Steve Deace - Rules for Patriots: How Conservatives Can Win Again

Why We Lose

F or too long conservatives have been operating under a false assumption.

This false assumption has three creeds:

1. We make up the silent majority.
2. This is still a right-of-center country.
3. Liberal media bias is primarily to blame for losing elections.

Two of these are not true, and one that is true isnt so for the reason we think it is.

It is true that this is still a right-of-center country, but we say that without recognizing the center has moved at least somewhat left. Todays moderates were liberals 40-50 years ago, when todays liberals were radicals typically relegated to seedy, dive bars listening to the Velvet Underground, or on the faculty of a college campus reading contraband copies of Ramparts.

Likewise, todays establishment Republican is where the mainstream of the Democrat Party used to be. So for conservatives to hang our hats on this still being a right-of-center country is like bragging about having fewer public gaffes than Joe Biden.

Furthermore, the silent majority is an antiquated term. There recently was a day when the Judeo-Christian ethic was taught and modeled quietly in the majority of our homes while the elites slouched mainly alone towards Gomorrah, but we cant even count on that anymore. We are a culture awash in moral relativism, with standards resting on shifting sands, and absolutes cast aside in favor of situational ethics. The silent majority, like the rest of America, has been Balkanized. At best nowadays, its a silent yet substantial minority. The closest we can come now culturally to a uniform moral standard is you can do whatever you want to do as long as it doesnt hurt anybody else. In other words, everyone is wise in his own eyes.

And enough whining about liberal media bias! Is the majority of the mainstream media liberal? Umm, is the Pope Catholic? However, with the growth of alternative and social media, the percentage of the American people who use the mainstream media as their primary source of information is dwindling. It will only get smaller as more tech-savvy generations grow older. As their audience shrinks, so does their influence.

Dont forget Ronald Reagan won two landslide elections without the benefit of Fox News, Matt Drudge, or talk radio. There is so much conservative media infrastructure today that didnt exist 20-30 years ago, and some of it is among the most profitable in the industry. Our problems go way beyond messaging, which is the symptom and not the disease.

Besides, as a talk show host thats probably been interviewed for more stories by the mainstream media in the past two years than just about any of my peers (many of whom wont even talk to the mainstream media), Ive also learned the liberal media bias we think exists is actually more of a secular media bias.

Many reporters, especially the ones my age and younger, have been exposed so little to Biblical teaching and Christian theology that a faith-based worldview is often just dismissed out of hand as not even worthy of their consideration. Their liberal politics is the result of a secular-progressive worldview that is often unchallenged by a Judeo-Christian moral ethic. There are times Ive done interviews with these folks, and after they hear what I have to say they look at me like theyre observing a new species of animal in its natural habitat. Theyre like, Wow, you really exist. I only thought you were a straw man for my leftist professor(s) in college, but here you arein the flesh.

Case in point: remember when you had the stereotypical priest coming to the rescue in the horror movie? Contemporary horror movies act as if the church doesnt even exist, and man is on his own to face evil. That is but one anecdotal example of what Im talking about.

It is time for conservatives to stop playing the victim card, and start being honest with ourselves about where this country truly is. On my radio program we call this 3-D thinking. The first dimension is to know why you believe what you believe. The second is to know why others believe what they believe. And the third is to know why others believe what they believe about what you believe.

With that in mind, the answer as to why weve lost so much ground in this culture isnt liberal media bias, which is symptomatic of the problem. The reason weve lost so much ground in the culture is because most Americans lack the worldview our Founding Fathers had, which is the second dimension.

As far as the third dimension is concerned, most Americans do not have the proper worldview because the institutions and organizations in our culture charged with instilling it in themprimarily the family, churches, and schoolsare either in societal decline or have been taken over by those who disagree with the worldview of our Founding Fathers. They are systematically purging it from these institutions and organizations as we speak.

I dont base this analysis off of my own opinions, but off of the data. I may be a man of faith but analytically I am a data-driven guy, and the data of where we are as a people is disappointing to say the least.

Worldview

According to leading worldview trend analyst George Barna, only 34% of adults believe that moral truth is absolute and ethics are not situational. Just 27% of adults believe Satan is a real force of evil in the world. Didnt someone once say the devils greatest trick was convincing mankind he doesnt exist? That appears to have worked on about three-fourths of the American people, and 72% of them also believe they can earn their way to Heaven by being good (and of course the standard for good is highly subjective) rejecting the traditional Christian notion that it is by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ (you know, the Easter story) we are reconciled with our Creator.

Add this all up, and Barna concludes that since he started surveying American belief systems in 1995, the percentage of adults with the same basic Judeo-Christian worldview as our Founding Fathers has typically ranged from 7-9%. Yet at the same time 83% of Americans consider themselves to be Christians. Go figure.

A worldview isnt the same as a moralview. Most Americans still possess on some level a basic Judeo-Christian moralview, even if its polluted in certain places by contemporary influences like moral relativism and situational ethics.

I would define a Judeo-Christian moralview as rightly knowing where right and wrong comes from, and who the ultimate determiner of right and wrong is. A Judeo-Christian worldview is rightly integrating that knowledge of right and wrong, and who were ultimately accountable to, into our daily lives so that it becomes the main influence for the decisions and choices we make. In other words, actions speak louder than words.

For example, youre supporting a truly principled conservative against a Republicrat hack in a primary. Your guy loses said primary, and now the GOP establishment begins its sanctimonious (and fingernails on a chalkboard annoying) calls to coalesce because the Democrat is allegedly so much worse (when in many cases they turn out to be one in the same). You dig in your heels and say no way, youve read this book before and every time you swallow your integrity and vote for the Republicrat, he/she then makes you regret it nearly every day theyre in office. Youre bound and determined you wont fall for the banana in the tailpipe anymore.

But then the Republicrat goes head-to-head with the Democrat, and you notice that by comparison hes articulating a viewpoint so much closer to your own. In fact, hes starting to sound so good that now youre wondering why you raised such a stink in the primary in the first place? You start questioning yourself, and wondering if the Republican Party establishment has been right about conservatives all along, we are impossible to please. Dag gum, if you knew all along this guy was so good, you wouldve urged others to coalesce sooner to keep your powder dry for the general.