How to Win the Demographic and Culture Wars
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Modern Orthodox Jews, a group of which I am, obviously, a member, have the highest levels of cultural exposure, the lowest birth rates and the highest susceptibility to progressive views. The Modern Orthodox approach was viable in 1950s America where the outside culture was healthy, but I have come to question its survival value in an era where the culture is decaying and hostile to any form of traditional family values. Chassidic Jews, with the lowest rates of cultural exposure also have the highest birth rates and, unlike Modern Orthodox Jews, I have yet to meet a single liberal Chassid.
So is cultural secession the solution? For traditional Jews it might be, but for traditionalists as a whole, who have the demographic reach to turn the national numbers around, it can be a temporary solution until the numbers and the political power that goes with them are theirs. As with Orthodox Jews, there is a Christian culture industry, but it isn’t enough to have positive messages as an alternative, it’s equally important to cut out as many negative messages as possible.
Above all else, education is the future. Traditionalists who fail to understand this will allow the educational system and the entertainment industry to transform their children into progressives. Progressives know that control of the educational system means control of the future. Without the educational system and immigration, progressives are doomed to be cafe radicals. With them, they can count the generations until they control everything.
The progressives have few children of their own. Your children are their children. If they can corrupt your children, then they have a future. If they cannot, then they will go off and die in a corner. The progressives have three strengths, class warfare, cultural programming and immigration. America had prosperity that negated class warfare, but it neglected to safeguard its culture from the left and did not consider the consequences of Third World immigration. With their political and culture power, the left destroyed prosperity and now with all three cards in their hand, the progressives are rising high.
But too many conservatives have despaired because they have fallen prey to the myth of a perfect America that once was and can never be again. But America was never perfect, like every person, it was a work in progress. It was a struggle between ideas and ideologies and that struggle did not end because the progressives have worked and plotted to get this far. Defeating them is a matter of exploiting their weaknesses and firming up our strengths.
Most of the Republican Party remains unwilling to acknowledge that this is a cultural war. And it is. Culture is one of the things that the left is good at. It’s an easy and profitable way for the left to pursue its ends. And it’s fun. But it only works with captive audiences.
The left’s cultural infrastructure is wired to feed its programming to an audience that sits there waiting to receive it and is willing to even pay top dollar for the privilege. Like every Iago, it has no idea what to do if Othello not only doesn’t pay for the privilege of going to its schools and movies, but actively tunes it out and forms a community that makes its own entertainment and education.
Forget physical secession for the moment and think cultural secession. Physical secession, even if it were achieved, would do little good without putting cultural secession first. And if you cannot manage cultural secession, then how will you ever achieve physical secession?
Cultural secession means cutting away the educational and entertainment culture of the left out of your home. It means creating your own alternative education and entertainment and grouping in communities that act as a support structure for traditional values. Is it easy? No. It involves sacrifice. But groups such as the Amish and Orthodox Jews have done it and have thrived doing it.
Some wars are settled by guns, but cultural wars are settled by the schoolbook and the movie. They are settled by the family.
The progressive agenda is to destroy the family, to undermine it, ridicule it, economically disadvantage it and burden it until it falls apart and is replaced by the Big Brother of the State. The traditional agenda is to maintain the family and pass along traditional values across the generations. That is what this cultural war is really about; whether the family or the state will the defining unit of human experience.
tell a friendAbout the Author: Daniel Greenfield is an Israeli born blogger and columnist, and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. His work covers American, European and Israeli politics as well as the War on Terror. His writing can be found at http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/. The views expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not represent the views of The Jewish Press.
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Nobody who identifies as a Jewish traditionalist could possibly want to limit immigration "as much as possible". It was precisely arguments such as these that led to the draconian restrictions of immigration to the US during the mid-20th century, and as a result the Six Million had nowhere to which to flee.
Furthermore, the author ignores the fact that most immigration to the US is by quite traditional people: Christians from Latin America and the Philippines, and people from the mainland of Asia with strong traditional family values. But since they aren't the White Anglo Saxon Protestant Bigots with whom the author clearly identifies, he wants to keep them out. When is he going to follow through and convert?