The War Room

DOSSIER # 4: THE MYTH OF THE SOCIAL CONSERVATIVE

I was recently out with some friends the other night. As I have stated before, being in the arts, most of my friends are very left (to use the word liberal here would be a misnomer). After talking to them about their views on many subjects (art, politics, film, relationships), I walked home and began thinking about the concept of ‘social conservatism’.

Now, most of my friend’s girlfriends are also very left. One of them also works for the Provincial Liberals. She is a very sweet person who also happens to be a ‘feminist’ by her own definition. She is staunchly pro-choice, staunchly pro-same-sex marriage and very much supports ‘gay pride’. She also has a very sensitive sense of humour that finds the slightest vulgarity offensive and has told my friend that if she ever caught him inside of a female strip-club their relationship would be over and she would consider him a misogynist. As a result, he is constantly submitting his own former ‘laddish’ outlook to her whims. I do not say this is a good or bad thing, just that my friend has told me this is the way it is.

I have another friend who lives in Ottawa that I have known since elementary school. He votes Conservative. He is philosophically pro-life and opposed to same-sex marriage. He also has a fairly ribald sense of humour, loves staying out late at pubs well past his bed-time and has been known to frequent a strip-club or two especially when he was in his post-university days.

Question: Which one of these two people (the feminist or the friend in Ottawa) is the social conservative?

Social conservatism is yet another cultural misconception, myth and lie. The concept is one that has become a negative term that allows The New Left (NDP-Liberal) politicians and media types to negatively slander and stereo-type conservative politicians and their constituents. No one is that black and white. To some degree, we are either all social conservatives or none of us are. We all have limits. We all have a line where humour, sexuality or good taste is crossed into a realm where we just don’t want to tread. To allow The New Left to define social conservatism as being merely pro-life or pro-man/woman marriage is to continue to allow them to dictate the very rules by which we run our lives.

Are there any people who are more uptight, humourless and ‘socially conservative’ than the politically correct New Left? Political correctness-not being able to say what you see- is perhaps the greatest form of censorship my generation has know and yet this is not defined as social conservatism and The New Left continues to play victim and say they are ‘oppressed’.

Conservatives and libertarians must confront this issue head on and make the censorious nature of New Left-wing political correctness the new ‘social conservatism’. Refuse to identify yourself as a 'social' conservative if you have views that are deemed as such by The New Left. To do this is to allow them to define you and hence the playing field. Keep your views but don't allow them to label them.

A big part of this is cultural. We must call them on their hypocrisy and have the courage of our convictions. Changes like this happen at the grassroots level and work their way up. Until this happens, we will never have the truly conservative cultural government we deserve.

posted by Nicol DuMoulin @ 4:34 PM