Clearly, if I want to scare leftists, all I have to do is hold up a picture of Sarah Palin.

Of course, the leftists will assure you that they aren’t scared of Sarah Palin. Why would they be? She’s dumb. She’s goofy. She hasn’t brushed up on the real issues. She’s a quitter. She’s not a real contender.

Whatever. After that Tea Party speech half of the DNC had to check to see if they’d wet their pants. Her book tour was more disturbing to them than the “spider walk” scene in “The Exorcist”.

But why? What makes her so scary?

If pressed, the leftists will tell you that they fear her beliefs and what they perceive her policies to be. She will take away women’s right to choose. She will ban books. She will outlaw homosexuality. She will mandate religious beliefs. She will nuke Arab countries.

When making horror films, we always start with a basic concept. In that initial stage, we will decide whether or not the film will be “fantasy horror” or “realistic horror”. A film about vampires is fantasy. A film about a normal looking guy who kills young college girls is more grounded in reality.

The fear of Sarah Palin is like the fear of ghosts, vampires, or werewolves. Pure fantasy (Please note that I didn’t include alien invasion or zombie apocalypse as fantasy because, well, those things could actually happen).

Most of these predictions of doom and gloom under a Palin regime aren’t based on any sort of facts. Palin never banned Harry Potter books. Palin vetoed an Alaskan law that would have barred the state from granting benefits to the partners of gay state employees. Palin is personally pro-life, but as governor actually refused to extend deliberation on two anti-abortion bills presented by the state legislature.

There are a lot of plot holes in the narrative. So what are they really afraid of?

What they fear is that Palin would actually stick to fiscally conservative principles. She would reform the tax laws to make them fair and rational. She would clip the influence of labor unions. She would end the unholy alliance of Big Government and Big Business. She may actually extend women’s rights to choose to include how they spend their money, where they send their kids to school, and what caliber handgun they want to buy.

Scary stuff indeed.

History shows that the boogeymen presented by the left against conservatives are always flights of fancy. We’ve had more conservative leaders than leftist ones since Roe v. Wade and last time I checked it was still legal to have an abortion. We had a born again Christian in the White House for eight years and we don’t have mandated school prayer. Despite a Reagan presidency, being gay isn’t a crime.

On the flip side, when we warn about the dangers of giving the leftists the purse strings, we’re right. I think there were more than a few conservative musings about how an Obama presidency will lead to a bunch of radicals hanging out in the oval office, an increase in taxes and regulations, a decrease in liberty, and a tanking economy. All of which are, unfortunately true.

Where are these creatures of leftist nightmares born? They come from their own subconscious. They are manifestations of leftist projection. Conservatives may have strong personal convictions, but their overriding world view dictates a minimum of government intervention. Leftists are the ones who seek to use the apparatus of government to impose their personal, social views on the rest of society. That notion is antithetical to conservative principles. Look at Global Warming hoax-master Al Gore. His entire daily agenda is based on telling others how to live. Oh, and his dad voted against the Civil Rights act and his wife led the charge to censor rock and roll.

Who’s creepy now?

Leftists are sneaky smart. They can’t beat conservatives on ideas because most people agree with conservative principles. Small government, lower taxes, less entitlements, the list goes on and on. So, like good horror film writers, the left creates monsters that tap into deep seeded emotional fears. Like a good ghost movie, these stories are scary as hell, but not very real.

The chances of a President Sarah Palin ushering in a new age of Puritanism are about as real as the threat of mutant cannibals.

So the next time some twit like Cameron Diaz says that a vote for the conservative is a vote to legalize rape, just remember, it’s only a scary story. Keep telling yourself it’s not real. Just a little piece of fiction made up to frighten you.

Unlike zombies. Now that’s a different story.

Law & Order’s mysteries are as unpredictable as where the sun will come up tomorrow morning.  In a typical episode, when the cops arrest a gang member you can safely bet the climatic trial denouement will reveal the real killer to be either the wealthy corporate executive,  the ambitious conservative politician or the hypocritical Christian preacher.  You know, kind of like in real life.

So now Law & Order is taking on the new Bush administration and, by extension, all of those who have fought so hard to keep our country safe from terrorism since 9/11.  I’m in awe at these iconoclastic artists’ bravery and courage in forthrightly expressing exactly the same views held by all of their friends and associates.  Taking risky, edgy stands like this can put you in physical danger – for instance, you might be hugged to death by your fellow-traveling industry peers. 

Legally, the whole theme of the episode – that a former government lawyer’s legal opinions on what constituted “torture” under various statutes and treaties can give rise to criminal liability in a state court case – is a joke. Little things like the rules of evidence, basic criminal procedure, the Supremacy Clause, and several dozen other rules, statutes, and Constitutional doctrines would never allow this “case” to exist in the first place.  But the more important point is the bigger issue – the whole notion of prosecuting lawyers for their legal opinions is unbelievably short-sighted and dangerous to our democracy.

The episode makes a great deal of hay from the wicked Bush lawyer’s attempts to determine exactly what conduct is permitted and not permitted under the potentially applicable legal authority – which the writers refer to “[a] surgical parsing of words to draw hair-splitting distinctions.” 

Uh, guys – after 20 years of shows, you should probably know that drawing close distinctions is exactly what lawyers are supposed to do.  But now, for cheap political advantage, your bright idea is to persecute attorneys who get the answers to tough legal questions “wrong” – at least, wrong in your opinion.  And this is not some clear-cut, un-nuanced (and I thought you leftists loved nuance) issue.  The application of the Geneva Conventions and US law to the fact pattern presented by war on terror detainees is far from crystal clear – which is why lawyers were analyzing the issue in the first place!

Here’s the rub.  Parties change, but principles remain the same.  If you think it’s a really smart idea to prosecute conservative lawyers when you believe they get the wrong answer, think about what happens to the liberal government lawyer who opines that the law forbids an aggressive interrogation of a terror suspect after that failure to perform an aggressive interrogation keeps us from preventing another 9/11 – or worse.  Then think about what happens when the Republicans come back into power in the aftermath of that disaster and decide to prosecute that liberal attorney for manslaughter resulting from his negligence in offering that legal opinion.   Heck, maybe some members of the prior Democratic administration ought to be prosecuted too for good measure – isn’t that the logic you would find regarding Bush administration officials on the Huffington Post?

Sound ridiculous?  Yeah, I would have thought so too, until liberals started about talking about prosecuting conservative lawyers for their legal opinions and maybe even some of our past political leaders as well.  Like I said, parties change but the principle of prosecuting your predecessors, if we are foolish enough to let it become established, will not.  If you want to tear this nation apart, it would be hard to think of a more effective way to do it.

Law & Order has once again managed to rip a critical story from the headlines, but it’s not the story its writers think.  It is the story of one of the stupidest and scariest trends in American politics today – the criminalization of political opposition.  And, for the sake of our country, we should hope that this lousy episode of a lousy TV show is the last we hear of it.

Your correspondent, as absorbed by the Warhol Museum, 117 Sandusky Street, Pittsburgh, PA.

A dance craze— like “freaking”— it is not, but rather, a point of view.

Back in January of this year, Andrew Breitbart announced “Big Hollywood’s modest objective: to change the entertainment industry”.  The announcement is as important as it is radical, assessing the power of Pop Culture in shaping global attitudes and standing athwart contemporary assaults on Western values, yelling, as did William Buckley in 1955, Stop.

Ask yourself: Is a vision of the world that is contrary in almost every way to the prevailing cultural paradigms a difficult “sell”?  Given this is always so, how is such a challenge overcome?

“Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.”  —Andy Warhol.

This from a man whose art, at a time when the prevailing artistic paradigm was the dynamic force of abstract expressionism, cut against the grain entirely with stark, cold, objective representations—with silk-screened wooden boxes virtually indistinguishable from their cardboard counterparts containing Brillo pads, and with paintings of common household items— Campbell’s soup cans, most famously. It is not impossible to shift the paradigm, to change the perspective, to assert new viewpoints in art and capture the minds of the audience for them.

The business of producing “art”— representations of reality in every possible medium— generates billions of dollars and has an enormous impact on culture. In point of fact, those representations reinforce sensibilities in their audiences and participants that not only contribute strongly to the creation of culture, but also to the attitudes that are informed by culture.

What’s the problem with so many contemporary attitudes? They are, among other things, non-judgmental, amoral, narcissistic, belligerent, pathologically emotional and unreasonable, anarchic, obsessed by a sense of entitlement, absurd, destructive, willfully ignorant, nihilistic, devoid of self-knowledge and an understanding of human nature, externally motivated, and as controlling and manipulative as an adherence to leftist ideology, whether conscious or unconscious, can produce.

These leap to mind and reveal nothing more than the tip of the iceberg, saying nothing of the attendant symptoms of such folly in over-excitement, anxiety, ennui, sexual dysfunction, chemical dependency and so forth. The litany can go on and on and on… but to go so far as to question the ‘appropriateness” of such attitudes is, as often as not, viewed as intolerable.  Such benign expressions as affectations of dress or teenage dancing simply must not be “suppressed” or linked to the entertainment industry, since kids have always done it, and they’re just having fun.

Somehow (golly gee-whiz, I wonder how?) these attitudes and viewpoints have come to define convoluted and contradictory ideas— twisted ideas— of freedom and the pursuit of happiness more in line with fear and loathing than with joi de vivre. Are these viable foundations for a life worth living? We can’t ask Lord Byron. We can’t ask Kurt Cobain. Nor can we ask Michael Jackson.

Claims that “it’s only rock and roll” or just a movie, TV program, a video game, etc., are bogus. These popular diversions can and do consume our time and attention, often demanding the total focus of consciousness it takes to be an Indy driver or a member of a Bomb Squad.  Ephemeral, disposable, they may be, but those things that produce such riveting effects cannot be dismissed as mere entertainments, i.e. of little consequence.

Ideas have consequences. Art has consequences. Both worlds create connections in the mind to abstract visions that, again, inform cultures and subcultures collectively and individually. “Everybody here is wearing a uniform, and don’t kid yourselves”, as Frank Zappa, a wise guy, put it. Black tie, rainbow bumper sticker, stacked heels, AC/DC or Che T-shirt, cowboy hat or rose tattoo—what are the connections?  They can be almost infinite in terms of thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, ideas, self-images, all broadcast by various media, and it might be reasonable to suggest that not all of them are in one’s best interests.

And if such choices regarding personal appearance reflect only the surface, what lies in the depth of the content of our character? What can be said of our thoughts and emotions? What of our words and actions? Do our deepest inner selves and our reputations among others reflect genuine integrity of character in the combinations and permutations of all these elements of personality?

But we’re smart. We’re highly intelligent. Yet we are like consumers of some exotic hallucinogen so jaded by long experience we say derisively, “That stuff has no effect on me” as we ramble somewhat aimlessly from one personal or cultural/political disaster to another.

“If conservatives don’t figure out popular culture soon, the movement will die a deserving death”, said Mr. Breitbart six months ago, and rightfully so. What, then, must conservatives, independents, libertarians, classical liberals, free-thinking artists, producers, and, yes, patrons of popular culture who are unswayed by leftist “progressive” dogma figure out?

Andy Warhol assumed a role of detached observer, a recorder, a mirror; an objective overview of Warhol’s work, one not distracted by glitter and trash, brings certain elements of popular culture into clear focus. First among equals is Economics, and it’s no more complicated than the artist’s quote above. Make the money, work hard for it, be smart with it. Good business means making the hard work pay off with financial growth and independence. Diversify. There’s no yawning abyss between art and music, film and literature, magazines and photography, sculpture and performance art, news and gossip and entertainment. They are all mediums through which an artistic vision may be realized. Media is meant to be used, to be manipulated.  Objectively, is most effectively manipulated by the controlled application of CASH.

Invest.  Invest in Ideas.  Artists, (you know who you are, if no one else does) knowing with certainty that there will be no grants from National Endowment for the Arts, get a job, be self-supporting, and invest in yourselves.  There is no such thing as “selling out”; selling out is the whole point. Tongue planted firmly in capitalist cheek, of course, with the hope that conservatives and others will get a handle on pop culture, and soon.

And Fat Cats take note: George Soros has moved so much money in the promotion of the Left in politics and media he could easy change the name of his Open Society Institute to “Global Social Engineering R Us”.  Those who wish to see their values portrayed in artistically viable ways, in a manner conducive to accessibility and commercial success, need to ratchet up their efforts to compete with this monster— or at least put up a viable Resistance.  Put your money where your mouths are, and into the hands of artists and producers who may be “under the radar” but who know (knowing hunger and even the concept of thrift) what to do with the financial resources, and will do it wisely with the intentions of realizing their creative ideas and reaping a profit, thus keeping your patronage.  You might even avoid seeing the wealth you’ve worked so hard for over the years go up the noses of your trust fund beneficiaries.  (Don’t worry about their dance floor behavior, though.  It can’t possibly be an indicator.)

Another important Warholian element for consideration is the idea that there are differences between the culture of the fine arts and the popular culture. Simply put, it does not matter. Warhol effectively erased a great many such distinctions, and if there are to be any, history will be the judge. The intellectual and moral crises challenged by those who rebel against the cultural dominance of the left today are of such existential moment it is foolish to labor over such points.

The real work of redefining the future is what is of profound importance.

NEXT: Do The Warhol— Part 2 of 4: The Cult(ure) of Personality

While Mr. Rove has been defined by the media and Hollywood elite as a partisan attack dog and nicknamed forebodingly as “The Architect,” he came off as anything but and emphasized that conservatives should be careful to work with our current president in a respectful manner.  When he mentioned President Obama’s name, a few overzealous members of the audience shouted out their less than positive feelings about the man; and Mr. Rove quickly and gently reminded them that our president has made some decisions that conservatives should applaud. From the surge in Afghanistan to military tribunals, Mr. Rove explained that President Obama has taken the right steps in regards to some very important issues that face our nation.  

As Mr. Rove stated, “We have to love our country enough that when [President Obama] is right, we are his best and strongest defenders.”  After eight years of BDS, conservatives should know better than to reflexively disagree with our current President on every issues just because he has a (D) in front of his name.  This does not mean that we must ignore the President when he is wrong, which is his tendency, but rather that we must also, as Rove explained, “disagree with him thoughtfully and carefully.”

The point is that whether or not we agree with those on the other side of the aisle, we must respect our nation enough to treat every issue that we face with careful reasoning, and intelligent discourse.  Too often, we forget that these debates are not about political victories but instead, are about finding the best way forward for our nation.  As Mr. Rove said, “our country exists and prospers because of values…that have meaning.”  By tearing a man down solely because of his political affiliations, win or lose the battle, we are degrading these values and thus our nation. We should honor our past and the fact that the United States was founded by men who put “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” before ego and power.  

Americans are exhausted by the continual battles between Republicans and Democrats; as these two parties continue to sling mud back and forth.  This is not to say that Americans are looking for bi-partisanship, which usually results in wishy-washy legislation that only panders to voters’ short term happiness.  Instead, I believe, that Americans are desperately seeking leaders who will remind them of what makes our country great: the audacity of the human spirit to accomplish great things when released from the grip of oppressive government; the need to sacrifice in order to protect our great tradition of liberty, and the duty we have to help our neighbor instead of relying on our government to do so.  If we, as conservatives, base our message on these values, we will give Americans a true message of hope that is based in the values of our past, but that will also lead us to our future.

As to the first, we have reached a tentative answer: A combination of temperament and values in the conservative mind combine to make the writing life both less suitable for, and less attractive to, conservatives.  The question remains:  What is to be done?

Let us state the obvious first  – conservatives who are so inclined must write, write often, and write well.  But that is not enough.  They must submit their work to literary magazines, publishing houses and agencies, large and small, again and again if need be.  Getting your work to market is a long, disappointing slog, with no guarantee of success for even the best of work.  Liberal writers know this and engage the process nonetheless; conservatives must do likewise.

But what to write?  Some will argue that conservatives should write material with explicit conservative themes.  This, I think, would be a mistake.  While explicit themes have their place, over-reliance on them would make conservative authors niche artists who preach to the converted only (or at least mostly).

Far better, in my view, to write the best stories possible without worrying too much about politics – a good story, told well, will garner readers from across the political spectrum.  Conservative values will nonetheless naturally shine through, and will be all the more powerful for their subtlety.

And finally, conservatives who despond over the lack of conservatism in the arts need to look to the next generation:  Do we teach our children that conservatism and the arts are not incompatible?  Were we so taught by our parents?  Do we encourage artistic gifts in our kids when and if they arise?  If values are at the heart of the matter, then the only way conservatives will compete in the literary world (or any art) is if we change how we view and value the arts, and that kind of change can only begin in the home.

In closing, I would like to thank the readers that stuck with me through the end of this series.  And I would especially like to thank John Nolte, Andrew Breitbart, and Big Hollywood for taking a chance on this long and discursive journey, and for all their efforts to advance conservatism in the arts.

For conservatives to triumph politically, we must compete culturally.  That means not just commenting on art – but making some.

Let’s get to work.

[Ed. note: You can read a new chapter of this eight-part series every Saturday and Sunday morning. Previous chapters –Part one, two, three, four, five, six. and seven.]

Matt Patterson is a columnist and commentator whose work has appeared in The Washington Examiner, The Baltimore Sun, and Pajamas Media.  He is the author of “Union of Hearts: The Abraham Lincoln & Ann Rutledge Story.”  His email is mpatterson.column@gmail.com

My musician friend Martin has similar thoughts.  He feels a vast gulf separates the liberal and conservative mind.  He describes conservatives (again, generally) as serious in thought, and more apt to value personal responsibility and spiritual-based morality, while artists, he says, tend to have, and maybe even need to have, more lax work and personal ethics.  Creative people, he tells me, want to push the envelope, move beyond the status quo, an attitude which they tend to apply to all aspects of life.  Again, it comes down to messiness.  Conservatives don’t like a mess; liberals love ‘em.

The lifestyle of Bohemia is a prefect example – late nights, sundry substances, many partners; these and other staples are less likely to tempt the conservative temperament by definition.

But even granting that conservatives are temperamentally less inclined to participate in the Bohemian lifestyle, it is a vile (and destructive) myth that Bohemia and artistry necessarily go hand in hand.  Many writers and artists, many great writers and artists, have lived stable, relatively tranquil lives consistent with the conservative temperament.

There are no tales of debauchery or overindulgence surrounding Virgil’s life, for example.  Instead, the man who authored the Aeneid seems to have been a shy man given to study and composure.  Then there is Shakespeare.  The scant evidence of his life, mostly legal and church documents detailing births, baptisms, financial transactions, etc., show zero taste for Bohemian recklessness (leaving aside the question of the autobiographical nature of the sonnets, on which topic there is much disagreement).  By all appearances, the Bard seems to have been an eminently stable and sensible family and business man, who by his death had managed to amass a healthy sized estate to bequeath to his children and grandchildren.

And it is important to remember that, while conservative temperament and conservative politics often go hand in hand, they do not always.  Nor do liberal politics necessarily flow from liberal temperament; there are those rare souls who contain within them both the philosophical love for the free market as well as a liberal temperament given to personal messes and artistic extravagance.

So temperament, while a factor, need not be a determinative one.  Perhaps the rest of the puzzle comes down to values.

Conservatives do not value art less than liberals.  But it does seem that they value art in a different way.  Conservatives tend to put art in perspective,  putting it quite sensibly after things like family, God, and country.  In other words, conservatives are less likely to value art in that all consuming fashion necessary if one is to devote one’s life to the pursuit.  The result, of course, is fewer conservatives than liberals gravitating towards a profession in literature and the arts generally.

Tomorrow we will examine possible solutions to this conundrum, and conclude the series.

[Ed. note: You can read a new chapter of this eight-part series every Saturday and Sunday morning. Previous chapters –Part one, two, three, four, five and six.]

Matt Patterson is a columnist and commentator whose work has appeared in The Washington Examiner, The Baltimore Sun, and Pajamas Media.  He is the author of “Union of Hearts: The Abraham Lincoln & Ann Rutledge Story.”  His email is mpatterson.column@gmail.com.

First, the point about closet conservatives.  They come in one of two breeds: 1) those who hold conservative views but keep them quiet, preferring to avoid discussing politics altogether for fear of being sniffed out, and 2) those who not only hide their political views, but openly and falsely profess liberal views.

My good friend Martin, a professional musician, admits to me that he is among the former.  “When I’m at social events, or any gathering of entertainers, and they start talking about Bush is evil, blah, blah, blah, I just bite my tongue, because I know that even if I say something, I’m not going to have time to correct all their stupid errors and assumptions, and even if I did, there’s no damn way they’re gonna listen to me anyway.”  It sounds like you think artists are dumb, I say.  “They are,” he answers with a sigh.  “Incredibly.”

For Martin, and those of his breed, I have genuine sympathy.  An artist in his position is surrounded constantly by people with whom he must work, with whom he must get along for work to both keep coming and run smoothly.  Many of these co-workers are personal friends.  This last is no small matter – artists are intensely clannish, and form tight personal bonds.  So in my friend’s case, why jeopardize friendships?  Why jeopardize income?  Perfectly understandable, it seems to me, that he lets his friends and co-workers prattle on.

The latter breed, however, the ones who affect a liberal bias, projecting a false beard to the world, are a different matter.  This is truly insidious, because the aim here is not just to protect one’s income by muting beliefs, but to gain income (and friends, I suppose) under false pretense.

(Mr. Blowhard thinks there may be a fair number of these folk, this, “go along” crowd.  I hope he’s wrong.  I can’t say that I know any myself, and for that, I am quite glad.)

Mr. Blowhard also brings up the New Formalists, a topic which nearly everyone I speak to about this subject mentions, and so we will turn to that subject tomorrow.  But first, I want to address the last of Mr. Blowhard’s comments.  You know – advising people, both on the right and on the left, to steer clear of a career in literature or the arts altogether, because  “It’s likely to be a very hard one…. Money is scarce, success may never arrive, frustration and disappointment are inevitable, breakdowns and suicides aren’t uncommon.”

All true.  But I wonder.  Does one really have to be an author or artist to have a tough time in life?  There are lots of waitresses and dock workers and miners who have it tough.  Money is scarce for many people, in and out of the arts.  Success, the definition of which varies from person to person, may never arrive for anyone, regardless of chosen profession.  Frustration and disappointment are indeed inevitable…to any person living on planet Earth.

Mr. Blowhard asks why anyone would opt for the hard way in America, and I must say I was little surprised by that (entirely rhetorical, I presume) question.  The artists who have surrounded me my whole life – authors, musicians, magicians, actors – didn’t opt for their life.  They do what they love.  No, that’s not true.  There’s less choice than that, even.  They do what they do because they can’t not do it.

Think of Poe.  Living in squalor his whole life.  Why didn’t he just become a grocery clerk, one might ask?  Or a banker?  At least then he would have been able to pay his rent.  But that’s precisely the point.  Poe, like any real artist, loved being an author, loved his macabre visions and his ability to spill them onto paper, more than he loved his rent.  More, in fact, than he loved anything else, including his life.

Likewise, Ovid loved his verse more than he loved the Eternal City which nourished him.  Loved his art more even than his freedom, which he lost when Augustus banished him to Tomis on the Black Sea for some mysterious crime perhaps relating to his verse.  We owe a debt to every artist, who, like Ovid, chooses their art over their own comfort.

When I asked Philip Terzian, a Pulitzer finalist, if he would have any advice for an aspiring conservative author, he had a very different view than Mr. Blowhard.  “Art is about struggle – use the friction,” says the Books and Arts editor for The Weekly Standard.  Then he pointed out that, even if the literary establishment is repressive from a conservative standpoint, great literature can, and often has, emerged from repressive circumstances.  “Comfort spoils the creative impulse,” says Mr. Terzian, who then points out that a lot of the literary set who toe the liberal line and get all the right grants and tenure end up producing junk.

In the end, advises Mr. Terzian – “Do what you love.”

[Ed. note: You can read a new chapter of this eight-part series every Saturday and Sunday morning. Part one can be seen here. Part  two here.]

Matt Patterson is a columnist and commentator whose work has appeared in The Washington Examiner, The Baltimore Sun, and Pajamas Media.  He is the author of “Union of Hearts: The Abraham Lincoln & Ann Rutledge Story.”  His email is mpatterson.column@gmail.com.

A recent study by the Pew Research Center has discovered that Democrats tend to be less happy than Republicans. That comes as no surprise to me. For the past eight years we have been listening to the whining about a stolen election, a war for oil, shredding the Constitution, Halliburton Halliburton Halliburton! You would think that now that they own both Houses of Congress and the White House, they should be happy. The economy is in the tank (as we told them would happen, if they ever got control of the government) but yet they still don’t seem to be happy.

The Tea Parties completely put them over the edge. Apparently we’re not allowed to have protest rallies and we’re not allowed to compare this President to a dictator from a previous era, as was their practice during the last administration. They call us mean and racist and use a sexual profanity too describe our movement. For some reason they seem even less happy, than they were when they were out of power.

Perhaps by forfeiting the last election, we have taken the purpose out of their lives.

It has been suggested there is far more unhappiness for the rich than there is for the poor; because if your life is imperfect (as it is for most of us) at least the poor can dream about how they might someday become rich. There is an eternal hope that money changes everything. Unfortunately for the rich, they already have the money, so there is nothing to hope for; and when hope is lost, so goes the spirit. Perhaps what we are seeing on the Left is that they have lost their hope. By voting for the Hope, they now have nothing to hope for. Meanwhile, nothing has Changed.

I might be rushing to conclusions though. Maybe being a Democrat doesn’t make it more difficult to be a happy person; rather, people are drawn to the Democrat Party because they are unhappy already. There is a certain kind of person in this world, a person who sees conspiracies everywhere. They see a conspiracy of Christians who want to bring back the Spanish Inquisition. They see a conspiracy of anti-intellectuals who want to ban science and burn books. They see a conspiracy of corporatists who want to reduce us to Eloi slaves, and march us into the kitchens when the Morlock dinner bell rings. These are the same people who think that the earth is being poisoned and toxins are everywhere.  In short, these are people with severe mental illness.

Where else are they going to go? The Republican plank of laissez-faire will not appeal to hypochondriacs and paranoids. These people need an outside force to coddle them and tell them everything is going to be all right. They want access to a doctor who is forced by the government to listen to them recite their ailments on a daily basis, completely free of charge. These functions used to be provided by churches and mental institutions; but the trend away from religion and the laws against involuntary institutionalization have allowed these patients to wander into the voting booths. They will be discontented with any government that does not promise to regulate every aspect of their lives, putting things into nice neat rows, and giving away everything for free.

In a way I think that people who run the Democrat Party intuitively know this. They know that if the people are kept miserable that they will overwhelmingly vote Democrat. I believe it’s why they really don’t care what damage their economic policies will have on us all. They don’t care if Cap and Trade will put the economy into a death spiral, or if their universal health care will start a declining life expectancy rate for the first time in American History. Because the more the misery, the better it is for them.

And for the truly miserable, the only balm is the knowledge that other people are just as miserable as you are. So what better way to find friends than to ensure there is an entire nation of miserables alongside you, living next door in the government provided housing, with equal access to a doctor, authorized to assist your suicide?

That’s what happens in other parts of the world. Most notably in the Social Paradises of Europe, places that consistently rank higher than us on the “Quality of Life” scale; those nations where the suicide rates are dramatically higher than here in the United States. I speculate it is because the ability to achieve is strictly limited over there. No matter how hard you work, you will still be living in the same neighborhood with the guy who spends his day sitting at home. What motivation is there too succeed when you will end up living in the same rabbit hutch next door to people who don’t even bother to get out of bed in the morning? Hope is the factor that inspires us to go on and by equalizing outcomes socialized Europeans have legislated hope out of existence.

It would be overwhelmingly depressing, if I didn’t believe that Americans will not stand for this. Democrats have confused a slim majority with a mandate and they are now over-reaching. I have hope, that the policies being pitched today will not survive beyond the 2010 election.

But enough nonsense, it’s getting late now … time to mow the lawn.

Do you think that there are fewer conservatives (artistic, political, or both) in the arts generally, and literature in particular?

A two-part answer.

Part one is that I have a super-inclusive view of “culture.” We’re all immersed in culture whether we know it or not, and whether we want to be or not. We clothe ourselves, we watch TV and movies and flip through magazines, we eat, we listen to stories and jokes, we drive cars and have opinions about airports and restaurants … That’s all culture. So from that point of view we’re *all* “in the arts.”  

Part two … Deeply-held Zen bullshit to one side … Yeah, in my experience there are far fewer righties in the arts than lefties, and that holds for writing and publishing as much as the other arts I’ve come in contact with. Lefties dominate, and in most ways they dictate the terms that the arts discussion takes place on. At its worst you could say that a common, unspoken assumption in the arts is that being a lefty is a prerequisite for even getting into the field.

All that said, I should add that I’ve always wondered about something, which is how many of the people in the arts who go along with the general-leftie-ism of the the field do so only for public consumption. In other words, how many of them dissent privately? I’d guess that a fair number do. But how will we ever know?

I should add as well that one of the reasons my fellow Blowhards and I blog is to demonstrate that it’s possible to be arts-guys without being party-line lefty. We developed a pretty good-sized readership pretty quickly, so I have to believe that there are numerous people out there who like the arts but who find the official art-world’s leftie-ism off-putting.

Give some examples of conservative novelists/essayists.

Probably the most famous contempo conservative American literary writers are Tom Wolfe and Mark Helprin. Dana Gioia, a terrific poet…is also a conservative. The conservative magazine world is swarming with rightie journalists and essayists. Bruce Bawer and Andrew Sullivan are two of many examples.

Is it some temperamental quality in the conservative mind that pushes away from a literary career? Or is it institutional liberalism in the lit community?  Some combination of the two?

Let me take the opportunity to introduce another one of my Zen-ish points, if I can. I think it can be a mistake to over-focus on the self-described “literary” wing of the reading-and-writing worlds. So far as fiction goes, for instance, there’s a huge and dynamic non-literary world of narrative genre writing out there: sci-fi, crime, romance, erotica, and more. In my experience these writers are often far more free-thinking and far less doctrinaire and party-line than the literary crowd is. They’re also just as smart and often far more talented. They create works in modes that everyday people can understand and enjoy, and they do so in what’s often a friendly, accessible, and even businesslike spirit. And it’s a far larger world than the literary world is.

The literary world? Feh — who needs ‘em?

What about politically conservative literary authors throughout history?  Did there use to be more?  If so, why?  What are the historical factors you think would have caused the shift?

You’ll probably want to speak to a real scholar about this. But I can’t resist taking a swing at it anyway. I see three main stages:

- In the late 1800s some writers (Henry James was one) started treating the novel not as a big sprawling entertainment form but as a work of art that needed its own artistic unity.

- Modernist writers responded to the challenge presented by the movies by focusing ever more on “writerly” concerns.

- The post-WWII American boom produced, along with everything else, a boom in colleges and universities. As more people watched TV, book-fiction lodged itself ever more in academia. Eventually what’s often joked about as “the creative writing industry” seized command of the serious-writing wing of fiction-writing.

In other words, where “serious writing” goes, elitism, snobbery, radicalism, and academicism came to prevail.

What advice would you give a political conservative thinking about a career in literature, or the arts generally?

Honestly I’d advise anyone, rightie or lefty, to avoid a life in the arts, at least the arts as conventionally understood: literary-fiction, gallery art, etc. It’s likely to be a very hard one. I’m very serious about that. Money is scarce, success may never arrive, frustration and disappointment are inevitable, breakdowns and suicides aren’t uncommon. And in a country as full of money, space, and opportunity as the U.S., why opt for the hard way?

That said … If your righty is going to persist in his ambitions despite my warnings … I’d first urge him or her to consider how leftie-dominated the traditional arts are. Do you really want to fight that in addition to all the other battles you’ll inevitably be fighting? Perhaps you might want to think about the new media instead. Website design, for instance, is wide open — you can set up shop, do work, publish, get paid — and there’ll be no institutional crapola you’ll have to wade your way through. I’d also suggest looking into the entertainment business instead of the more highbrow wings of the culture world. If you can do work that connects with a sizable audience, you can work in TV or movies whatever your politics. You’ll also be able to make a decent living.

If your righty persists in his/her interest in the higher-brow arts … I’d suggest finding your way to the righty rebel groups that do in fact exist in at least some of them. In painting, for example: the New York Academy of Art runs a 19th-century academic-style program, and there are people like Jacob Collins (a real giant, as far as I’m concerned) who are the suns around whom many “conservative” painters circle. In poetry, the New Traditionalists and New Formalists (who gather once a year at West Chester College outside Philly) are reviving traditional poetic forms. Frederick Turner is a giant here — a great critic and poet both. In architecture, there are New Classicists at work, and the New Urbanists are tradition-oriented too, though some of them get kind of NPR/PBS soft lefty. Only a few architecture programs (Notre Dame, University of Miami) base their training on tradition, but “a few” is better than none, god knows.

So far  as literary fiction goes, I wish I could come up with decent advice. There aren’t any conservative or traditionalist schools or circles around, to my knowledge. Like I say, most fiction writers who care about traditional values go into narrative-fiction fields: movies, TV, or genre fiction. Which leaves lit-fiction almost entirely to the lefties, the schoolmarms, and the radicals. So I’d venture three thoughts: 1) Keep your rightieness to yourself if you can. Or 2) Make a deliberate choice to flaunt it. Make a statement of it. Identify yourself as Mr. or Ms. Defiant Literary Righty right at the outset. There’s a reason why Tom Wolfe wears the White Suit! Or 3) Start up a school or circle of writers and editors and readers who prize traditional literary values and craft, and then endure decades of neglect and abuse.

Thank you for time, Mr. Blowhard.

In the next week’s installment, we will analyze Mr. Blowhard’s response, as well as check in with Pulitzer finalist and Weekly Standard literary editor Philip Terzian.

Read Mr. Patterson’s “A Conservative Journey Through Literary America — Part 1: Introduction”

Matt Patterson is a columnist and commentator whose work has appeared in The Washington Examiner, The Baltimore Sun, and Pajamas Media.  He is the author of “Union of Hearts: The Abraham Lincoln & Ann Rutledge Story.”  His email is mpatterson.column@gmail.com.

While the best tactics to achieve this goal are open to debate, its ultimate worth and necessity are indisputable – for too long, conservatives have ceded the most influential segments of society, from academia to Hollywood, to the Left with nary a fight.  The current sorry state of our movement is in no small measure the result of this refusal to engage the battle of ideas where it impacts people the most- the culture that they absorb every day through radio, Internet, television, and movies.

The piece which will appear in eight installments, one chapter each Saturday and Sunday, over the next four weeks, however, will deal more specifically with the literary world, and the conservative’s place therein.  For contemporary literature (by which I mean drama, poetry, and written fiction) is also more or less the exclusive province of left-wing thinkers and practitioners.

Some may argue that literature these days is not nearly as influential as movies, say, or television, and therefore perhaps not as worthy of conservative efforts to engage.  On the face this is true – far more people watch Sex and the City, for example, than read The Kenyon Review.  But in a larger sense, this argument misses the point and dangerously underestimates the influence of literature as a vehicle for poisonous ideas to enter the cultural mainstream.  

Let us say that a talented young person, whose passion is film-making, enrolls in an elite educational institution.  At that institution, he is exposed daily, both directly and indirectly, to the works of left-wing literary authors; in his university writing class, for example, he is given an essay by Susan Sontag to analyze and exemplify.

Let us suppose as well that this person is not inherently opposed to conservative ideas; nevertheless, having studied film and literature for four years without having been exposed to any conservative authors, he enters the film-making profession steeped in liberal thought.

Let us next suppose that this film-maker goes on to make a powerful movie which becomes a hit and is enjoyed by a wide audience, every member of which now exposed to the left-wing thought present in the subtext of the film.

This scenario, the trajectory of countless artists, illustrates the complex intersection between literature, art, education, and entertainment – all too often, it is on campuses and in literature where artists of all stripes are first exposed to left-wing ideology, to which they then give form in their work, some of which inevitably becomes popular and therefore a part of “pop” culture.

And it is precisely because literature has a foot in all of these worlds that I feel it is both worthy and fertile ground in which conservatives may stake a claim – if they are willing.

It seems, however, that by and large they are not willing.  There are terribly few conservative poets, fiction authors, and dramatists working in America today.  The aim of the following essay is two fold; 1) to discover why this is so, and 2) to explore ways in which this atrocious state of affairs may perhaps be corrected.

Tomorrow we will start by interviewing blogger, critic, and publishing expert Michael Blowhard.

Read Mr. Patterson’s “A Conservative Journey Through Literary America — Part 2: A Conversation With Michael Blowhard”

Matt Patterson is a columnist and commentator whose work has appeared in The Washington Examiner, The Baltimore Sun, and Pajamas Media.  He is the author of “Union of Hearts: The Abraham Lincoln & Ann Rutledge Story.”  His email is mpatterson.column@gmail.com.