Dec 31, 2018
Since the end of a year is dedicated to both reflecting on the
past and looking towards the future, I thought it would be apropos
to take a look back at where Saving Elephants has been this past
year and—more importantly—the state of conservatism in 2019 and
beyond.
No one wants to be a loser, and these days it seems like
conservatives are in full retreat. Whether that’s a Trump
supporter who voted for the president as some last-ditch effort to
fight back at the Left as dirty as they were willing to fight us,
or conservatives such as myself who see ourselves in the wilderness
as we wait for adults to return to the political fray. But
what’s important to keep in mind is that nearly every political
tribe feels like it’s losing these days. You think
progressives or liberals or socialists or any other group out there
feels as if they have the upper hand?
The thing about conservatism is that it has a remarkable
ability to endure. Even when it’s vanquished for a generation
it will eventually re-emerge as people grow tired of the latest
ideology that comes along and promises salvation. When the
ship of conservatism sinks, it becomes a submarine.
It’s easy to forget that—traditionally—conservatism has not
been popular. Real conservatism—not the shallow stuff
masquerading as such—has stubbornly insisted that, while we can
strive for and, in some cases, obtain a ‘good life’, this world is
not perfect and utopia isn’t achievable. It teaches that
there will always be trade-offs in the things we want and that
sometimes we have to ‘order our loves’ so that what we naturally
want—say, social justice or equality—must necessarily come second
place to other, more enduring values. Perhaps most
appallingly, it insists on each of us taking responsibility for our
own lives. Shallow conservatism teaches a version of this,
but it usually means talking smack about freeloaders or ‘people who
are not us’ not taking sufficient responsibility for their
lives. Real conservatism says we all have a duty to do so,
not just the people who don’t look like us or the people we don’t
like.
In my view, one of the greatest threats to conservatism
emerging among young Americans is the widespread distrust of our
institutions. Millennials in particular are far less likely
to attend church and have less confidence in our traditional
political party establishment that past generations. I DO NOT
mean that this distrust is unwarranted. But conservatism is
all about restoring the institutions that have served us well from
generation to generation—not about radical efforts to destabilize
the system. I agree the system is broken. It’s time to
roll up our sleeves and fix it, not tear it apart and just hope
that’ll somehow make things better.