Win the Culture
by Andrew Klavin
Issue 128 - March 25, 2009

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.

Andrew Klavin now blogs at Klavan on the Culture as a companion piece to commentaries by the same name on PJTV.