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Notes -
Given the (pretty good, IMHO) case Michael Lind lays out in this Tablet piece about how demographic trends still strongly favor utter dominance by the Democratic Party, what can people on the right do, then? Note, I'm not asking what the Republican party does, which is move left to capture moderate voters so to remain electorally viable (per the median voter theorem and Duverger's law); I'm asking what voters who care about the policies that would thus be abandoned, as opposed to the "politics as sports" folks who are happy just so long as "their team" beats the other guy.
I am this demographic.
Political consciousness came online after college as a Reganite conservative. Realized there were some contradictions there but, more importantly, that the rot started far earlier. Progress to a William F. Buckley conservative and am now at the Willmoore Kendall level.
And am tradcath.
There is no "promised land" of small-c conservatism in the US. There is no city or state aside from maybe Idaho / Wyoming that is truly conservative all the way thru (and those I just listed have actually taken the libertarian blackpill). This is not to say it's a Lost Cause (is this the Jubal Early forum?!). The mission of small-c conservatives right now is pretty much lawfare. And, looking at SCOTUS and the legacy of Mitch McConnell, it's actually going damn well. Then again, the reaction to Dobbs has shown that America is so used to elective abortion that it doesn't actually want to give it up, despite posturing to the contrary. This is even more true with social spending and direct cash transfers.
On a social level, tradcath communities are real, vibrant, and actually growing especially among the Youths. The problem is internecine conflict. Some Gen-Z tradcaths are trying to be "more catholic than the Pope." YouTube Catholics seem to be largely YouTube first, Catholic second. The Pope himself ... well ... Jesus. The positive side is that it truly is a durable community. Moms (and Dads) routinely group babysit, there's always a potluck or sort of open dinner thing happening, people trade tips on schools, make business deals and connections, plan vacations together. A parish with a strong tradcath element (a giveaway is at least one Traditional Latin Mass per week) actually uses the Church building itself as a center for community instead of "spooky once a week lecture hall." This can all be done with relative ease because everyone is already one hundred percent bought in to a shared understanding of the True essence of morality, existence, and God. So, yeah, social trust levels are high. I do sometimes enjoy thinking about progressive families coming face to face with a playdate situation in which they have to think, "holy shit, I don't actually know anything about how this other family views the world, and I'm giving them my child for an afternoon." The kayfabe of "respect all backgrounds" disappears real quick.
The issue of concern both with small c-conservatism and American tradcaths is that we fail to avoid becoming fatalist crusaders. It's actually not that big of a deal to be a permanent minority so long as we can self-preserve (read: tradcaths babies on one hand, and politicians from rural states that have a structural advantage in the Senate on the other - even if those states are actually libertarian in concept). I do worry that there's a temptation to borrow from the Snake Handler Pentecostals and the Massive Resistance Southern Democrats to go on a campaign of self-immolation just to show how righteous we are.
A side bet for you: I would expect enrollment at small Catholic colleges (note: not seminaries, just explicitly catholic affiliated / run colleges) to spike for a few years.
They’re bankrupt and trads are scared of student loans. Right now the trend is against small Catholic colleges, who are shifting towards charismatic Catholics to make up for it.
Figuring out how to make adolescents bridge over into adulthood and the broken marriage market are top 5 problems in the tradcath world. These are not totally unrelated problems, obviously. But this isn’t Orthodox Judaism or Mormonism here where the community is astonishingly well run on a temporal level even if it’s not to everyone’s taste.
I didn't know this. Thanks.
So .... protestants.
Yeah, I was remiss to have left that out. I think part of the thing about the Gen-Z Catholics that is worrisome is they think that tradcathin' will make marriage easier. It won't, it just makes the commitment to the idea that much more serious. The massive external danger is that the secular world looks at marriage as an easy in-and-out situation that one can simply eject from if they feel like it gets in the way of "who you are" (or other such nonsense).
The real issue with the tradcath marriage market is the missing step A- the social technology to force young people to take budding relationships very seriously and either call them off or get engaged in a quick timeframe is there. It works. It’s just, well, that requires a step A to get there and tradcath communities are extremely bad at that step A. I have yet to see a workable solution actually get implemented and it’s not as if there’s a single top down authority to make people adopt one.
It doesn’t seem like there’s an epidemic of bad marriages or whatever, tradcaths expect to have to make sacrifices to have a marriage work out and a preexisting framework for deciding who sacrifices what. That may not be perfectly fair, but it’s highly workable and intuitive.
I really like this response, I just want to pull out some more details.
"The missing step A" -- Is this the initial meeting between two young people? From what I can gather, it looks like you're saying that tradcath communities are great for getting a young couple on rails into a marriage, but bad at getting Harry to meet Sally at the dance. Is this accurate?
I am well placed enough in my IRL tradcath community to know at least a few details on every couple marrying this year. 50%+1 were introduced by their siblings(this group grew up in the community, by and large, and so large families plus teenagers with lots of free time[because homeschooling] and young adults who don’t move out of their parents house as soon as they can afford to). Subtract online dating and there’s not a lot of possible room for meeting organically left- and elders of the community think this number of marriages is too low.
Ironically one of the bigger challenges is getting Sally to show up for that church dance, although tradcaths put enough effort into stopping teenaged Joseph and Maria from having a relationship that grown-up Joseph is also probably in for an awkward start to pursuing the girl who does show up at the church dance anyways just from aftereffects. Everyone has a different solution and that solution is always one which doesn’t entail that particular person to make any changes.
In the francophone world I believe the problem has been solved by a strong, formal expectation that eligible young adults not seeking the religious life attend the parish young adult group. This expectation has, for whatever reason, not made it to Anglosphere trads- partly due to the extended nature of Anglosphere adolescences I suspect, but there’s probably other reasons.
This just makes me want to start sponsoring Knight of Columbus Taverns all across the country. Bolt 'em on to the local parish. Have to be a local or sponsored by one to attend.
Perhaps the Holy Spirit - in the form of the fully alcoholic blood of Christ and its various Irish and Scottish cousins - can move the younguns to form holy unions.
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