Why are America’s conservatives wasting so much time and energy on the one war they have NO CHANCE AT ALL of winning?!
In the economic sphere, conservatives can often get their way – they’re backed up by rich and powerful interests.
Culture is different. Things change and they don’t change back. Our society has reached a point where reviving the old laws against sodomy, or even withdrawing legal recognition of same-sex marriage, would be as politically impossible as taking the vote away from women.
It is curious that Americans are becoming aware of something called “Christian nationalism” just as it is becoming apparent that Christianity as such is on the way out. Fewer than 50% of Americans go to church now – that number will not increase in your lifetime or mine. At least 25% of the Millennial generation identify as atheist or agnostic, and Generation Z appears to be the same only more so. America is well on its way to becoming as post-Christian as Europe is now. Historians speak of a “Christian consensus” in American culture – and they do not speak of it as existing at any time after 1950. The decline in traditional religious belief since then has been dramatic, epochal, and, most importantly, IRREVERSIBLE.
It’s not only the declining Christianity. According to studies I’ve seen (cited in Salon.com several years ago), Millennials are not only less religious than any elder generation of Americans, they are also less racist, less sexist, less homophobic and less xenophobic. Take all those things out of social conservatism, and what’s left?
Millennials are not necessarily socialists. They are in fact more friendly than elder generations to socialism (or at least to the WORD "socialism," left undefined in the surveys, as against a likewise undefined "capitalism"), but a politics of economic libertarianism might nevertheless resonate with many of them.
But social conservatism will not – nor with any generation that comes after them. That is why I say that social conservatism HAS NO FUTURE.
Christian-oriented social conservatism will be with us for a couple of decades yet – but no longer than that. In the long run, on a generational time-scale, social conservatism has no future in America – none at all. Everything they do in this field is only a rear-guard action, a desperate effort to slow down an inevitable retreat.
In the economic sphere, conservatives can often get their way – they’re backed up by rich and powerful interests.
Culture is different. Things change and they don’t change back. Our society has reached a point where reviving the old laws against sodomy, or even withdrawing legal recognition of same-sex marriage, would be as politically impossible as taking the vote away from women.
It is curious that Americans are becoming aware of something called “Christian nationalism” just as it is becoming apparent that Christianity as such is on the way out. Fewer than 50% of Americans go to church now – that number will not increase in your lifetime or mine. At least 25% of the Millennial generation identify as atheist or agnostic, and Generation Z appears to be the same only more so. America is well on its way to becoming as post-Christian as Europe is now. Historians speak of a “Christian consensus” in American culture – and they do not speak of it as existing at any time after 1950. The decline in traditional religious belief since then has been dramatic, epochal, and, most importantly, IRREVERSIBLE.
It’s not only the declining Christianity. According to studies I’ve seen (cited in Salon.com several years ago), Millennials are not only less religious than any elder generation of Americans, they are also less racist, less sexist, less homophobic and less xenophobic. Take all those things out of social conservatism, and what’s left?
Millennials are not necessarily socialists. They are in fact more friendly than elder generations to socialism (or at least to the WORD "socialism," left undefined in the surveys, as against a likewise undefined "capitalism"), but a politics of economic libertarianism might nevertheless resonate with many of them.
But social conservatism will not – nor with any generation that comes after them. That is why I say that social conservatism HAS NO FUTURE.
Christian-oriented social conservatism will be with us for a couple of decades yet – but no longer than that. In the long run, on a generational time-scale, social conservatism has no future in America – none at all. Everything they do in this field is only a rear-guard action, a desperate effort to slow down an inevitable retreat.
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