Ask Dr. Helen: Where is Conservative culture?
My PJM column is up:
Read the column and let us know what books, magazines, shows, music, movies, etc., you consume to get your dose of conservative ideas. Do you organize or belong to any groups that have conservative or libertarian ideas? Lastly, how can we reach out and support more right-leaning culture?
Is there no creativity today among those who lean right? If so, where can you find it?
Read the column and let us know what books, magazines, shows, music, movies, etc., you consume to get your dose of conservative ideas. Do you organize or belong to any groups that have conservative or libertarian ideas? Lastly, how can we reach out and support more right-leaning culture?
Labels: PJM column
posted by Helen at 5:28 AM
42 Comments:
One group says that capitalism is good because it is the only system consistent with objectivity and reason; that reason is our tool of survival and that capitalism allows that tool to operate, whereas other systems destroy or preclude men from thinking, preclude men from having reality as the standard of truth; other systems force men to act as if Fuhrer or Government Dictate or Pharaoh were the standard of truth.
For the perspective they provide like no one else and for their insightful philosophical and moral foundation of individual rights and capitalism, I like to see what ideas and arguments the Ayn Rand Institute has.
Their commentary is here: http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=index
There are good articles and op-eds here, too: http://www.capmag.com/
The Cato Institute website, National Review Online, Jewish World Review, Cafe Hayek, Econlog, Marginal Revolution, Greg Mankiw's, Instapundit, Powerline, The Volkh Conspiracy
In general, I greatly prefer the way economists approach social problems over any other group's. As a group, economists are so incredibly cynical that a lot of what passes for "argument" among politicians and pundits gets laughed off as self-serving BS by economists. I find that even when I disagree with an economist's position, I still have to think about it. A good example is Don Boudreaux's (Cafe Hayek) current disagreement with Thomas Sowell analysis of gay marriage.
Some suggestions for movies:
“We the Living” — a good demonstration of the destruction of individual soul and spirit and material wealth that communism causes; the movie (a black & white) is based on one of Ayn Rand’s novels, but made in Italy during WWII. The movie was popular and well-received…until the authorities realized the movie was not just anti-communist but anti-totalitarian, and had the movie pulled from all theatres. We are lucky there were still some surviving copies of the movie after the war.
“This Land is Mine” — a black & white with Charles Laughton; set in WWII.
“To Have and Have Not” — a black & white with Bogart and Bacall. Again, set in WWII…I think. Netflix.com says “Dynamic duo William Faulkner and Jules Furthman scripted this Howard Hawks classic starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall (who, rumor has it, fell in love on the set) that’s supposedly based on an Ernest Hemingway tome.”
“Ruggles of Red Gap” — a black & white with Charles Laughton. Set…not in WWII!!…but in the old West. A comedy-drama about an English valet who has to move to America and deal with the culture shock.
“Ridicule” — a modern French movie (color; subtitled) about a civil engineer who goes to court to try to attain funding for a drainage project in his city. The movie does a good job, by implication, of showing how things get done in capitalism vs. non-capitalistic systems.
“Executive Suite” — a black & white with William Holden, Barbara Stanwyck, Frederick March, Walter Pidgeon; presents business as positive and important!! A rare feat for Hollywood!!
Well, Dr. Helen, I hate to break it to you, but there is no conservative culture. There is no liberal culture either. There is only culture, with elements of both.
Take Heinlein's masterpiece, A Stranger in a Strange Land. Great book, read it as a teen and it profoundly influenced. There were elements of conservativism in it--Valentine Michael Smith's struggle against government oppression--but there were liberal elements in it as well, with parts of Smith's Church of All Worlds--communal living and group sex--strikingly anti-conservative.
Or take one of my favorite movies, Lust for Life, which tells the story of the painting of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Michelangelo was very conservative in his religious faith, a devout Catholic. But as an artist, he was profoundly liberal (witness the one section of the ceiling that shows the ass of God). My favorite scene is when the Pope brings in Cardinals and Bishops to judge the painting. Michelangelo rails, "God did not invent shame. It was left for the priests to invent shame. I will paint Man in all his naked glory, as God created him. Why do bring fools to judge my work?"
I think the problem really comes down, as all things do, to a definition of terms. What do "liberal" and "conservative" really mean? Here's how I define them.
A liberal is insistent on change, even when it doesn't work. A conservative is resistant to change, even when it does work.
But to my mind, there is a third school of thought. It's called the Old School, or Traditionalism if you will. The Old School goes with what works--insistent on change that works, resistant to change that does not. And there is no better exemplar of this approach than Tom Landry, the first head coach of the Dallas Cowboys.
Landry was as Old School as it gets, deeply religious, stoic, always dressed in a suit, tie and hat on the sidelines. But he was one of the most far-seeing and influential coaches in history. He invented keys and reads, the 4-3 and later the Flex defense, the multiple offense, situational substitution, the man-in-motion, the deep speed threat, and perfected the shotgun formation. He fundamentally transformed the game of football. Peter Gollenbock's Landry's Boys is an excellent book on the subject.
I don't consider myself a liberal or a conservative, a Democrat or a Republican. I'm an American and a Traditionalist. Where do I go to find my culture? Well, the Declaration, the Constitution and the Federalist Papers are a good place to start, but the Classics--Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Whitman, Twain, Faulkner, etc.--are my home. But as for education, and I am largely self-taught even though I have two bachelor's and a master's degree, I very highly recommend Sister Miriam Joseph's The Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Grammar, Logic and Rhetoric (Paul Dry Books). It is excellent for home schooling.
Some recommended books:
"Economics in One Lesson" by Harry Hazlitt. He says "[T]here is a second main factor that spawns new economic fallacies every day. This is the persistent tendency of men to see only the immediate effects of a given policy, or its effects only on a special group, and to neglect to inquire what the long-run effects of that policy will be not only on that special group but on all groups. It is the fallacy of overlooking secondary consequences.
"In this lies almost the whole difference between good economics and bad. The bad economist sees only what immediately strikes the eye; the good economist also looks beyond. The bad economist sees only the direct consequences of a proposed action; the good economist looks also at the longer and direct consequences.
...
"There are men regarded today as brilliant economists, who deprecate saving and recommend squandering on a national scale as the way of economic salvation."
"The Myth of the Robber Barons" by Burton Folsom. A good book showing the wealth-building and pro-man consequences of the business empire builders, and showing false the view that "robber barons" were evil men who stomped on others like Hegel's "heroes" who came upon the world scene and smashed the rules and smashed heads. (People like Robespierre did the smashing -- businessman cannot if they want make a profit and have a successful business.) There is an audio talk based on the book here: http://www.fee.org/events/detail.asp?id=6114.
I agree with GawainsGhost. I've been called nonconservative because I'm not religious and because in some cases I support a woman's choice for abortion. I've been called nonliberal because I see personal responsibility as paramount and wealth redistribution (not social construction) as bad. I'm not really either, I'm a mix.
As for culture? I really don't have one, but delve in what interests me regardless of other's perceptions as to its merit. In the end, their opinion doesn't matter.
As far as organizing into groups goes:
http://www.drinkingright.org/
The idea of "culture" as a left-right liberal-conservative issue is interesting. Personally, I think it's a false dichotomy we've allowed ourselves to buy into, because it's what the socialist edge of the left has been repeating now ever since Marx. As long as we think of culture as being a political battlefield, we allow the left to set the agenda.
I think the main issue, which is long term, is education. Home school your kids, and as part of that, teach self-control, personal responsibility, and the need for them to think for themselves. That way they will grow in knowledge, and not be burdened by the increasing indoctrination happening in the schools.
As an artist, who was known even in college as a conservative (while studying the Theatre, of all things), the only thing we can do now about culture is go out and make it.
In the arts, everyone is supposed to be an iconoclast, yet virtually no one goes out and actually overturns the idols of our age. In light of that, I'd highly recommend "Against the Idols of the Age" (essays by David Stove) and "the Rape of the Masters" by Richard Kimball.
Also, I'm surprised no one has mentioned Harry Potter. I can't think of a more anti-bureaucracy piece of fiction, and certainly not anything that has ever reached its level of recognition.
"There is no liberal culture either. There is only culture, with elements of both. Take Heinlein's masterpiece, A Stranger in a Strange Land...."
Not a good choice to support your contention. Heinlein was not a conservative. He was a libertarian. He is usually labeled a conservative because he was pro-military-service, pro-fee-market economics, anti-communist, and passionately patriotic, and lefties prefer to categorize their enemies in terms the suit them rather than in terms that fit reality.
G. K. Chesterton, in contrast, was clearly a conservative whose writing reflected this.
It's usually very hard to fit real writers into rigidly defined categories, but that does not mean that it is useless to speak of "conservative art" and "liberal art" and so on. To take extreme examples, it would be absurd to deny that the Soviet Union and China produced huge quantities of communist art under the label "socialist realism", and many artists of the 20th century passionately used their art to further their political ideas. (For one interesting example, note the Bauhaus School and all its cousins and descendents.)
GawainsGhost, I may not have expressed that as well I could. Just in case there's any doubt I was emphatically NOT implying any connection between you and leftists who misrepresent those they disagree with. At most I was referring to how we often unconsciously use the categories that leftist educators and journalists have sometimes very successfully imposed on our language--and I say "at most" because I leave open the possibility that even this would be reading too much into what you wrote.
pst314, I take your point. Art can often times be described by its underlying political philosophy. I made my point poorly. My opinion is that when we approach creativity and culture from a political perspective, we end up ceding the argument to those who have controlled the arts and culture for so long.
If we are talking about conservatives being creative, (as Dr. Helen asked "Is there no creativity today among those who lean right?" then those who are conservative and creative should simply get to it and create.
My paintings deal with spiritual themes, but I have no illusion that they will convince anyone to agree with my religious beliefs. The same works for culture, (though literature has more power of argument and persuasion perhaps than painting). However, those who appreciate my art, but have different political beliefs, are going to be people with whom I can have a rational discourse, and there! something can happen.
It's also heartening to mention that so much of what is considered "High Art" is so painfully bad (I can't tell you how many Bush-Hitler-Chimp paintings I've seen) that it's going to be forgotten in only a few years.
I also can't believe I have forgotten the Art Renewal Center.
Not sure of any politics involved, but they showcase traditional western culture and art in painting and sculpture.
My family and I have church. We go to a church that has spiritual values that are similar to ours, and we meet people that have the same sort of values.
For the nonreligious, I guess you really work on your support system, making friends and working hard to keep the friends that are similar enough philosophically to be supportive.
I agree with the SciFi angle, it is nice to read stuff that values personal responsibility and the art of the possible.
Trey
I put on my bullet-proof vest before posting this -- Heinlein and most science fiction is poorly written and laughable in its construction.
Perhaps this is because it is approached with the philosophy foremost in mind rather than the story.
There is much "liberal" fiction that certainly falls into this category of non-art.
Stick to Louis Lamour and his ilk -- story-tellers, but ones with an ear for human reality. The Harry Potter series is a good example.
I wonder if conservatism discourages creativity in some ways. Is there so much emphasis on responsibility that creative impulses get stifled a bit.
Anthony Daniels aka Theodore Dalrymple--essayist in The New Criterion and City Journal--incisive observer, brilliant stylist.
Films directed by Wolfgang Petersen (Das Boot, Perfect Storm, Troy)--his characters make choices. In the usual TV or movie story all we see are people *doing a job* or *pursuing an obsession*.
donna b. --
You've described most fiction (and factual) writing, period.
Other than Heinlein, what have you read? You also have to keep in mind it's speculative fiction, not bodice-ripper or plodding life-a-day narrative. Wait, read Dune for plodding.
Maybe try The Mote in God's Eye, Lucifer's Hammer or The Foundation Trilogy for some meat or most anything from Tiptree for good story and look up the Stainless Steel Rat series.
"I wonder if..."
No.
For some reason all the singer-songwriters I like(their music) as flaming left-wingers. 100%, not a single one is right-wing. I mean, some might be moderate, not all have taken active political stands. I guess if you are in that community, you best shut up if you don't toe the ultra-left line.
I am an artist: why, I even have an M.F.A - a Masters that is it is; and having conservative and Christian principles helped and continues help me be creative: while others are emoting and refusing reason, I am increasing in my use of the intellectual powers.
I say this while knowing full well that being a Christian and conservative has been to my professional disadvantage: I remain an unknown through God's will.
"most science fiction is poorly written"
I take it you've never heard of Sturgeon's Law: After endless dismissals of science fiction as worthless because most of it is mediocre or worse, author Theodore Sturgeon made his famous and devastating rejoinder: "Ninety percent of everything is crap." Most mainstream fiction is crap. So is most poetry, most drama, most painting, most music. There is only ten percent quality in any field. Your criterion for dismissing sf would dismiss everything else, too. Oops.
The best science fiction and fantasy rival mainstream fiction for quality of writing. Just a few random examples: Roger Zelazny, Gene Wolfe, Gregory Benford, Terry Pratchett.
As for Robert Heinlein, he was born in 1907 and began writing in the late 1930's. His early stories reflected the times, and what strikes a contemporary reader as awkward or false was often a result of Heinlein's efforts to say what he wanted to say within the editorial confines of the day. (For instance, pulp editors generally were hostile to adult male-female relationships--in other words, sex), thinking that sex was inappropriate for their target audience (mostly boys and young men).
If you want to judge Heinlein's skill, you should look at his work once he had matured and developed his craft, such as Glory Road and Puppet Masters--although for that matter, Stranger and Starship Troopers and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress are also very good.
"Perhaps this is because it is approached with the philosophy foremost in mind rather than the story."
I suspect that this is the key to where you went wrong: Why do you prioritize story over ideas? By doing so you deprecate most pre-modern literature, as traditionally ideas have enjoyed equal weight. Certainly it is essential to tell a good story, but the best sf does this very well, and has the added advantage of exploring ideas from every sphere of natural and moral philosophy.
"...we end up ceding the argument to those who have controlled the arts and culture for so long."
I'll sign my name to that: One of the best ways to sum up the poisonous nature of the Left is its battle cry "The personal is political." Ideologues have mostly destroyed the actual teaching and appreciation of literature and art, replacing them with political propaganda which abuses works of art, telling lies about the art in order to advance an ideology.
Oh--and one last thing about Heinlein: Did you know, donna b, that Heinlein is credited with inventing a vast number of literary techniques which the best writers use to tell their stories? Even radical leftist Samuel R Delany gives him his due.
Actually, Donna B. lost all credibility with me after she said Louis L'Amour was a good writer. Yes, he tells a good yarn, but in my opinion his writing style is *painfully* bad.
Which just goes to show it's diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks. FWIW, my grandfather had every single Louis L'Lamour book and had read them all several times. Betcha can't guess where I got my hands on the Louis L'Amour that I've read. . . . ;-)
I believe more in a fantasy type of book. Try Robert Jordan (unfortunately he died before completing the last book in the Wheel of Time series), or George R.R. Martin. Robin Hobb has some excellent books as well.
Wolfboy, I am more of a hard scifi kind of guy. Ever notice how you can tell the difference between a scifi and a fantasy book by the typeface on the cover?
Most of the scifi are sans serif while the fantasy covers almost always have serifs! There are exceptions of course, but it is a good rule of thumb.
Trey
Louis L'Amour? America's story teller, that's a good one. But he was no Mark Twain or Jack London. Or Edgar Rice Burroughs (another great sci-fi writer, by the way) for that matter.
In these times, I would recommend Thoreau. "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." Words to live by.
While I do consider Chaucer to be the best--the keenest observer of human character--I have a special fondness for Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (hence my nickname). In the third fitt, when the Lady of the Castle tries to seduce Gawain, we find a timely portrayal of female manipulation tactics. First, she tries to get Gawain to identify himself as a character from a (French) romance novel. Then she tests his knowledge of the romance text. Finally, she tries to get him to act on that identification and knowledge--"You can have my body." But Gawain is a good Realist and won't fall for Nominalist linguistic tricks; he won't betray the Lord of the Castle or dishonor the Lady. That's about as conservative as it gets.
But I still say Chaucer's The Merchant's Tale is the most apt depiction of our times. In that story, the rich aristocrat, a member of the landed gentry and inherited wealth, wastes his money on fancy clothes, expensive parties and loose women. Then, when he's broke, he has to go to the manager of his estate, a common man of modest means who above all else understands business and money, to borrow cash (with interest) in order to finance living beyond his means. If that doesn't tell the story of this decade, I don't know what does.
Finally, I highly recommend my favorite poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins. Particularly The Wreck of the Deutschland, The Windhover, God's Grandeur, and That Nature is a Heralclitean Fire and of the Comfort of the Ressurection. That's some of the best poetry ever written and a great source of spiritual consolation in troubled times.
tmink - Indeed. It does make it easy when looking through the sci-fi/fantasy section in an used bookstore though.
My wife gets a little annoyed whenever we go to a used bookstore. I spend hours there. She still doesn't fully understand why? I made the comment to her one time:
"The sum of human knowledge is contained on these shelves. It seems a waste to just let it sit there."
That is my motivation. I have to agree with gawainsghost... the 'classics' are called that because they never go out of style. Society may change in appearance, but at its basic, it will always be the same.
I agree that there isn't liberal or conservative culture. It strikes me, though, that a respect for the culture that we have built up over the past three millennia or so is a conservative attitude. For the past four decades, more or less, the question has been "is it new?", rather than "is it good?" Asking the second question has become a deeply conservative thing to do. It seems that a whole lot of my disagreement with those who are called liberals today is that I believe that we should be reluctant to discard the wisdom of the past. Perhaps another way of saying that is that I value experience over logic.
Another aspect of what I'll call the conservative attitude is that somebody with that attitude asks "is it good?" rather than "do I agree with its point?" George Orwell wrote a good essay on this point. I've just spent a few minutes searching the web for its title and haven't been able to find it. I think that it's one of those in his book Dickens, Dali, and Others. To continue with an example from Orwell's oeuvre, Animal Farm isn't a good book because I agree with Orwell's view of totalitarianism, nor because there's a one-to-one correspondence between the characters and high-ranking officials in the USSR; it's a good book because it holds the reader's attention, the characters are consistent, and it's well-plotted. A similar book written by a less-skilled author probably wouldn't be very good, and I believe that it would be possible for a skilled author to write a good novel of the same type pointing up, say, the follies of the Republican party over the past twenty years.
Walter Miller's novel "A Canticle for Leibowitz" is a deep and well-written book that is classified as science fiction, but should really be called "philosophical fiction" or "theological fiction."
Excerpts:
"To minimize suffering and to maximize security were natural and proper ends of society and Caesar. But then they became the only ends, somehow, and the only basis of law - a perversion. Inevitably, then, in seeking only them, we found only their opposites: maximum suffering and minimum security."
"The closer men came to perfecting for themselves a paradise, the more impatient they seemed to become with it, and with themselves as well. They made a garden of pleasure, and became progressively more miserable with it as it grew in richness and power and beauty; for then, perhaps, it was easier for them to see that something was missing in the garden, some tree or shrub that would not grow. When the world was in darkness and wretchedness, it could believe in perfection and yearn for it. But when the world became bright with reason and riches, it began to sense the narrowness of the needle's eye, and that rankled for a world no longer willing to believe or yearn. Well, they were going to destroy it again, were they—this garden Earth, civilized and knowing, to be torn apart again that Man might hope again in wretched darkness."
So I guess all we have to do is get conservative culture out of the books and on to the streets, eh? I am a bit surprised no one mentioned the Bible.
I'm not an intellectual. I always read Buckley with a Webster's collegiate dictionary at the ready.
I am a lover of mechanical things, systems, processes. They obey "laws", and can be fixed to again perform as designed if they go haywire. They can almost always be improved. I am no Thoreau, but I do love the woods. Much more than people. Mankind is not capable of permanent improvement. It ain't gonna happen. Knowledge continues to explode. Wisdom has never grown.
Wisdom: out of man's heart comes evil and wickedness: adultery, fornication, theft, murder, war, and all ungodliness.
Knowledge: let me reckon the innumerable ways of the above. The list grows larger every hour: the wisdom remains unchanging and true.
njartist --
Don't forget, out of man's heart also comes good and virtuousness: fidelity, chasteness, largess, rescue, peace and all goodliness.
Ain't a one way street.
I'll argue the origin of the good and evil that reside in man's heart, but not the facts that they do.
But I will not argue that hope springs eternal. If it didn't, why then we'd all be democrats.
"Wisdom: out of man's heart comes evil and wickedness: adultery, fornication, theft, murder, war, and all ungodliness.
Knowledge: let me reckon the innumerable ways of the above. The list grows larger every hour: the wisdom remains unchanging and true."
Do you suppose there is a double meaning here, in that the "wisdom" of man "remains unchanging and true"?
Well. It works. No matter what generation, or what political ideology, true wisdom itself is constant.
Maybe we should seek to be wise rather than aligned to a particular creed.
Well, C. S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man works well in this regard.
Just a quick note to thank you for the excellent article. I have recommended it to visitors at Vital Signs Blog (http://vitalsignsblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/where-is-conservative-culture.html) and hope it enlarges the readership of your timely and important piece. Again, good job!
Denny Hartford
Director, Vital Signs Ministries
Omaha, NE
Denny Hartford,
Thanks for your post!
Michael, interesting film suggestions... still, I wonder whether they can be read as "conservative".
While leo MCCarey, who directed "Ruggles of Red Gap", certainly leaned towards the right, "Ruggles" is a film about emancipation, and, more or less, a triumph over a new order of equal and free men against an old order od masters and servants... So its theme can be atractive to many people regardlesly to whether they lean right or left.
As for "This Land is Mine" a film I absolutely love, its message about overcoming one's fears and stepping ahead has similarly a wide appeal... Incidentally, Jean Renoir, the director, had made films in France for the Front Populaire, and Laughton was at the time starting to work with Bertolt Brecht... Not to mention many sentences in the film, as in the speeech in court where one of the characters says that" it is easier for working class people to recognize the(nazi) enemy" .
In short, I know people who loves both films, some vote right and some vote left, but they're charmed all the same by the thrilling work of good actors, good scripts and good direction.
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