Helen Smith, a psychologist specializing in forensic issues in Knoxville, Tennessee, blogs about popular culture, politics and psychological issues over at Dr. Helen. But some of her posts also end up over at Pajamas Media including the one about "conservative culture" below which I found of great interest...and I think you will too.Dr. Smith has zeroed in on an important problem: the naive hope that a conservative political ideology can thrive (even survive) without the development of a well-balanced, wide-ranging cultural perspective.
Below I print Dr. Smith's Pajamas Media post which, by the way, spawned a huge amount of interesting comments. You might also enjoy very much (as I did) this Bill Whittle interview of Dr. Smith in a delightful 16-minute interview about this issue. Finally, I close this post with a brief description of how Vital Signs Ministries (and Claire and I personally) are engaged in raising our Quality Culture Quotient.
But let's start with a statement of the problem. Here's Dr. Smith's Pajamas Media post:
The election is over and everywhere you turn, people are saying that the Republican brand sucks, conservatives are on the way out, and free markets are over.
This is a hope on the part of liberals and not reality. Haven’t people been saying that Democrats or Republicans were on the way out since, well, there have been Dems and Republicans? Conservative and libertarian ideas are still good ones, but ones that need to reach out to a wider audience in venues that they can appreciate.
My email question today has to do with where to find conservative culture:
Hello Dr. Helen,
I am just discovering Pajamas Media. What a nice surprise. My question is where is the conservative culture? Conservative politics is fairly easy to find. What I am looking for is music, novels, tv, movies, magazines — see what I mean? So much popular culture is lead by deadbeat celebrities. Perhaps Pajamas Media will evolve to fill this need. I hope so.
A Reader
Dear Reader,
You raise a good point: culture drives politics and not the other way around, at least in my opinion. Because of this, it is imperative that if conservative and libertarian ideas are to survive, we must educate people in ways that they can relate to — and this means popular culture in the form of books, music, television, movies, and social groups, starting with education.
The development of "quality culture" is, of course, not a new responsibility for the Christian. We are to put all things under the Lordship of Christ. We are to intelligently, humbly enact the dominion mandate with its repercussions on our personal character and lifestyle, our family, our society and physical environment, and our learning. Therefore, it is a natural thing for a Christian organization like Vital Signs Ministries, although we are primarily concerned with pro-life, pro-family matters, to provide ways in which people can be educated about the big picture; to see how our attitudes, opinions and actions interconnect with the grave moral issues of our time.
It is for this reason that our ministry has included the wide-ranging Vital Signs radio program, the current outreach of Vital Signs Blog, the Faith and Films project, and the Book It! series in which we have hosted discussions over not only books with a specifically pro-life theme but also such titles as (this year alone) Judging Thomas: The Life and Times of Clarence Thomas by Ken Foskett; America Alone by Mark Steyn; and The Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
Added to this is Claire's and my love of fine literature, music and drama which is shared with our friends and frequently promoted to the general public. Perhaps chief among these engagements is a) the 16 very successful years of the Notting Hill Napoleons, our literary club which meets every month to discuss that month's classic novel (Dickens, Scott, Dumas, Sabatini, Hugo, Shute, Trollope, etc.), b) the more recent (5 years or so) meetings of the Omaha Chesterton Society, and c) the availability of The Book Den, my literature and arts blog.
We couldn't agree more with Dr. Smith's urging conservatives to "conserve" quality culture. And not only because it is necessary for the effective outgrowth of free and enlightened politics. But because culture is life and the Christian, above all, has a duty to seek the highest, truest and most beautiful in his holy walk before God.
