Conservatism needs to apologise to the younger generations.
Yes, you read that correctly.
I am of course using the term ‘conservative’ in a generic sense that no doubt will offend theorists, however objections based on my hazy definition are digressions.
Leaving aside the fact there is no conservative citadel to express such regret, it remains that the political right-of-centre seldom if ever, pitches to a mid-to-late-teens audience.
For that neglect, we owe these young people an apology: We have failed to provide an alternative to the programming they receive via the education system and the media. When there are no contrasting messages, you are forced to believe the only information accessible to you.
It’s a trivial analogy, but as a child, you believed Santa Claus etc. existed, until you were told otherwise, correct?
We beat our breasts in lamentation that education has been thoroughly infiltrated by parasitic theories, yet what have we done to prevent or counter that?
Whereas competing ideologies actively pitch to the younger cohort – partly via the institutions mentioned above – conservatism and its variants take the approach that “Nah, it’s too hard. We’ll work on converting them after a few decades of life experience.”
In the meantime, what damage has been done to our society by this failure to provide an alternative political and life ideology? More to the point, why would you embrace conservatism in middle age when it rejected you at a time you were seeking answers?
Conservatism needs to apologise to the younger generations for neglecting them.
I do not write this flippantly, but intend it in the literal sense: To begin the conversation, a conservative organisation (if one can be found) must publish an apology to the young of this country; sincerely, and with an appropriate explanation.
When conservatives have power they never wield it and so the lean left continues unabated.
Trump showed the way and the right decided to ignore it.
Report comment
All my life my elders told me about the good old days. I didn’t listen. They were right. Same thing, different generation. You learn by experience not by apology. Time for the younger generation to learn a few lessons. The hard way.
Report comment
The point of apologising is not so much about repentance: it’s an opportunity to initiate an approach to a demographic that the right of centre largely neglects.
I frequently state my belief that ‘we’ need to seize (& then maintain) the initiative, because reacting defensively to the plays of our opponents will always keep us on the back foot. An acknowledgement that we haven’t paid the younger generations as much attention as they deserve (stick with me here), might be a means of seizing that initiative. It isn’t an answer or a pre-made outcome, simply an opportunity to drag momentum from our opponents.
Report comment
I don’t need to apologise to my children.
We taught them ourselves at home and raised them in a vigorously Christian atmosphere.
Jonty, you don’t understand how long the leftist finks have been infiltrating Western society.
It did not begin in 2001
Report comment
” It isn’t an answer or a pre-made outcome, simply an opportunity to drag momentum from our opponents.”
Perhaps.
I believe it is also largely a result of the growth of social media and the internet generally, together with the loss of an MSM holding all and sundry to account – without that, the younger generation would do as we did when younger, and revolt against “the man”. Then, as they get older and they become “the man”, change to a more conservative view. However, with SM and the ‘net, together with an MSM more focused on click-bait and views than digging for the truth, this paradigm appears to have changed. Maybe not, but it looks that way to me.
Of course, education has also changed – it is now de rigor to teach what to think, not how to think; it is “normal” to require “safe spaces” rather than simply say “you are here to be challenged in your beliefs and confront views you may find offensive, to learn how to argue against that which you abhour”.
It all piles up, and we get… what we have.
Somehow it seems inevitable this would come about – people who believe in freedom of choice and personal responsibility allow the facists/communists/whatever to continue to exist. And you must admit, their ideology is very tempting to the young and naive, especially when it is indoctrinated by every possible avenue of learning.
It’s not where we end up that concerns me – the desire for freedom is stronger than any authoritarian regime and will eventually triumph. It is what it will take, the destruction and damage done to tried and tested systems before we all revolt, and what that revolt will turn us into (at least for a time) that concerns me. What happens in “the turning” has the chance to be very ugly, and it will almost certainly get worse before it gets better. Perhaps COVID and the reaction to it has been a blessing in disguise – if it wakes up a large percentage of the population, if it destroys the Uni-party’s grip on power, if it exposes the lies and manipulation, it may “short circuit” some of the nastier aspects of the change. I sure hope that is the case.
Report comment
If you have to apologise, you were conservative more in theory, than fact.
Report comment