Klavan On The Culture

February 18th, 2009 8:54 am

Welcome

Hello. Welcome to my new blog, Klavan on the Culture. It’s a companion piece to some commentaries by the same name I’ll be doing on PJTV. I hope you’ll tune in to see them.

For the last forty years, we conservatives have allowed the left to monopolize the culture. Partly, sure, that’s because the left excludes and blacklists conservative artists. But it’s also due to our own neglect, philistinism and old-fogey-ositude. Whatever the causes, though, movies, television, literature, music, mainstream news, liberal arts courses in universities—all the bastions of cultural power are in the hands of leftist rascals, fools and clowns. Their relativist, anti-liberty, anti-faith creed is a slow poison dripping into the American consciousness. It’s the same poison that has sapped the vitality of Europe since World War II, that nearly allowed Soviet tyranny to triumph in the seventies, that has so befuddled our intellectual elites that they often side with murderers and thugs over free, democratic states and that has now elevated an empty hologram of a man to the highest office in our land.

I’ve been waging my own little battle against this state of affairs with as much creativity and hilarity as I can muster. I’ve done it in my novels—go over to Amazon and buy yourself a copy of Empire of Lies and you’ll see what I mean—in my writings at City Journal, in interviews like this 5-parter with Peter Robinson over at Uncommon Knowledge, and in blogs like AndrewKlavan.com and Big Hollywood. Now I’ll continue the fight here and on PJTV.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: We can win back the presidency, the congress and the supreme court, but if we lose the culture, we ultimately lose the country. I know we’re conservatives. I know we’re naturally better at creating civilizations, building businesses, raising children, running governments and praising God than doing the really important stuff like telling stories, cracking jokes and singing songs. But the trumpets of destiny summon us to a new battlefield! We must fight them in the movies, we must fight them in the novels, we must fight them in the music videos. We must never surrender!

Whatever. You get the picture. Here I am.

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13 Comments

1. David Thomson:

Countless conservatives subconsciously believe that they can essentially mind their own business and the outside world will take care of itself. In many respects, they are comparable to foreign policy isolationists. And sadly, the results are often the same: disastrous. These same conservatives were persuaded not to “impose” their values on others. Unfortunately, such an attitude creates something of a vacuum—and their secularist opposites have no hesitation in filling it. There is no such as neutrality in the culture wars. Sitting on the sidelines is not an option. You will ultimately have to make a choice.

Feb 19, 2009 - 7:10 am 2. Pops in Vienna:

Welcome aboard.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

Feb 19, 2009 - 12:35 pm 3. chipvw:

You betcha, Andrew is welcome. And for those of you who haven’t read his stuff, I personally disagree with him and say: start with the Weiss and Bishop trilogy. Especially if your preference is audio; he reads it beautifully.

Feb 20, 2009 - 10:41 am 4. AClay:

First, I am a fan. I read both Empire of Lies and Don’t Say a Word.

Second, culture determines all else societally (explaining why Jews, Armenians, Hakka Chinese, Maronites, and few other cultures are in general successful wherever they end up).

Third, American culture is being Europeanized.

Fourth, in the West, demand will create more culture than supply.

Given these conditions, it is imperative that conservatives (including libertarians) demand quality conservative culture and avoid subsiziding culture that threatens our ways of life.

Conservatice culture can thrive in the marketplace (South Park, Mel Gibson, Brady Bunch, the first Star Wars movie, Batman). Please use your blog to spur it along, while also calling attention to the hypocrisy of consuming media that undermines the culture we seek to promote.

Also, we must find alternatives to the existing higher education system that is eroding our culture rather than building it up. Any ideas?

Feb 20, 2009 - 11:10 am 5. Maggie:

Welcome.

Feb 20, 2009 - 12:03 pm 6. Donna V.:

I have always been baffled as to why so many writers are Leftists. After all, the Left’s track record regarding freedom of expression is pretty rank. How many writers vanished into Stalin’s gulags?

I’ve often wondered if the attraction is there because writers are so used to creating their own worlds – worlds they have complete control over – that they come to think the real world can be managed as neatly as the ones inside their heads.

Either that or perhaps they are fundamentally apolitical and so accept the cliches of the Left without fully thinking them through, because their real focus is their art.

Neither explanation fully convinces me. I’d appreciate better insight into that particular mental phenomenon.

At any rate, I’m happy to see another conservative culture warrior fighting the good fight!

Feb 20, 2009 - 4:01 pm 7. ricpic:

There is a general misconception that art is about spontaneity, feeling, as opposed to thought. Thus is a veritable horde of the thinking averse drawn magnetically in. The proof that art is produced only by a very rigorous application of intellect is in the pudding: always and everywhere a scarcity of first rate pudding and a surplus of slop. It follows that the slop crowds out the pudding. And since slop inevitably includes a portion of politically oriented slop thought, i.e. liberalism, liberalism is the dominant political message delivered by the arts.

Feb 20, 2009 - 5:27 pm 8. T. O'Connor:

Most of the artists that I know mistake their feelings of freedom for something that they have accomplished by and for themselves, but such feelings are not always and exclusively the fruit of free will.

Feb 20, 2009 - 9:01 pm 9. Stevo:

Keep it coming, Andrew. Fight the Hologram.

Feb 21, 2009 - 7:03 am 10. Patty:

Chipvw: Agree. I started with the Weiss and BIshop trilogy — wish there were more — loved these books.

Feb 21, 2009 - 9:06 am 11. Daniel:

The Arts, rightly understood, feed the imagination. They are food for the mind and when it is a healthy diet society and culture flourish. And the diet is lousy or poisoned or just generally withheld society and culture eventually dies. The Arts, controlled by Left-Liberals is poisoning the minds of free people everywhere, not just America. If people want freedom, liberty, the ideas embodied in the American experiment to survive then we need a better Cultural diet.

I commit myself to doing whatever I can to help Andrew in this cause.

Feb 23, 2009 - 11:26 pm 12. renep:

It would be better to use reverse psychology: Pretend you are a Liberal and propose extremely insane and wild ideas. For example:
Obama is better than Jesus!
Liberals Rock, you suck!
Gays and lesbians make better parents, so outlaw heterosexuals as parents.
Who needs a budget, spend, spend, spend!
The Federal Reserve should run all markets!

It ends up turning most people off to Liberal ideas.

Mar 26, 2009 - 6:59 pm 13. Patrick J. Deneen – on Culture and Politics « Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Happiness:

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Aug 29, 2009 - 8:45 am