Alas, poor Beck. He’s obsessed with me. He has, in various episodes on his sadly declining radio show, called me a “13-year old boy” and a “Goebbels” whose writings are “poison to the Republic.” Poison to the Republic? I don’t know. Poison to his ratings, maybe!
Beck was once the Left’s favorite punching bag, the target of all their false accusations of racism. Unlike most establishment conservatives, he even did things—he once led a massive march on Washington, D.C. in defense of American heritage, with some estimates putting attendance at nearly 500,000. Looking at the photos it was probably more like 85,000, but whatever.
Now, Beck’s apologized for being too conservative in the past and even pens columns for The New York Times these days.148 In the run-up to the 2016 election, he threw his support behind Hillary Clinton, saying that opposing Trump was the “moral and ethical choice,” even if she were elected in his stead.149
There’s a reason why conservatives like Shapiro and Beck, who were once the best the movement had to offer, now represent the past, while people like me represent the future: conservatives spent the last decade losing to the Left, and they’re tired of losing.
I don’t mean electoral defeats, either, although Mitt Romney’s loss in 2012 could easily have been avoided by nominating a candidate that conjured up a compelling vision of America, rather than a compelling vision of your high school principal. No, conservatives lost in arenas that were more important than electoral politics: art, academia, and pop culture. Despite momentary political victories, the values spread by Hollywood eventually influence the ballots cast in voting booths. Conservatives lost culture, and until we win it back our political victories will only be temporary setbacks against the steady advance of leftist principles.
Actually, they didn’t simply lose the culture war. It’s worse than that. The truth is, they never even bothered to fight.
THE CULTURE WAR THAT CONSERVATISM FORGOT
There has been no serious attempt from national-level politicians to push back against the liberal dominance of universities. The Foundation For Individual Rights In Education (FIRE), which campus conservatives rely on to protect their free speech, does an excellent job fighting the worst excesses of left-wing censorship on campus. Yet the group was set up and is run by moderate liberals.
Heterodox Academy, a group of academics pushing for more political diversity in the social sciences, is spearheaded by Steven Pinker and Jonathan Haidt—also both liberals. It’s not a bad thing that some liberals still care about free speech and pluralism, but why are we letting liberals do the heavy lifting? Where are all the conservatives? With the exception of a scarce number of news sites like Campus Reform and The College Fix, it’s almost as if conservatives don’t care.
Indeed, the few establishment conservatives who do care about campus issues—and attract huge online followings of young people in doing so—privately admit their success is met with bemusement by fellow beltway conservatives, who wonder what the fuss is about, and why more people aren’t interested in the latest appropriations bill or Russian naval maneuvers in the North Sea. Young conservatives, who are on the front lines of leftist intolerance every day, fell asleep during that last sentence.
It’s the same in showbiz. A conservative in Hollywood is like a gazelle in a pack of lions: only the nimblest will escape unscathed. There are rare exceptions, like Clint Eastwood, whose conservative views fit with the John Wayne-esque tough guy persona he often plays on screen. Or Tim Allen, who was hilariously candid about his political views, right before his successful sitcom was suddenly canceled, for some unknown reason. The rest have to wear lion suits and purr convincingly at feminists and Black Lives Matter activists.
All of this is a result of conservative laziness. For years, the only prominent right-winger who made any effort to organize the conservative Hollywood underground was Andrew Breitbart, a man despised by the Beltway establishment. Isn’t it funny how successful, conservative, culture warriors always end up making enemies of the D.C. establishment? It’s almost as if they agree with leftists on everything except economics and foreign policy.
Unsurprisingly, the rise of Trump gave the cultural conservative underground courage to come out into the open. I was overjoyed when Kanye West, one of my idols, came out as a Trump supporter after the election (this was promptly linked to his alleged mental health problems by Perez Hilton150). Roseanne Barr, one of the funniest people on the planet, has openly supported Trump, and for good reason. She made a career out of speaking directly to the working class, same as Trump. And at the 2017 Grammys, when previously unknown singer-songwriter Joy Villa shocked attendees by wearing a dress bearing the words “TRUMP” and “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN,” she saw her album sales rise by 54,350,100%,151 proving that conservatism in showbiz can in fact be the opposite of career-ending.
There’s a long way to go yet: for every Kanye West, there’s an Adele, who told an audience she was “embarrassed” for Americans because of Trump. Does anyone remember what happened to the Dixie Chicks when they said almost the exact same thing about W Bush? Their CDs were literally crushed by tractors. Nevertheless, the courage I’m seeing from conservative entertainers and celebrities in the wake of Trump’s victory makes me optimistic that things will change, albeit without the help of the conservative establishment.
Stuffy Beltway types really don’t know what to do with me. I’ve introduced a brand new type of conservative to them. Listen, not everyone in the conservative movement is going to be cool and hip. But at least let’s aim to attract new members who still have both their hips.
Could it be that establishment conservatives want to lose? “Cuck” became a popular insult in 2016. Its original definition was a man whose woman gets slammed by another dude, but it’s now become a byword for needlessly relinquished manliness, for selling out and caving in. Calling someone a cuck is an expedient way to denote a beta male or coward. (See: the Republicans running against Donald Trump in the 2016 election.)
I’m constantly told by establishment types that I’m a clown. Yet for thirty years these guys have achieved nothing on campuses. In barely two, I’ve set the entire higher education system in America on fire. If I’m a clown, what does that make them? (See the last paragraph for your answer.)
There’s nothing contradictory about appreciating Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen and also getting a kick out of calling Amy Schumer a boring cunt. And there’s nothing wrong with talking about very serious subjects using satire, silliness, and shock value. For instance, at one of my shows, which was called “No More Dead Babies” and dedicated to the evils of abortion, I handed out individually signed and numbered photos of dead fetuses as memorabilia.