Balance does not exist in nature. As a vacuum is filled, so too must a spinning top topple, a speeding vehicle slow, a floating ship sink, and an aeroplane return to the earth. Even the hardest rock weathers and returns to its molecules under the weight of time and the elements.
The current pinnacle of human engineering is not Elon Musk’s heavy-lift rockets, it is the perfect landing of his boosters. Having fallen vertically from kilometres above, evidence of man’s mastery over his environment cannot be more clearly demonstrated than those towers of technology landing gracefully on their butts. To remove any doubt of the difficulty of that task, try and stand a broom handle upright on your palm.
Just as balance in the physical world can only be achieved through external factors, balanced societies and cultures can only be found where external rules are enforced. These rules can be based on the assumption of equality, or deliberate persecution and subjugation – either way, society cannot survive without the participation of the vast majority. While some might relish the thought of chaos, survival of the fittest is less appealing to the rest of us.
Prior to what we now recognise as Western Civilisation, cultural balance was enforced through the Middle Ages by control from monarchies and kingdoms, helped along by short lifespans and the near-total poverty and ignorance of the population. Commencing with the Magna Carta, followed by the Industrial Revolution, the Great World Wars, and the uneasy peace of the Cold War, the eventual golden period before the millennium may have lulled the West into a false sense of security.
In a comfortable and secure environment, defences weaken. As conservatives politely ceded territory to waves of progressive movements – each time becoming smarter, more organised, and better funded – a vacuum was created. The thin veneer of balance taken for granted across the culture and societies of the West had been remorselessly undermined. It is only recently that the culture wars have been clearly identified, and only after great losses have been recorded.
Bureaucracies, universities, media, entertainment – all largely lost without a fight, without even really being noticed. Combined, the unbalancing of these institutions, if allowed to continue to its ultimate conclusion, will almost certainly end the comfortable existence expected by the citizens of the West. But how did this happen? How did the West lose its balance?
A typical conservative is tolerant and forgiving – someone who believes in live and let live. But on its own, live and let live is not balanced. Tolerance and forgiveness of everything ends in you being murdered or enslaved. Recall the stories of the missionaries in the American Wild West, venturing forth with nothing but their Conestoga wagons, some oxen, and a bible. Those who thought the noble savage would convert and trusted their own values were staked out over ant nests, scalped, or had their feet cooked in a fire, then scalped. It’s hard to forgive those who trespass against you if you’re dead. Rescue only came from the army or well-armed cowboys. At least that’s how Louis L’Amour told it in stories that I read as a kid.
What is missing from the West is the balancing force of strength, purpose, and belief. The culture wars demand it.
Jordan Peterson explains this unbalance from another perspective. There’s a cultural challenge and the tolerant forgiving conservative gives a little ground. The live and let live philosophy. This happens over and over until one day your daughter is playing contact sports against a boy in a skirt, the politicians let in hordes of illegal immigrants, and your movements are restricted because you have exceeded your carbon allocation. The fact that unassailable truths are all being attacked at the same time should itself create an awareness of the scale of the problem. You can be sure that other cultures, those with more balance – through authoritarianism, a caste system, religion or outright brutality – are not under the same threat. This is a balance problem peculiar to the West, brought about by lazy inactive conservatives.
Does a progressive ever compromise, ever give any ground back? Not in real life they don’t. They lie on the ground and scream, or destroy works of art, or raise mass protests, or buy shares in a company to deliberately destroy it. You have to admire their ruthlessness and devotion. There’s something robotic and cold about the complete lack of empathy that sees the various movements practising exclusion while screeching inclusion, discriminating while preaching equality, and destroying the environment while telling us they are saving it.
These radicals feed on success, becoming more extreme, and encouraging escalation. We are witnessing this in real-time with the pro-Hamas movement as it gathers momentum in the West’s cultural centres – London, New York, Paris, and Sydney. Is there a word to describe non-citizens publicly calling to end the country that has given them safe passage? Another cold reality is the dedication of governments and bureaucracies creating higher costs and fewer choices for consumers through carbon taxes – openly and by stealth. We don’t need to look far to expand the list. Government’s increasing push towards censorship, late-term abortion, choosing your gender, leniency on criminals, higher taxes, population growth by immigration, reduced defence spending, the welfare state, massive debt, Covid lockdowns, and vaccine coercion will all be familiar topics to the reader.
I believe the saying, ‘You get what you vote for…’ In reality, it shouldn’t just be conservatives who dislike these government intrusions. But over and over again governments shift these thresholds without even asking. You might be staying the same, but the system is being shifted around you and you risk being stranded in the desert like one of those ancient fortifications almost swallowed by sand, its crumbling walls still stubbornly in the same spot while the surrounding civilisation has long departed. If the leaders of those ancient cities had understood the encroachment, if they had built new walls further out, if they had advanced instead of retreated, might those cultures have survived?
The first step to winning a battle is understanding that you are actually in a battle, and modern philosophers are finally coming to understand the culture wars.
On borders, Carl Benjamin describes our political leaders as managers who view people as human resources, where culture is immaterial and can be intermingled without consequence: we need immigrants to prop up the economy, which works well on a spreadsheet.
On religion, Gad Saad explains that virtue is now seen as rejecting age-old survival instincts that celebrates human tragedy: take our children, take our women, destroy our religion, but please please please don’t call us a bigot.
On gender, Brendan O’Neill points out the obvious: her penis.
On censorship, Jordan Peterson notes: Canada staggers blindly and self-righteously to the tyranny of the utopian moralizers.
On politics, Dave Rubin discusses: how I left the left.
Is it hyperbole to say that without a balancing force, something that pushes back, the culture wars will end our society? I don’t think so. Tolerance of intolerance doesn’t work. We do not always have a proverbial knight in shining armour to stand up for our values. We nearly always have to vote for the least worst option. Donald Trump is not a conservative, but has become wildly popular because Carl Benjamin says, a leader must stand for something, and at the very least we all understand that Trump stands for border control.
Gandalf, that well-known philosopher, while battling the Balrog on the Bridge of Khazad-Dum said, ‘You shall not pass.’ Let’s all be a little bit more like Gandalf. Find your line in the sand while you still can. If we continue down this path, chaos awaits.
