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Clark Coleman's avatar

I read Richard Hanania's blog post, "Conservatives Win All the Time," and I think it is a good generator of discussion. But it is not too encouraging when even some of the four "wins" for conservatism are long term defeats.

He mentions that abortion has been declining, especially in light of the Dobbs decision. But the subtlety here is: What is your starting point for measurement of the issue? If you start sometime around 1990, when abortions per year were peaking, there has been progress. What if you compare 1960 to 2023? What are the chances of recent declines continuing until abortion looks like about 1960?

Likewise, laws permitting lightly regulated home schooling are one of the wins. But this is more a matter of an issue going from obscure or completely unknown to most people (let's take 1960 as a starting point again), then starting to grow, running into conflicts with antiquated laws, leading to publicized absurdities in those conflicts, leading to changing those laws. Out of obscurity and into a more reasonable light. Unless some other issue is closely analogous, I am not sure how this example will be a template.

Hanania, in the same section, cites the increase in home schooling, public charter schooling, and the departures from public schools during and after the COVID pandemic as evidence of a conservative win. But these are all examples of conservatives failing to stop the decline of public schools, followed by people getting disgusted and leaving. In 2023, those public schools are terrible by comparison to, say, 1960. That cannot be the model for future "wins," can it?

His example of making progress on gun rights is accurate, as is the progress on reducing marginal tax rates.

One of the commenters quoted a political commentator saying that conservatives win only when they are pushing for expanded rights, like the right to life, gun rights, home schooling rights, keep more of your paycheck. When pushing for restricting the influence of destructive social forces (e.g. race quotas, overwhelming immigration numbers, porn in schools), conservatives don't do well at all.

That leads to the BIG question in all of this: Can a civilization survive in the long term with no progress on any issue except issues that can be framed as giving expanded rights? Can we entirely do without constraints?

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Thomas Pinckney's avatar

Love the post!

I find it quite interesting/infuriating that much of the popularity of evangelicalism is based on leaders telling others what to think as opposed to encouraging them to work out the gospel in their own lives.

My wife and I were talking last night about the fear mindset we grew up with. The concept of the slippery slope, if you take one drink you're headed for alcoholism, or the concept of the holes left in your life by sin. You may or may not be familiar with this anecdote. Basically it is that it we are a fence post sin is nails stuck in us, Jesus pulls out the nails but the holes remain.

While there is wisdom in avoiding some things this mindset so often causes people to miss the beauty in front of them.

I would love to see/find a Christian community that bravely steps into the world and engages with people, culture, and art, knowing that mistakes will be made, some things will work out, others will not, but even in the mistakes and errors we are still covered by the blood of Christ. This seems to be to be what true freedom in Christ would look like.

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