Monday, January 5, 2015

For Those of Us in the "New" Counter-Culture, Silence ISN'T Golden

Mark Steyn, that mirth-inducing Eeyore, has said that there's little point in electing conservatives to political office and expecting them to make any headway so long as the dominant, mainstream culture remains stuck in a leftist/"progressive" rut. Andrew Klavan would no doubt agree with that assessment. He, however, thinks there's cause for optimism in the culture department as, more and more, we malcontents and offense-givers who comprise the new counter-culture leave our mark:
But if we’re going to rebuild American culture…  in the arts, in the history books, in schools, at home… the truth is the only place to start. Dramatic truth, comic truth, historical truth, moral truth. None of it goes down easy. And so you’re going to be hearing “I’m offended,” all day long and into the night. It’s not a sin to offend people. It’s not even a problem really. Getting offended is just one of the ways people react to reality — it’s the way American culture has been teaching them to react for the past forty-five years. 
I feel strongly that a new American culture is already on the way. I read it in books, see it at the movies, read it online and find it in everyday life more and more. My work — and my love — is the arts, but the new culture won’t just be built there. It will be built in the way we treat our spouses, the way we raise our kids, and the way we tell the stories of our country and our lives. For myself, I plan to do all this as honestly as I can, as morally as I can, and as fearlessly as I can
Me too. But not because I'm optimistic about changing the culture; I'm not. It's because I could not live with myself if I remained silent in the face of the PC madness.

Simple as that, really.

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