- There is nothing in a good “conservative” story that should repel a liberal reader.cindiann / Foter / Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Clearly I’ve hit a nerve in my discussions of a more-ideal kind of “conservative” art: People are dumbstruck, to all appearances, their minds captured whole, limbs transfixed mid-gesture in a riveting silence.
This must be so, because it cannot be the case that I am the only person who worries that not figuring out how to do what you’re setting out to do may be worse than an error. Poetry is leadership. By not thinking about where your poetry is leading your audience, you might be making things worse!
Even so, who am I to tell you what’s “good art”?
In this context, “good art” means polemically effective art, art that will lead people in the the direction of egoism, individualism, capitalism – lead them into the middle class.
De gustibus non disputandum est, yes, but results are measurable. Ars gratia artis? Anything goes. Ars gratia libertatis? (Art for the sake of freedom?) Some maps will be demonstrably better than others. That’s what I’ve been trying to talk about since August of last year. If you want to get up to speed, here’s what I’ve done so far:
- Conservatives: If you want for the good guys to win in the end, the art you’re looking for is comedy.
- The link from art to human values and back.
- Why comedy matters: Understanding the art that will redeem human civilization.
- The path to every human value is paved with poetry.
- Let’s have a real writing contest: Take a sad song and make it better.
- @LibertyIsleMag made #conservative #art into just another Dairy Queen disappointment for me.
We are not writing propaganda pieces to warm the cockles of the hearts of professional politicians and think-tank gnomes. If your polemic isn’t artful, not even your mom will read it. But there is nothing in a good “conservative” story that should repel a liberal reader. To the contrary, if the argument is true and if the exposition proves it, that story, whatever it is, can be the critical inflection point in changing lives forever.
That’s what I’m interested in doing.
We grow our numbers by:
1. Babies.
2. Evangelism.
Babies work best in the long run, but evangelism is a two-for-one swing, effective immediately. How is that not worth doing? How especially in a time when the best exponents of the middle class produce the fewest babies?
Insanity is doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results. I’m doing things differently. How about you?
