For far too long, conservatives have been too complacent. They have ignored the Left’s assault on the culture. Indeed, they were oblivious to it. It led to them being obedient and submissive.
They were a group of people who relinquished control of the Republican Party to fake leaders masquerading as conservatives. Such deviants would claim one thing while on the campaign trail in front of voters, and then do the opposite once elected. These bad-faith actors have decimated the conservative movement.
Still, many choose to ignore this reality. They have no qualms about surrendering to the Left on social and cultural matters. They would comply with left-wing political initiatives such as diversity, equity, and inclusion in exchange for the political support of fiscal policies that fatten their bank accounts. They acquiesced to the ideas of menstruating and pregnant men just so long as their profits weren’t affected. They abandoned the political virtues of Republican icons such as Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt.
Emblematic of this was Paul Ryan, the former Republican House speaker and the Republican 2012 vice presidential losing candidate. In June 2023, he declared, “I’m not a culture war guy.” Yet Ryan will insist he is a conservative. But if Ryan does not want to defend the cultural institutions of the family, religious freedom, the Second Amendment, parents’ rights to educate their progeny, or the forces of law and order, what exactly is he conserving?
The answer is obvious. Ryan only wants to conserve tax cuts for hedge fund managers and to outsource America’s manufacturing to a hostile nation that uses slave labor. He has, after all, done quite well in the corporate world since leaving politics. But Ryan and those Republicans like him showed they are not real conservatives. They never were.
They are a cadre of aristocrats who predominantly cared about fiscal matters. They are tax-cut-obsessed, free-market globalist trade enthusiasts, and money changers. They refused to defend conservative social values because such values never really mattered to them despite claims to the contrary. In doing so, they ignored a core tenet of conservatism rooted in Edmund Burke’s ideals: Conserving the culture is conservatism!
Burke, considered one of the founders of modern conservatism, once said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” And nothing is what these so-called conservatives have done for quite some time.
Republicans need fewer Paul Ryans and more leaders who don’t run away from embracing and supporting conservative values. How ironic it is that working and middle-class labor union members who defy their socialist and corrupt union bosses now have more in common with the right-wing social conservatives than the elected Republicans of yesteryear?
Furthermore, not being a “culture war guy” is an outright betrayal of conservatism. Conservatives believe in protecting what is right, not just counting coins. As Burke also said:
“But what is liberty without wisdom and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint. Those who know what virtuous liberty is cannot bear to see it disgraced by incapable heads, on account of their having high-sounding words in their mouths.”
As such, the time is now for monumental change. Now is the moment for the renaissance of the social conservative. Gone are the days of conservatives abandoning the fields of education, music, literature, art, government, law, and journalism. They will not repeat the unpardonable error of retreating from the public square. They will uphold their duties to defend conservative values and not be compromised in any way.
Social conservatives will ardently protect the lives of the unborn without fear from those on the Left. They will defend the right to secure borders, not flimsy immigration bills that do little to solve the nation’s border security problems in the name of bipartisanship. They will not be reluctant to denounce outlandish notions such as men being able to menstruate and get pregnant, the existence of 73 genders, or the inexplicable inability to define what a woman is.
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No more.
We are at a critical moment in history. Now, more than ever, is the time for the renaissance of the social conservative. They will embrace bravery, not cowardice. They will be vociferous, not silent. They will be the change, not react to it.