How Fares American Culture?

 

 How Fares American Culture?

Published in Marietta Daily Journal (GA) April 15, 2023 

            If my house were burning down I would care not one whit about the race, the social status, the educational level, or the personality of neighbors and firemen who were rushing to lend help. My only interest would be saving my family and my house. My only sentiment would be gratitude for those who cared enough to help stop the destruction.

            Like never before America is afire. Literally so only two summers ago as Defund the Police mayors of major cities ignored arsonists and looters as well as their victims, and figuratively so today as competing ideologies continue to collide. If and when 2024 arrives I’ll give my vote to the firefighter who can best extinguish the fire, defeat the social arsonists, and bring us back to normalcy.

            The 2020 electorate was almost evenly divided on who should be president. Since the 2022 midterm election brought neither a red nor a blue wave, it appears that 2024 might be a repeat of 2020. It’s certainly clear that America’s culture war is not over. Religious freedom is an issue, what with churches being bossed around by the government during Covid. Freedom of speech, like never before, has risen to issue level. Unabated crime now reaches to suburbs and rural America. Indoctrination in schools has rightly riled parents in many states.

            Moral issues are not dead. Letters to the editor around the country have centered on pervasive foul language, the licensciousness of the Super Bowl halftime show, and the moral turpitude of candidates. ESPN, Disney-owned, has come under fire for sprinkling its sports coverage with progressive politics as has Disney World for celebrating, loudly, LGBTQ culture. Customers and stockholders are beginning to speak out and criticize the previously untouchable corporate CEOs who take sides with practically anything the LGBTQ lobby proposes.  Americans, typically far more pragmatic than they are ideological, have begun to see the importance and the necessity of speaking out for the sake of their children. How presidential candidates respond to these concerns will definitely affect the 2024 outcome simply because Middle America is becoming more independent and no longer willing to be a dispossessed class of people.

            Since Democrats always stick together and Republicans seldom do, the 2024 presidential election will hinge largely on how well Republicans unite after choosing their nominee. It is no shame that Republicans don’t always stick together. Rather it is a testimony to their independence and rejection of group think. How many Democrats are willing to take a position against abortion? How many Democrats would stand strong against Nancy Pelosi in the way that The Twenty stood against and achieved concessions from Speaker to Be, Kevin McCarthy?

            One seldom hears a Democrat calling fellow Democrats “deranged disruptors,” yet those were Newt Gingrich’s words for The Twenty who kept McCarthy honest. Texas Congressman Dan Crenshaw called them “terrorists,” and Fox News host Brian Kilmede dubbed them “idiots.” Interestingly, all three of these Republicans have either apologized or acknowledged they used overblown words. Most conservatives understand the gravity of the 2024 election and the necessity of unity and the right fireman.

            If unity comes it will be because paleo-conservatives and neo-conservatives see the light and are willing to march together to it. Paleo-conservatives are traditionalists like Calvin Coolidge and Ronald Reagan who stubbornly hold to the old verities of individualism, capitalism and localism. Neo-conservatives like Asa Hutchison and Mitt Romney are more willing to concede than to fight for conservative values. Paleos understand that radical forces are determined to reframe and reset America, both her economics and her social and religious values. Neo-cons either don’t realize this or are complicit. Neo-cons are embarrassed and enraged by Jim Jordan, Sean Hannity, and Tucker Carlson, but Middle America isn’t.

            Such is the landscape as things warm up for 2024. As things go today, the state has become the domineering partner in our nation’s culture. The Biden administration desires to tell us what kind of cars we can and cannot drive and how we should view sexuality. Market forces no longer drive the culture. There is certainly no market discipline on schools as teachers’ unions rule the roost in our major cities.

            Political comic P.J. O’Roark stated, “Winners don’t reach across the aisle. They fix borders and lay down terms of surrender.” This sad truth rubs those who believe in bipartisanship, but bipartisanship doesn’t work when one side is trying to set fire to our institutions and turn the culture upside down. What will work is a confident leader/fireman who believes in the American experience, who views America as exceptional, who can inspire Middle America, and who will effectively dispose of America’s social arsonists.