Turn On, Tune In, and Drop Out
Spend enough time amongst conservatives, and you will notice a few perennial solutions given to the gradual shift away from America’s twin foundations: English Common Law, and Christianity. Whenever the Anglo-Saxon tradition of ordered liberties, and its implicit Christian foundation, is maimed badly enough, conservatives tend towards one of three solutions: form parallel communities, elect a Caesar, or, especially in the case of the religious right, assume that it is the End Times, say nothing can be done, and resort to internal exile while waiting for the (surely imminent) Second Coming. All three of these “solutions”, however, ignore the Christian imperative to transform the culture for good, and, most importantly, can be historically shown to fail. In some cases, even, a rigorous case can be made that these strategies are designed to render conservatives impotent.
Let us look with the first, forming parallel communities. Rod Dreher is the most well-known advocate of this solution, presenting the case in the now famous The Benedict Option, arguing for the type of Benedictine Communities that provided refuge during the dark ages. It would be hard to underestimate the influence Dreher has, with his work being incredibly popular among clergy across denominations, and him being the left’s favorite religious punching bag. Reading Dreher is not necessary to believe in parallel communities, as many on the right, who have not read his book, tend to lionize the Amish, and wish their chosen community (Mainline Protestants, Catholics, Orthodox, libertarians, etc.) could live as the Amish do: cloistered from the world’s problems. At the core, the argument, be it presented in literary, or memetic format, is as follows: the traditional American way of life has been damaged to such an extent that any wide-scale correction is impossible, and thus the only hope for preserving the American way of life is to form parallel, fully self-sustaining, communities that will, once “the system” collapses, be the foundation for America Reborn.
Unbeknownst to most, this exact strategy was tried before, and ended in catastrophic failure. Having a marked impact on how the Vietnam War was perceived, in addition to aiding a growing ecological consciousness (revivifying the thoroughly American tradition which claims names as big as John Muir and Theodore Roosevelt), the hippies were a powerful group of dissidents. At the height of their influence, however, they all but went extinct. Why? The answer is “Turn on, tune in, drop out.” Timothy Leary, who was, among other things, a member of the psychology subsection of the Army Specialized Training Program, popularized what would become known as “hippy communes”: independent, parallel communities that ate organic food, filled with large families, and focused on a wholesome lifestyle, one free of consumerism, and a return to natural ways of living. With a few ascetic modifications, such as short hair for men, and lowering the quality of music slightly, the hippy commune would be indistinguishable from the proposed traditionalist parallel society. This is not to make the argument, though it could easily be done, that traditionalism is a rediscovery of the hippy spirit, but to point out that the “trad villages” advocated by conservatives, be it in long form book format, Amish adulation, or in memes, did exist, and they only hurt its inhabitants. Separating from the public sphere, hippies lost what influence they had on the culture.
In what be one of The Atlantic’s best pieces of the decade, How Democrats Killed Their Populist Soul, Matt Stoller writes the following,
“The story of why the Watergate Babies spurned populism is its own intellectual journey. It started with a generation of politicians who cut their teeth on college-campus politics. In their youth, they saw, up close, not the perils of robber barons, but the failure of the New Deal state, most profoundly through the war in Vietnam. “We were the ’60s generation that didn’t drop out,” Bob Edgar, a U.S. representative from the class of 1975, told me.”[1]
Our phrase is right there, “drop out.” Stoller’s article, as the title suggests, the disappearance of populism on the left, and its replacement by cultural issues (Lgbt+ advocacy, Civil Rights, Climate Change, etc.), welfare, and higher marginal taxes. Instead of the populism of old, inside the post-Watergate Democratic Party,
“a series of thinkers agreed with key elements of the arguments made by Jensen, Stigler, and Bork. The prominent left-wing economist John Kenneth Galbraith argued that big business—or “the planning system” as he called it—could in fact be a form of virtuous socialism. Their view of political economics was exactly the opposite of Patman’s and the other populists. Rather than distribute power, they actively sought to concentrate it. Galbraith for instance cited the A&P chain store, which, rather than the political threat Patman had decried, Galbraith declared should be recognized as a vehicle for consumer rights and lower prices. His theory was called “countervailing power.”[2]
A&P, to contextualize, was the Walmart of its day. Instead of trust-busting, and supporting a wide distribution of property ownership, two pillars of classical populism, the Watergate Babies, those activists of the 60s who “didn’t drop out” (read: lukewarm hippies who compromised on core beliefs) made the case that supporting 1960s Walmart was the way forward.
Aside from neglecting the Christian imperative to transform the culture, instead advocating a withdrawal from the culture, the popular “solution” of forming parallel communities, Leary’s very strategy that killed the hippy’s influence, will only weaken conservatives, and those who do not drop out will, by nature of not dropping out, will remain faithful to few, if any, core beliefs. Dropping out is not an option. Engagement in your parish council, local politics, and your child’s school is necessary for a better tomorrow. Being a presence for good, bringing the culture you want to see into your community, is what we are called to do. Either we add savor to the world, or we leave it tasteless.
[1] Stoller, Matt. “How Democrats Killed Their Populist Soul.” The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, October 27, 2016. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/10/how-democrats-killed-their-populist-soul/504710/.
[2] Stoller, Matt. “How Democrats Killed Their Populist Soul.” The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, October 27, 2016. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/10/how-democrats-killed-their-populist-soul/504710/.