The cultural roots that nourish American conservatism are withering. A new poll from The Wall Street Journal shows steep declines in the number of Americans who highly value patriotism, religion, having children, and hard work. This poll tracks with what is evident to any cultural observer, and conservatives need to adapt to the challenges this poses.
But some proposed changes to conservatism would be self-defeating. For instance, the creation of a sort of horny-bro conservatism would be a disaster for conservatism. This latest addition to right-wing taxonomy comes courtesy of Jane Coaston of The New York Times, who argues, “Some conservatives seem to have decided that winning over a new constituency — one that hates rules and ordinances and loves hot people and cool ideas and sex, sex and ideally more sex — is worth changing what it means to be a conservative in the first place.” This is politics for the anti-woke “horny bro” who is not a social conservative but who really hates the hectoring and moralizing of the woke left.
This is not a new observation. Coaston draws on Matthew Walther’s “Barstool conservatives,” and those of a certain age may remember “South Park conservatives.” The questions have always been how many of them there are, how much they can help the conservative movement electorally — and at what cost? Coaston, as a non-conservative observer, thinks this faction could help the right win, but that in the long run, its ethos is incompatible with conservatism, which views the
