuss, for example, whether capitalism or socialism is the more effective vehicle for human prosperity over time, we first have to agree that human prosperity is worth pursuing at all. Which itself is a concept currently under attack by a significant contingent of the Left. ("You'll own nothing and be happy"... "Dogs have more value than humans"... "Thanos was right"...)
Yes agreed - but seems like a lot of what you’re point to as common values - ie human nature, good and evil - are rooted in a shared worldview that seems absent from, let’s call it, the anti-Marxist wing of public life. Marxism have an idea that underpins motivates all efforts - historical/dialectical materialism and, politically, socialism. But is there a broad-tent notion of “spiritualism” active today in the West to serve as a counter weight? Perhaps there is, and I’m missing it.
There most certainly is. The "Alt-Right" (meaning the regular Right as called by the MSM, not the actual Neo-Nazis) is quite widely acknowledged to also be the "Christian Extremists," "Fundamentalists," "Zionists," and for the secular set aligned with us, the "Classical Liberals." Those groups—and more—each hold to core beliefs of objective morality that can be broadly termed the "Judeo-Christian worldview." Whether they're all actively religious or not. It's not actually a hard mark to hit AT ALL.
And even if it is, or seems to be: that is PRECISELY what I'm arguing for here. We MUST identify the shared values FOR which we fight, and describe them clearly, and hold them aloft as the goal, or we risk just joining in on the frenzy to tear down for the sake of tearing down.
If our position is "I don't know what we're fighting for, but I know it's not what we have!" then we are exactly Marxists ourselves, and it would be better to just let the Left keep control than to knock them down in order to erect "something."
Which is what the "Progressives" are already working on, anyway. "We're not there yet, we've got further to go, let's keep tearing down what we've built so we can build the next 'better' thing."
The only thing "They" have in common, at heart, is tearing down what has been established. Just because they now occupy the "Establishment" doesn't mean that's not still what they're doing. They're actively and intently eroding public trust in science, in the legal system, in the entertainment industry, in our system of government at every level. They're tearing it all down quite effectively already. We need to BUILD. and we need to build something specific, and real, and defined. Not just "something new."
I probably don't fully understand Dadaism the movement, but the takeaway I have from what I've learned of it is the notion that art itself may or may not be valuable at all, beauty is *completely* subjective, *anything* can be art because art has no valid definition at all... taking opposition to "the Establishment" way too far, into opposition of anything *being established* at all. Which, to my mind, translates to "Objective Reality doesn't exist. My truth, your truth, but no objective Truth. Men and women and children are what we decide they are, and can change whenever we decide to change them. 'There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.'"
You can live a very fulfilling life without being enamored by or worse an intellectual social or cultural captive to the surrounding culture How snd where you spend you spend your spare ti e speaks a lot as to what counts in your life
"Like the Dadaists, we should forget everything" and start from scratch? That sounds to me like the opposite of what conservatives should be doing.
Go back to basics, remember true values, bring back beauty and Truth and defend our God-given rights. Not "forget everything" and wing it, moving forward with no template except the rejection of the current. That's just Marxism. Reject the current, reject the traditional, and shoot for the unidentified "new." Lather, rinse, repeat.
No, we need to clearly define our principles, and stand by them without fear. Sure, that involves a fair bit of rejection of the current gatekeepers and pseudo-moralists, but because we have a crystal clear and openly communicated standard to which we adhere, and which we must defend and return to.
Dadaism is a rejection of all standards, reveling in the vapid, inane, grotesque, vulgar, and pointless. It is a truly bad example to use if we're to reject the cultural capture achieved by the modern Marxisits. Indeed, a trend toward "conservative Dadaism" would be playing right into the hands of the deconstructionists and nihilists who are happy to watch it all burn.
Good point - I appreciate what you’re saying and you’re right. But Dadaism was also a reaction to the cultural inanity and frivolity or the First World War when artists were producing portrait after portrait of aristocrats whose regime sent millions of young men in their prime to their slaughter. Art was in service of power. Culture was an expression of the in-group. The Dadaists spat in the eye of the establishment.
So long as we don't give in to an "anything but this" mindset. We're not just *against* something we dislike; we're *for* something real and important. (Like reality, for instance. 🙃)
This is key. It’s the biggest weakness in fighting cultural Marxism - the Marxists have their One Big Thing, their ideological monolith, that filters everything. And opposing that there’s “free markets”? “Less government”? There’s nothing coherent and cohesive.
I beg to differ here, too. I know it seems like we're so diverse, those of us who aren't radical Leftists. The tent has indeed gotten increasingly bigger as the opposition has gotten more and more tyrannical and extreme, pushing all but the most radical adherents away.
But we don't have to agree on every little detail in order to agree on a core set of values. Things like free markets and government size are really quite surface level, compared to the nature of reality itself.
Do humans have individual worth? Can people be trusted to generally choose good, if given correct information and left to make the choice? Is there even such a thing as objective good or evil? Things like that, the very pillars upon which any civilization must be founded, are under attack by modern Marxists. I think we can sufficiently agree on those core tenets to make a united stand.
Before we can discuss, for example, whether capitalism or socialism is the more effective vehicle for human prosperity over time, we first have to agree that human prosperity is worth pursuing at all. Which itself is a concept currently under attack by a significant contingent of the Left. ("You'll own nothing and be happy"... "Dogs have more value than humans"... "Thanos was right"...)
Yes agreed - but seems like a lot of what you’re point to as common values - ie human nature, good and evil - are rooted in a shared worldview that seems absent from, let’s call it, the anti-Marxist wing of public life. Marxism have an idea that underpins motivates all efforts - historical/dialectical materialism and, politically, socialism. But is there a broad-tent notion of “spiritualism” active today in the West to serve as a counter weight? Perhaps there is, and I’m missing it.
There most certainly is. The "Alt-Right" (meaning the regular Right as called by the MSM, not the actual Neo-Nazis) is quite widely acknowledged to also be the "Christian Extremists," "Fundamentalists," "Zionists," and for the secular set aligned with us, the "Classical Liberals." Those groups—and more—each hold to core beliefs of objective morality that can be broadly termed the "Judeo-Christian worldview." Whether they're all actively religious or not. It's not actually a hard mark to hit AT ALL.
And even if it is, or seems to be: that is PRECISELY what I'm arguing for here. We MUST identify the shared values FOR which we fight, and describe them clearly, and hold them aloft as the goal, or we risk just joining in on the frenzy to tear down for the sake of tearing down.
If our position is "I don't know what we're fighting for, but I know it's not what we have!" then we are exactly Marxists ourselves, and it would be better to just let the Left keep control than to knock them down in order to erect "something."
Which is what the "Progressives" are already working on, anyway. "We're not there yet, we've got further to go, let's keep tearing down what we've built so we can build the next 'better' thing."
The only thing "They" have in common, at heart, is tearing down what has been established. Just because they now occupy the "Establishment" doesn't mean that's not still what they're doing. They're actively and intently eroding public trust in science, in the legal system, in the entertainment industry, in our system of government at every level. They're tearing it all down quite effectively already. We need to BUILD. and we need to build something specific, and real, and defined. Not just "something new."
I probably don't fully understand Dadaism the movement, but the takeaway I have from what I've learned of it is the notion that art itself may or may not be valuable at all, beauty is *completely* subjective, *anything* can be art because art has no valid definition at all... taking opposition to "the Establishment" way too far, into opposition of anything *being established* at all. Which, to my mind, translates to "Objective Reality doesn't exist. My truth, your truth, but no objective Truth. Men and women and children are what we decide they are, and can change whenever we decide to change them. 'There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.'"
You can live a very fulfilling life without being enamored by or worse an intellectual social or cultural captive to the surrounding culture How snd where you spend you spend your spare ti e speaks a lot as to what counts in your life
Excellent post, and the idea of building and claiming a new culture is well expressed and vital. Thank you for articulating so clearly.
Thanks John - I think there’s no I the way forward at this point.