Here’s a claim that 99.8 percent of FCC indecency complaints were filed by a single activist group. The facts seem a little confused, but the evident general inactivity on the conservative side of the issue is the sort of thing the “conservative trend” in American life amounts to. The truth is that there isn’t a culture war to speak of, let alone a “radical religious right.” What we see instead is unrelenting cultural revolution that the majority resists inconsistently, sporadically, mostly passively, and invariably unsuccessfully. The victories of cultural conservatism, the recent referenda on “gay marriage” for example, simply amount to a few symbolic instances in which the cultural Left hasn’t won as quickly and effortlessly as experience has taught them to expect. They’re just speed bumps on the road to the glorious future they envision.
In substance, as we’ve noted here at Turnabout, the revolution amounts to the annihilation of culture as a local, autonomous, historically-developed complex, and corresponding institutions like the family that make it possible for ordinary people to lead a dignified and decent life, and their replacement by the unlimited rule of rationalized formal institutions like world markets and centralized—preferably global—bureaucracy. As such, all organized power, all recognized institutional authority, and all certified expert thought supports it. It’s what you hear from every reputable authority. It is, after all, a revolution whose function it is to make the power of established public power absolute beyond the dreams of any despot since the Chinese Legalists. So why shouldn’t established public power support it?
In the end the revolution will fail, because revolutions that try to transform human nature always fail. Nonetheless, the fight against it has hardly begun, and the weaker the fight and the longer the delay the more destruction we will see. The future may combine the worst features of post-Soviet Russia with those of the post-Communist Balkans. Our job is to do everything we can to head off that future.
Dim drums throbbing, in the h
Dim drums throbbing, in the hills half heard,
Where only on a nameless throne a crownless prince has stirred,
Where, risen from a doubtful seat and half attainted stall,
The last knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall . . .
Bolt from Iberia!
Don John of Austria
Is gone by Alcalar. . .
It isn’t over until it is over Jim. You know this. Cheer up. And Merry Christmas! o
Another explanation
I have not been one of those sending complaints to the FCC about indecency on television, because I don’t tune in to those programs. Note that the majority of their complaints came from people who did not think they were tuning in to an indecent program (the Super Bowl).
Granted, there is a problem with trendy Christians who have to “keep up with the times” and want to be able to discuss the latest TV trash at the office water cooler. It is no surprise that they don’t send in complaints. Others, like me, see very little on TV to complain about in the first place. The V-chip in my cable set-top box filters out anything rated ‘R’ or worse. Entire channels are blocked 24 hours a day, under my control, because they typically broadcast junk that does not have a rating (e.g., MTV and all other music video channels, the “fx” network, the “E!TV” network (which shows Howard Stern), etc.) I did not happen to watch last year’s Super Bowl, and never watch their silly pop-music halftime shows when I do.
How often should I be sending complaints to the FCC? And, is it not a bit ironic that the forces of evil complain about activists who complain without having seen the show? Having been driven away from most channels on their sets, of course they didn’t see the show!