People love to root for their team. As a die hard St. Louis Cardinals fan, few things are more fun than watching one of our guys knock one out of the park and round the bases to home plate and be greeted with high fives from his team mates. But when your team is not playing well and making costly mistakes, you also have to call them on it. This would be one of those times.
Conservatives, it is time for an intervention.
We have come a long way. A long way from those days of just three major news networks, no Internet, and the closest thing to Conservative talk radio was the great Paul Harvey. Now, we have Fox News, we hold our own quite nicely online, and we own talk radio. With all of these outlets, we have developed our own "stars". People who have worked their way up the ladder of print, radio, even Internet, to become influential voices of the Conservative movement.
To be very clear, our standouts have worked their behinds off to get to the positions they now occupy. That's great, and it is inspiring to those on the way up. It is proof that a basic Conservative tenet, to aspire to be better than you are, at whatever it is you do, works.
But something is happening. Something that may be an unfortunate side effect of being human, but it is something that could be damaging to all we have achieved. I have written about it before. The condition of Conservative elitism.
I will not name names here. The names are not important, and it is not what I do. However, a certain few have been chosen, and elevated to almost super human status. Every word they utter becomes gospel. Every radio show or TV appearance is golden. Everyone hangs on their every word, and the world appears to be their oyster. But as we Conservatives well know, few of us shy away from saying what we think, even if it is do disagree with one another. And like everything else, we don't all like or dislike the same Conservative pundits. But to voice a dislike for any of the "chosen few" out loud or on social media, and one had better be prepared for the slicing and dicing that almost surely awaits them by, believe it or not, other Conservatives!
So what causes Conservative elitism? Perhaps a number of things. Factions? Egos? Maybe all of the above. One thing is certain. It is not healthy. It is reminiscent of the old high school clique. You remember, the group that seemed to contain all of the "cool" kids, or at least the kids that were mysteriously deemed "cool". Some of the other kids dressed like them, even talked like them. They just wanted to fit in and be one of them. They say that imitation is the highest form of flattery, but aren't we all out of high school? And who gets to decide who the "cool" kids are anyway?
At the risk of being guilty of the very thing I am pointing out here, I would like to ask just one question. This past Saturday, Andrew Breitbart would have celebrated his 45th birthday. We all miss him terribly, and sorely miss him on the front lines of our battle. What would he have to say about Conservative elitism? Would he tell us that no one person, be it the most popular of Conservative commentators or radio personalities, to the lone blogger, is more important than the movement itself? Would he tell us all to grow up, stop being high school kids, and get our heads out of our butts, in that in-your-face way that only Andrew could pull off? My guess is that yes, he would.
This year's mid-term election and the 2016 presidential election could truly be turning points for Conservatives. Pretending that some of us are more important than others and attacking each other for not liking this person or that does three things. It takes us away from what the real focus should be. If we do not stop it now it makes us no different than the Left, and worst of all it makes us hypocrites.
Conservatism is something that requires group participation. Not group think.
Conservatives, it is time for an intervention.
We have come a long way. A long way from those days of just three major news networks, no Internet, and the closest thing to Conservative talk radio was the great Paul Harvey. Now, we have Fox News, we hold our own quite nicely online, and we own talk radio. With all of these outlets, we have developed our own "stars". People who have worked their way up the ladder of print, radio, even Internet, to become influential voices of the Conservative movement.
To be very clear, our standouts have worked their behinds off to get to the positions they now occupy. That's great, and it is inspiring to those on the way up. It is proof that a basic Conservative tenet, to aspire to be better than you are, at whatever it is you do, works.
But something is happening. Something that may be an unfortunate side effect of being human, but it is something that could be damaging to all we have achieved. I have written about it before. The condition of Conservative elitism.
I will not name names here. The names are not important, and it is not what I do. However, a certain few have been chosen, and elevated to almost super human status. Every word they utter becomes gospel. Every radio show or TV appearance is golden. Everyone hangs on their every word, and the world appears to be their oyster. But as we Conservatives well know, few of us shy away from saying what we think, even if it is do disagree with one another. And like everything else, we don't all like or dislike the same Conservative pundits. But to voice a dislike for any of the "chosen few" out loud or on social media, and one had better be prepared for the slicing and dicing that almost surely awaits them by, believe it or not, other Conservatives!
So what causes Conservative elitism? Perhaps a number of things. Factions? Egos? Maybe all of the above. One thing is certain. It is not healthy. It is reminiscent of the old high school clique. You remember, the group that seemed to contain all of the "cool" kids, or at least the kids that were mysteriously deemed "cool". Some of the other kids dressed like them, even talked like them. They just wanted to fit in and be one of them. They say that imitation is the highest form of flattery, but aren't we all out of high school? And who gets to decide who the "cool" kids are anyway?
At the risk of being guilty of the very thing I am pointing out here, I would like to ask just one question. This past Saturday, Andrew Breitbart would have celebrated his 45th birthday. We all miss him terribly, and sorely miss him on the front lines of our battle. What would he have to say about Conservative elitism? Would he tell us that no one person, be it the most popular of Conservative commentators or radio personalities, to the lone blogger, is more important than the movement itself? Would he tell us all to grow up, stop being high school kids, and get our heads out of our butts, in that in-your-face way that only Andrew could pull off? My guess is that yes, he would.
This year's mid-term election and the 2016 presidential election could truly be turning points for Conservatives. Pretending that some of us are more important than others and attacking each other for not liking this person or that does three things. It takes us away from what the real focus should be. If we do not stop it now it makes us no different than the Left, and worst of all it makes us hypocrites.
Conservatism is something that requires group participation. Not group think.
FORGET, PLEASE, modern “conservatism.” It has been a failure because it has been, operationally, de facto, Godless. In the political/civil government realm it has ignored Christ and what Scripture says about the role and purpose of civil government. Thus, it failed. Such secular conservatism will not defeat secular liberalism because to God they are two atheistic peas-in-a-pod and thus predestined to failure. As Stonewall Jackson's Chief of Staff R.L. Dabney said of such a humanistic belief more than 100 years ago:
ReplyDelete”[Secular conservatism] is a party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is today one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will tomorrow be forced upon its timidity and will be succeeded by some third revolution; to be denounced and then adopted in its turn.
“American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader. This pretended salt hath utterly lost its savor: wherewith shall it be salted? Its impotency is not hard, indeed, to explain. It is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It intends to risk nothing serious for the sake of the truth."
In any event, “politics,” for the most part today, is whoring after false gods. It will not save us. Our country is turning into Hell because the church in America has forgotten God (Psalm 9:17) and refuses to kiss His Son (Psalm 2.) See, please, 2 Chronicles 7:14ff for the way to get our land healed.
John Lofton, Recovering Republican
Dir., The God And Government Project
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