Culture Matters – Page 5 – Maverick Philosopher

The Culture War’s Battle Lines

These are the culture war’s true battle lines. On one side are well-scrubbed members of the managerial class who believe that any constraint on the free movement of labor, goods, and capital is a violation of “global values.” They are fully committed to the central project of neoliberalism: the insulation of markets from democratic pressure. They also wish to protect desire from any legal, cultural, or moral restraint. On the other side are unwashed people of varying political stripes who intuit that economic life should be subject to political authority, which today rests in the nation. They believe in moral norms and national boundaries.

Christians need to practice cultural realpolitik. No explanation of the meaning of marriage, however rigorously argued or scrupulously secular, can overcome the power of a managerial elite that is wholly opposed to the kind of society for which Christians hope. Refusal to see this has been fatal to the traditionalists’ cause. While arguing against liberal social changes, they have cheered economic policies that harm their natural allies and aid their opponents. They have handed a shovel to their own gravedigger.

Progressives now stand with global capital, as the Pride Parade so clearly shows. Christians in turn should stand with the working class, which is more religious, more diverse, and more patriotic than the managerial elite. Only by reducing inequality and restraining corporations can Christians avoid being buried. Only by challenging the ideology of free markets and open borders can they advance their view of the common good. The struggle between woke capital and the working class will determine the outcome of the culture war.

No Day Without Cultural Appropriation

Andrew Klavan:

Cultural appropriation is not a glitch of American life. It's a feature. It's part of what makes the country great. We take your culture, we get rid of the oppression, the mass murder, the slavery, the intransigent poverty and the endless internecine wars. We keep the pasta and the funny hats, and occasionally we dress up as you on Halloween. It's a good deal for everyone.

I think I'll make me a curry tonight, thereby paying tribute to Indian cuisine. I love Indian food. Americans who find it too hot are culinary pussies. They need to get out of their gastronomical ghettos and celebrate diversity. My curry might not turn out as good as a gen-u-ine Indian curry, but then again it might turn out better.

Klavan is being combative above, but it is well-justified punch-back against willful and vicious stupidity of the sort that leftist lunkheads specialize in dishing out. Cultural appropriation is good: blacks on the bottom could improve their lot by 'acting white,' by appropriating those bourgeois values that Amy Wax was recently waxing enthusiastic over, and rightly so.

I engage in cultural appropriation every day. Why just this morning I read a bit from the Old Testament. Am I a Jew? And then I prayed the Ave Maria in Latin with special emphasis on the beautiful Ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae.

Am I a Roman?

Is English your native tongue? No? Then by what right do you speak OUR language? You are engaging in cultural theft!

An Italian told me that there is no dish in Italy called pollo alla marsala. But there ought to be as you will readily agree after you've tasted mine.

Klavan is right: it's a feature, not a bug.

Camouflaged Elities

Fine observations on class, status, and wealth by Victor Davis Hanson. Concluding paragraphs:

Take the case of Nancy Pelosi. She goes by her first name among constituents to stress her bond to common men and women, and yet her net worth is $100 million and she owns a palatial Napa villa. Though she acts ordinary in some ways, she is insulated from the ramifications of her own ideology, which harms the very people she purportedly models herself after. When she dismisses tax cuts and bonuses for the middle class as “crumbs,” are we to assume she is not an out-of-touch elite? Or does “Nancy’s” virtue-signaling politics of redistribution camouflage her own privilege and agenda?

One reason billionaire Donald Trump won the Electoral College was that he was transparent. He did not fake a southern drawl or an inner-city patois in the manner of Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. Unlike Mitt Romney, he exaggerated rather than apologized for his wealth. His loud clothes, garish jet, and American boosterism were in your face, and allowed Americans to draw their own conclusions—and, in contrast, made vastly rich progressive activists like Tom Steyer and Al Gore seem disingenuous.

Visible class distinctions of the past were a result of pride in achievement and old-fashioned snobbery. But their practical effect was to warn that the interests and agendas of the elite were not always the same as those of the public. Today’s billionaire hipsters blur these ancient distinctions. But just because a Master of the Universe looks like us does not mean that his dogged pursuit of tax exemptions, offshoring and outsourcing, and vertically integrated monopolies is in our interest.

David P. Goldman on Condoleeza Rice

Here:

Should we assume that every people in every land is equally capable of shaping its own destiny? The notion that largely tribal Muslim societies can march to democracy on the same path as Americans who elected their own pastors and collected their own taxes has caused endless mischief. Time and again, Rice’s prescription comes down to “assume a civil society,” where none ever has existed.

[. . .]

Culture doesn’t matter for Condoleezza Rice, who reduces the world to simple ideological categories. Her contribution to misguided American policies has been substantial. America hasn’t begun to pay for the consequences of her mistakes. The Bush Administration and its successor spent over $4 trillion to build nations in Iraq and Afghanistan, with nearly 7,000 American dead and more than 50,000 wounded. What do we have to show for it?

Culture matters. This is why a nation has a right to defend and preserve its culture by enforcing its borders and by refusing to allow subversive elements to immigrate.

We are not all the same whether as individuals or as groups. We don't share the same values or want the same things. Not all cultures are equally conducive to human flourishing.