It is rare that the full impact of paradigmatic shifts are appreciated or well understood when they happen. With obvious exceptions, most sea changes take place in small increments until suddenly an event occurs which precipitates the change.
[This is almost completely irrelevant, but is illustrative of paradigm shifts: I keep bottles of water in my car, which I park outside of the garage. In the mornings when the temperature gets down to ~16-17 degrees I have discovered a fascinating phenomenon. If I release the cap the water immediately begins to crystallize, from the top down (reacting to the change in air pressure.) Depending on the temperature I can watch the crystals grow until the entire bottle is solid. Alternatively I can shake the bottle and it instantly crystallizes into a mixture of ice and liquid water. I liken this process to a supersaturated solution in which, once a seed is introduced, the entire solution crystallizes. My water bottles at 16 degrees are a metaphor for the social change I am imagining.]
On Tues, Bruce Carroll, aka GayPatriot, reported on his experience at last weekend's CPAC:
The HomoCon Tipping Point: Why CPAC Was a Milestone Weekend for Gays
Alexander McCobin addressed the GOProud/Liberty sponsor issue head-on and praised CPAC for being inclusive and standing up for the principles of freedom and liberty. McCobin was met with praise and applause for his remarks.
A few minutes later, Ryan Sorba from the California Young Americans for Freedom got to the podium and started a bizarre tirade against CPAC, gays and lesbians, and the audience itself. Following the incident, information quickly turned up that Sorba has been trying to peddle a manuscript called “The Born Gay Hoax” for a few years now. In his post-outburst interviews and encounters, Sorba hasn’t revealed whether his CPAC rant was planned in advance or the result of McCobin’s previous praise of GOProud.
...
The conservative crowd quickly turned on him and forced him to walk off the stage. The ironic part of the crowd support of GOProud is that none of its leaders were even in the room at the time, but in the exhibit hall. This was a spontaneous rejection of Sorba’s anti-gay rant by the CPAC grassroots. They drove him off-stage in a moment that quickly became the talk of the conference and the internet.
Left wing bloggers and reporters played out their pre-existing meme that Conservatives, as "everybody knows", are racist homophobes, based on Ryan Sorba's tirade; since none of them were at CPAC, they can be excused for not noticing the crowd's actual reaction to Sorba's rantings. The release of youtube videos of the events in question should be clarifying to all who wish to know what happened.
I firmly believe that the response to Sorba at CPAC represents a paradigm shift, the significance of which only in part pertains to Gays and/or Conservatives. I suspect that the ripples of the events at CPAC, dubbed HomoCon by Bruce Carroll, will be far more profound in the larger society.
Support for my premise comes from a noted liberal columnist, E. J. Dionne. In his article Dionne suggests that the Democrats pay more attention to the young Millennials. He notes that this is the only demographic that considers themselves liberals and are a natural constituency for a permanent Democratic majority. It is his explanation for the younger generation's liberalism that is significant:
Then the Millennial generation came along. The Millennials -- generally defined as Americans born in 1981 or after -- are, without question, the most liberal generation since those New Dealers, and they could transform our politics for decades. But this will happen only if progressive politicians start noticing their very best friends in the electorate.
Progressives who doubt this could usefully spend time with the Pew Research Center's exhaustive new portrait of the Millennials that was released Wednesday. The study underscored the new generation's "distinctiveness," and a big part of that distinctiveness is how progressive younger Americans are compared with the rest of the country.
For one thing, they are not allergic to the word "liberal." Americans under 30 include the largest proportion of self-described liberals and the smallest proportion of self-described conservatives of any age group in the country: 29 percent of the under 30s called themselves liberal compared with 28 percent who called themselves conservative.
"In every other age group," Pew notes, "far more described their views as conservative than liberal."
Among Gen Xers (born between 1965 and 1980), the conservative advantage over liberals was 38 percent to 20 percent. Among Baby Boomers (born 1946 to 1964), conservatives led 43 percent to 18 percent. Among those born in 1945 or before -- Pew uses the classic "Silent Generation" tag -- the conservative advantage was 45 percent to 15 percent. (Moderates and a few respondents who refused a label made up the remainder in all groups.)
The difference in self-labeling reflects real differences in attitudes. It's well-known that younger voters are more liberal on social issues, particularly gay rights. [Emphasis mine- SW] But their liberalism also includes sympathy for activist government.
It is a commonplace that the young are more liberal and want government to help make the world a better place. People become more conservative as they age because they learn that simple solutions don't usually work for difficult and persistent problems, and that government is a blunt instrument, a blunderbuss, while rapiers and smart missiles are more efficient and more cost effective. Beyond that, our Millennials have also come of age in a world in which personal liberties are taken for granted; they do not yet appreciate how government activism inexorably translates into decreased personal freedom. Their assumption of personal freedom is part of why they tend to be so supportive of Gay Rights. Because Gays have not had to remain in the closet for the last 40 years, Millennials all have personal relationships with openly Gay men and women and once you are friends with, or have relatives who are Gay, it is hard to demonize them as anything other than human beings, with the same rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" that everyone else assumes.
The erosion of homophobia and discriminatory reactions to Gays has been a slow process, accelerated by the changing from one generation to the next.
[At one time I had concerns about Gays in the military and supported DADT; why can't they (Gay activists) just leave well enough alone, I wondered? Since that time I have had my Oldest Son spend four years in the USAF and my Middle Son is now in the USN. Both have assured me there are a fair number of Gay people in the service and no one seems to care. In fact, they think DADT has been used primarily by people who had second thoughts and wanted to get out of the military relatively painlessly. In a similar vein, I have worried about the societal effects of redefining marriage. I have become convinced that our young people do not care and as such, eventually Gay marriage will be here. Beyond that, I know married Gay couples and they do not seem to be threatening the moral fabric of our country.
(For those who will now bring up the kinds of sex ed being forced upon grade schoolers, that is an issue about the appropriateness of prematurely exposing children to adult sexuality. The problem is not specific to Gay Sexuality but to adult sexuality. For a nuanced discussion of some of these issues from a Gay Marriage opponent, see In defense of gay conservatives at Hotair.)
Minds change over time in tiny, immeasurable increments, until one day the full change precipitates in the mind. This is why the courts should not be the agency of such social changes. When the process is short circuited, people/society resist change. Make a moral argument, convince people by the life you lead, and the change will come without the powerful reactive attacks from your distressed neighbors.]
Now consider OneSTDV's comment about the appearance of Steve Sailor's blog: [All emphases his]
Social posturing weighs heavily in the decision-making of many individuals. HalfSigma regularly blogs on these indicators of social class, such as the "right" brands of apparel and the appropriate musical choices for one's wedding. Are these entrenched aspects of class somewhat arbitrary? Of course, as one notes the metamorphosis of Tommy Hilfiger from a yachting brand to a prominent component of 90's rapper fashion. In marketing anything, whether that be a tangible item or a foundational ideology, one must couch the "product" in the language of the intended market class. Now these characteristics are sometimes hard to pinpoint, though certain patterns generally appear, as evidenced by Christian Lander's perspicacious profiling of the effete, urbane white middle class.
Conservatism has an image problem, partly due to its most prominent constituency and partly due to the smearing tactics employed by the Alinsky left. While populist movements can gain traction, they always require the partnership of elites. Elites run the country and if they shirk a particular movement, nothing of grave significance will arise. This elite class, even those coming from humble beginnings, will generally adopt the norms of high social classes. They may profess a waffling belief in young-earth creationism or maintain their rural dialect, but they can't fully divest themselves from the pressures of appearing dignified and enlightened.
So what does have to do with VDare? If VDare intends to broaden the scope of its message, if it intends to bring forth discussion of the immigration issue on a wider scale, they have to fix their website. It looks like utter crap, seemingly designed by a dilettantish rube with nary a meaningful thought. Is this fair? Of course not, but the left will seize any opportunity to depict non-PC opinions as fitting only for those of a low social class: the bitter, the angry, the losers of society who have only their jingoism and not a rational, coherent philosophy underpinning their political ideals.
Conservatism does indeed have an image problem. Conservatism has been successfully depicted in the zeitgeist as filled with homophobes, racists, and religious bigots. As long as Conservatives are dismissed as bigots, Conservative ideas have no opportunity to enter the closed minds of liberal young people. An event like the CPAC reaction to Ryan Sorba is enough to unsettle the permanence of the image in the minds of those who are not yet fully committed to the left. Once a mind is unsettled, it takes a great deal less energy to engage them in thinking about the reality that lies beneath their political weltanschauung. And once young liberals begin to think outside of the liberal box, all things are possible.
Liberalism has become a thoroughly reactionary force in America, pressing for larger government and decreased personal freedoms. Once we can entice the young into thinking about Conservatism and Libertarianism, much more easily done when they no longer instantly demonize Conservatives as bigots, we will win the argument much more often than we will lose.
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