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I want to share a "view from the inside" as I think that I'm unusual here -- theist, practicing Catholic, married, a gaggle of young children, wife is SAHM, went to an unremarkable college, went to an unremarkable flyover state college, household income in the U.S. middle 50% band, work a middle management job at a mid sized corporation. Though I work in tech, I don't have any connections to Ivy League people, I've never worked at a startup or lived in NYC or SFO, and there is little to no wokeness in my workplace . In other words, a profile of what people would probably reflexively imagine as a "normal" traditional American family (although I suppose being an Evangelical would be still more stereotypical).
At least in my circles, the biggest problems are fear and demoralization. Fear of "having your grill taken away," of no longer being allowed to live a normal life because you've become a target of elite outrage, is very real. I feel like a broken record saying this again on the Motte, but it's so, so different when you have children. I think I would make a decent small-time politician (I'm probably to agreeable to make it big time), but I have small children and a sensitive wife, and I wouldn't want them to be subjected to the kind of insane harassment that would result from some Twitter rando or news outlet signal boosting something I say or believe in. My ideal senatorial or presidential candidate would hold beliefs that would be considered so anathema by the elite that he would have to be independently wealthy and have an iron stomach and brass balls to even stand a chance.
As for demoralization, there's a sense that I share with some of my peers that American institutions are just thoroughly rotten, that we've become dhimmis without realizing it, and that trying to organize politically to build institutional power as unabashed practicing Catholics would go over now about as well as it would under a Caliphate.
To get to the point, I don't think that the Right is starved for intellectuals because it can't produce any. Rather, the foolish ones who stick their neck out get sidelined or destroyed, while the wise ones hide and bide their time. If Michael Anton's Red Caesar suddenly landed on the Atlantic coast, captured Washington D.C., and declared a new republic, I have no doubt at all that these people would come out of the woodwork and that Caesar would be able to quickly assemble a mighty cabinet. But until then, what sense is there in outing yourself as a counterrevolutionary?
What do you not understand? Do you want me to type of a list of bog standard socialcon talking points? Or are you asking about how we would change things given political power?
If it's the former, my beliefs don't deviate much from what the Catholic church teaches so you there's no mystery. If you ask more specific questions I can try to answer those.
If it's the latter: one of the points I was trying to make in my post is that a lot of us have given up on the current system since all peaceful forms of dissent seem to have been soft-criminalized or co-opted. We are waiting for an Alexander to come along and cut the Gordian knot. There is still action we can take today, though. Some of us are quietly moving to intentional communities and trying to rebuild the community life that was dissolved in the atomization of society so that we will better be able to organize and respond when that day comes, plus it gives our children antibodies to the globohomo zeitgeist (before folks start shrieking about repression -- there's a right way and a wrong way to do it -- my siblings and I are proof that the right way works).
I don't understand the appeal of social conservatism. To me it seems boring and limiting. The men I've known who grew up in socially conservative households and never rebelled tend to be meek, intellectually stagnant personalities who have daddy issues. And the ones who did rebel seem damaged by their upbringings. What is the draw? To be fair, I have a very small sample size for the above!
I mean, I don't like progressives either, but one of the main reasons why I don't like progressives is that psychologically speaking to me they seem much the same as conservatives. Repressive, intellectually stagnant personalities who want to impose their limited worldviews on other people.
It seems your objection is to the parenting style of “here are the rules, do not question them” rather than the content of the rules.
You can certainly raise children Catholic while also raising them to be intellectually curious. There’s a near inexhaustible amount of material to digest from thousands of years of tradition. Christianity does not demand completely blind faith, though it does find it praiseworthy. My own faith rests on historical evidence and teachings from church fathers.
I think few parents encourage any depth of thinking, regardless of their political alignment. They don’t engage in it themselves and would not have any interest or ability to push their kids to interrogate their own beliefs.
The social liberals kind of get a facade of intellectual curiosity for free by being antagonistic to tradition, but this antagonism itself is not interrogated.
Yeah, not so much. That's a great way to raise an atheist. (eg. sample size of 1: me). Learning the ins and outs of the history of the bible and enough theology is just enough to show you how much of a bullshit fake it till you make it the various holly texts incorporated in the bible are. The absolute revulsion it causes you as a naive believer to realise the entire edifice of "the church" is just years and years of the priestly/ruling class making shit up as they go along to benefit themselves or their kings. Seeing how the various commandments and moral demands of the dogma are entirely based on the worldly, fallen needs, wants and prejudices of mere humans is enough to turn anyone an atheist.
Trust me, the less you know about religion the better.
As as an ex-New-Atheist (well, still an atheist, just out of the whole Dawkins, Hitchens, etc., mindset), this is true, but then you realize this is true for every other human-constructed edifice, including (and perhaps especially) the ones that were supposed to be our salvation from religion, like The Science. At that point it's just a question of picking your poison, and there's a case to be made that religion is the least harmful.
The benefit of a cynical worldly framework is that when it is inevitably exploited in a cynical and worldly way, it is still working exactly as advertised.
Not really. The current framework advertises itself as scientific, while demanding obedience through distinctly non-scientific means. Also, a lot of the ideas it pushes are rather metaphysical in nature ("gender", various form of "privilege", etc.).
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