Back in February, I wrote a piece for The Daily Caller telling conservatives that we need to get ready to lose the culture war. That moment has now arrived.
Mitt Romney’s loss to President Obama does not mean that Republicans need to do some soul searching. It does not mean that we have to “really go conservative” next time. It does not mean we have to launch a massive effort to court minority votes.
It means that, as I argued back in February, America has moved to the left. Learn it. Know it. Accept it.
After Romney conceded, Michelle Malkin tweeted that people on the right need to keep our chins up: “We can’t afford to give up the fight. Ever.”
Well, yes, we can, and we should. Or rather, we should adjust our expectations and tactics. Having been routed on the battlefield, conservatives are now guerilla fighters. We are truly a minority counterculture. And the first thing we should do is step away from politics for a while. Only a fool or a sadist will tune into Sean Hannity or Laura Ingraham or Rush Limbaugh in the next few days, because in the next few days — months — they will not be telling you the truth. Because the truth has nothing to do with Republican soul searching. The truth is that America is now a leftist country. It’s Rachel Maddow and Jeremiah Wright’s country. You know that divorced fortysomething female neighbor of yours? The one who’s not half as bright as she thinks she is, and doesn’t know much about Libya or the national debt, but watches Katie Couric’s new show and just kind of didn’t like Romney because she, well, just kind of didn’t like him? America is now her country. It’s Dingbatville.
America has chosen not to tolerate death and taxes, but to embrace them.
We need to stop confusing our country with our God, even as we stop denying that our fellow citizens can invite the devil into their souls. The best thing for those on the right to do in the next few weeks is to shut the hell up, retreat into a quiet place, meditate and pray. Either that or go out and have some fun and forget about politics for a good long while. Because America is not God. Empires and republics rise and fall. Economies collapse. It happens. The breathless, relentless conservative media machine has to stop and focus on something else. Hannity needs to have some writers and musicians on his show. Go outside, people. See a movie. Create some art — something conservatives don’t support and frankly suck at. Stop tweeting. For the next few weeks I’m going to be listening to music, reading comics, and photographing models — sometimes all at once. I hear the new James Bond flick is pretty good.
The truth is, we may have to watch while our country becomes Greece, because a majority of Americans have decided that that is what they want. They care more about their racial identity and getting free stuff than they do about Benghazi — although if there is one bright spot in the election, it’s that race hustlers and professional victims have at last and forevermore lost the ability to blame their problems on “racist America.” (Confused MSNBC hipster Touré claimed that Barack Obama was “niggarized” in this campaign, meaning dehumanized and treated at “the other,” but if anyone was the victim of this it was Mitt Romney.)
The unrestricted abortion license will continue, because a majority of Americans have voted for a man who defends infanticide. Several states — including my home state, Maryland — have changed the definition of marriage, and it will not stop there. It will soon be illegal to oppose same-sex marriage, even for Christians. The media will become even more brazen in covering up for the president and shaming those who don’t agree. Our debt will mount, and our credit rating will fall. In a couple hundred years, America’s heavily censored school textbooks will record conservatism as a freak aberration. It will get a couple pages between the chapters on FDR and Barack Obama.
None of this is to say there should be no resistance. People of faith and courage don’t just lay down and die. Conservatives can participate in civil disobedience, we can protest. As Gandhi said, “They may torture my body, break my bones, even kill me. Then they will have my dead body, but not my obedience.”
But until it comes to that, let go of politics for a while. Be a true conservative and accept the reality of the world we now live in. America has been fundamentally transformed. God has not.
Mark Judge is the author of A Tremor of Bliss: Sex, Catholicism, and Rock ‘n’ Roll.
