"It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds." Samuel Adams

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

A new "long march?'

Mark Steyn, writing this morning in National Review Online, touches on a theme that has been a favorite of mine: the Obama victory marks the culmination of the left's long march through the institutions. And he argues that the right will not succeed in taking back the country until it completes its own long march, because 21st century elections will increasingly be decided on the basis of cultural issues and the left owns America's cultural institutions.

That's all well and good, but one must ask, how do you go about reclaiming the institutions? Will the academy suddenly open its arms to the right? Hardly. The reason the left seized the academy was because at one time, the academy was governed by reasonable people who thought they were bing open-minded and fair by allowing all viewpoints to have a so-called place at the table. Unfortunately, the people who claimed that place at the table are not reasonable people and they have absolutely not intention whatsoever of opening up any seats to right thinkers.

The same is true across the entire cultural spectrum. (For example, the judiciary is now lost to the right for at least a generation).

So, what to do? I think the idea of doing our own "long march" is out of the question. The institutions are closed to use. What's needed, I believe, is to create an entire parallel universe in which conservative values and principles will be absolutely foundational .

Any thoughts?

4 comments:

Dave said...

Lincoln's axium rings true to me: "The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next." Somewhere between 3 and 4 million American children are now being educated at home by their parents. There needs to be millions more. I believe conservatives must completely abandon the public school system. I think this is our only hope for establishing a "parallel universe" that can go forward into the future. We need to properly educate a whole generation. As long as we leave that task to the left, we will continually lose ground. It's like allowing the Patriot's coach to call the plays for the Colts. Who's going to win the game?

Brian C. Caffrey said...

Yes: Where on earth would we put this parallel universe? Ayn Rand's Atlantis was in Colorado. Present day Colorado's full of fruits and nuts. This means that outside of waiting for Christ's Kingdom, our parallel universe will interspersed throughout the rest of the community. We can't fit anywhere else, except in the Gulag Archipelago. How can such a society survive intact? Answer: It can't. There will be some sort of civil conflict. When half the people think it perfectly all right for a woman to rid herself of an inconvenient tissue mass, and the other half think the same woman is savagely murdering an innocent human being, those halves cannot co-exist peacefully side by side. If you need proof of what I'm saying, last year an old man, who happens to be a pro-life protester, told the male escort of a woman visiting our abortion mill here, "Real men don't take women to abortion clinics," or something to similar effect. The escort, no doubt complicit in the pregnancy, attacked the old man, throwing him off the platform he was on, causing him to land on the pavement, on his head, and leaving the man with a fractured skull. That, my friends, is civil conflict. Let me add that, initially, the Harrisburg police intended to walk away and do absolutely nothing.

Dave said...

Have either of you guys read Chuck Norris's Black Belt Patriotism? I'm wondering if he has any ideas that merit our attention.

Brian C. Caffrey said...

I have not. I was quite disappointed by Chuck's fawning all over that phony Mike Schmuckabee.