Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Winning The Culture War

Another central belief of this blog is that it's a losing proposition for conservatives to get drawn into arguments about particular issues while letting liberals set the term of the debate. Take tax rates. You can argue for lower rates, but it's a losing proposition in a culture where government spending is seen as the only route to progress.

Or take recent events. Right now, the hipsters are all a flutter about the inquest into the death of St Jean the Martyr. This, they hope, will blow the lid! on how State Death Squads murder people totally for no reason at all.

Meanwhile, this case has slipped past without so much as a raised eyebrow from the hipsters. Now, why might that be?

There are simply no objective grounds for claiming that the Matrydom of St Jean is the reification of the darkness at the heart of modern Britain but the death of 'Lois' is a yawner. Or, to put it another way, the right can and should take on the cop-hating scum currently oozing out of our nation's sewers, but we need to do more than that. We need to stop letting them set the terms of the debate by default.

The hipsters want to claim the death of St Jean is the Most Important Issue Evah! Well, let them make that case, because when they do they're exposing who they are. They're telling us what motivates them. They're not guardians of public morals, disinterested seekers after truth or crusaders for justice. They're agenda-driven lunatics, and it's past time we stopped treating them as anything other than that.

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