Conservative Reality Principle
by Paul M. Weyrich
 Herbert Marcuse, who did more than anyone else to inflict the ideology of
cultural Marxism on America, set up an interesting dichotomy in his vastly
influential book, Eros and Civilization (in the 1960s, it was virtually the
Bible of the New Left). The basic challenge facing the cultural Marxists, as
he saw it, was nothing less than replacing the Reality Principle with the
Pleasure Principle. The result would be endless pleasure, endless love (in
reality, endless sex) in a society where work would be unknown and "liberated eros" would unleash the delights of "polymorphous perversity." Dionysius would triumph over Apollo and decree a New Eden.
That indeed became America's road, and we've come a long way down it, baby.
The result, of course, was not a Dionysian paradise but endless decline,
decay and degradation. America of the 1950s, the last decade when our
country had its rightful mind, is now more of a foreign country than Tibet
or Upper Volta.
Where that road is rapidly leading us is all too clear. It is leading us to
Brave New World. When I was in high school, some years ago, every pupil had
to read two books which offered two alternative totalitarian futures. One
was George Orwell's 1984, which represented totalitarianism of the Nazi or
Communist variety. The other was a slim novel, written in the 1930s by the
British author Aldous Huxley: Brave New World. If the fall of the Soviet
Union removed most of the threat of 1984, America is today steering straight
for Brave New World. Indeed, it is leading the rest of the planet in that
direction, or, when necessary, forcing it, sometimes with bayonets.
The first law in Brave New World was that you must be happy. Happiness was
guaranteed by a combination of sensual pleasure (as with Marcuse, anything
goes, except marriage), endless consumerism and materialism, virtual
realities (the "feelies" did television and computer games one better),
psychological conditioning and, Hell's final triumph, genetic conditioning,
which was virtually inescapable. Summed up, Brave New World represents what
C.S. Lewis called the abolition of man.
The next conservatism needs to recognize that Brave New World describes
America's probable future, unless conservatives and perhaps some others can
bring about a massive change of direction. All the key elements are already
present and working as a leaven throughout American society, excepting only
genetic conditioning, and genetic engineering will soon give us that. It is
not irrelevant that Marcuse and the other cultural Marxists of the Frankfurt
School realized they could not destroy traditional Western culture with
philosophical arguments; the task required that people be psychologically
conditioned so that they could not believe anything else. Between the public
schools and television, many of our young people are already at that point.
The question facing the next conservatism is what can be done about it.
Obviously, concrete steps include home or other private schooling and
throwing the television off the roof, as Russell Kirk once actually did.
More broadly, we need to "deconstruct" Brave New World along the following
lines:
- Once again, make sure every school child, and every adult who has not done
so, reads Brave New World. It offers a powerful warning.
- Replace the cultural Marxists' rule of "if it feels good, do it" with
traditional Western, Judeo-Christian morals. Once again, we see that
cultural issues are primary.
- Be wary of technologies that offer virtual realities. I use a computer and
love it, but I am careful what I use it for. Too many people are not. In my
view, the next conservatism needs some way of evaluating new technologies
rather than just accepting whatever the market brings us.
- Remember that conservatism is not about stuff. Consumerism and materialism
are not traditional conservative virtues. Yes, conservatives want to live
comfortably, and that is fine. But as one minister put it, we are commanded
to use things and love people, not the other way around.
- Beware of psychological conditioning in any form, and reject genetic
conditioning utterly. Genetic engineering is one of those technologies
conservatives should be looking at skeptically. Do we really want men to
play God?
- Recognize that cultural Marxism, while not the same thing as Brave New
World, has made a Devil's pact with it, where each uses and benefits the
other. We should be fighting both.
At root, the next conservatism's task is to reverse Marcuse and restore the
reality principle in place of the pleasure principle. If we do not, I fear
events will, and those events may not be pleasant.
Paul M. Weyrich is the Chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation.
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