The Author has recorded an audio version for people who prefer to listen to the article.
The decline of volunteerism and community service is truly a calamity of our modern times. Yes, us Conservative types like to lament the days of the family and of social cohesion, yet we’ve largely retreated from the public sphere. The madness of Progressive ideology and its false promises dances just outside of our front steps. While the surge of the 1960’s Long March Through the Institutions continues largely unabated, many conservative types and Right Leaning thinkers have retreated into tribalism and online spheres, getting smaller and meaner towards others and each other. We weep and gnash our teeth at what has come to pass, yet few stand in stalwart opposition to it. Those that do stand in opposition face not only criticism from the forces amassed against them but from other Right Leaning types. These people attempt to drag anyone who sticks their head above the herd back into the conservative cave. The goal is to watch the shadows of despair, projected through torchlight onto the barren stone while chained to black pilled nihilism.
One of the biggest power fantasies that these Conservatives project onto the cave wall is that the cities are lost and we must retreat to the countryside, take up agriculture and a traditional lifestyle. This is one of the goals of the Progressive types. The cities are where decisions are made, and the effects stretch into the Countryside. Conservatives that remove themselves from the cities are excluded from important decision making altogether, and the voting blocks in the Countryside are far less powerful than the ones inside the cities. One cannot care about politics, but politics cares about you. Eventually those politics become policies which become law, and the law comes with force to ensure compliance, even in sleepy hamlets. So, the conservative type is forced even further into the woods, into obscurity, and eventually extinction. The small countryside living is a romantic and fantastical trap which is sold to Conservatives by algorithms to enforce the idea of frontier style living that becomes a prison. Hoping that the madness of Progressive ideology will cause internal collapse in the cities is a gamble that Conservatives are at a better chance of losing then winning. Instead, the thinking Conservative becomes involved in their local Electoral District Association, their police board, their business association and any other organization that produces societal outcomes in order to steer change!
The figures, projected through torchlight onto the wall, keep many Right Leaning types fixated. There are an endless number of podcasts, vloggers, bloggers and conferences to keep people entertained. The constant barrage of influencers and up and coming commentators cause delight and joy to those watching while they are told how unfair, unjust, and cruel the world is. The cathartic embrace of feeling like one is part of the sane and rational group standing against encroaching darkness, sharing each other’s content and performing outrage at the current thing. It becomes less about action and more about the reaction. Yet the current thing dictates the terms of engagement, the conservative is almost always in a state of reactionary behavior while the Long March Through the Institutions continues.
Despite this, the ladder out of the cave remains readily within reach and easily accessible. The digital world is one of figures dancing by torchlight projected against a cave wall, there is information that can be gained from it, but it does not offer actual solutions. Solutions require mental, emotional, spiritual, and corporeal presence. If Conservatives hate the indoctrination of the school system, then they must not simply complain about it, write angry letters, make scenes at school board meetings and other performative actions. They must strive to ensure that they are the ones in the seats! Performative behaviors have been the staple of conservative resistance to Progressive madness to “shake” the system. This has been moderately successful for the past five years or so, but the problem is the transition into moving the system in the right direction. If the punk rockers were the 70s shakers of the system, making a mockery of the system then the movers were the hippies who took over the boardrooms, classrooms and councils. The Right has had truckers, MAGA, commentators, podcasters and more shaking the system but none have moved into the key positions. The conservative shakers shook the system and have been largely left to be wrung out by the institutions with a lack of movement into the seats themselves.
The conservative movement is supposed to be a foundation, a bulwark to withstand the tides of progressivism crashing against it, yet it has become a boat tossed around at sea. Look at the state of our communities: fully ceded power to Progressive experiments of end-stage leftism. The Right Leaning types complain about libraries, once the staple of community driven learning & activities to promote intellectual thought, turned into homeless shelters, obscene material for children and gathering points for Progressive rot clubs. Yet, how many Conservatives even own a library card, or have even visited a library in years? Yes, apply your “not-alls” as you see fit. How many libraries have a Conservative book club or meeting space? How many Conservatives, in an effort to turn the tide, have even volunteered to sit on the library board in an effort to change the policies that allow these things in the first place? There are countless libraries that can’t even staff a volunteer library board. Who is volunteering though? The Progressive types. They make the time to do so because it is important to them. They view these public buildings in an almost religious sense. These are hallowed halls where their poisonous ideology can infect the youngest minds and mold them into the ideologies they want society to possess. “The library is for everyone” they’ll say as a homeless drug addict pisses in the corner, a man shoots up in the bathroom and a librarian is punched in the face! To the Progressive these behaviors require us to deconstruct our assumed values of the library itself to remake them even more Progressive. The loop feeds into itself like the ouroboros.
The most painful actions have been the retreat of Conservatives from the volunteer sphere. Volunteering is a staple of the North American pursuit of excellence and tradition in communities. In recent years however, many volunteer organizations have become volunteer deserts. These organizations, many of them approaching or over 100 years old, are closing down and having to cede to public services, which are fully infected with ideological dispositions, and generally provide inferior service mandates because they lack soul. Yes, many of these organizations themselves have come under the dark cloud of “woke”, but it was aided and abetted by the rapid retreat of conservative types from these spheres. The culture war is not an online war. It is a war for the values of community organizations. With many Right-Leaning types abandoning these spheres, they are also ceding conservative values. Because these organizations emulated these values, a young family this year was asking why the Canada Day celebrations in their town were small and limited. One only needed to look around at the volunteers, who dedicated their time and energy to setting it up, to see the average age of a volunteer was over 50 years old. There is no one to fill the gaps left behind. Too many Conservatives have chosen the cave-wall with its dancing shadows keeping them from joining and enjoying society. The general volunteer class of the Progressive type is embroiled in grievance affairs and demonstrations. They reject these old organizations if they cannot infiltrate them. These are areas that Conservatives should be thriving in.
Many Conservatives are justifiably upset with the general criminal dysfunction in their communities while the Progressive types celebrate this as an icon of the failure of the system they intend to “reform.” Robert Peel’s principles of policing state that “the police are the people and the people are the police”. Yet so many Right Leaning thinkers have abandoned responsibility of having safe and healthy communities to the State who either have an ideological disposition towards or are unable to stem the tide of years of failed Progressive criminal justice reform. When a Conservatives own family is targeted, they retreat further behind reinforced doors, security systems and begging the State to try to take things more seriously. Yet the ability to handle crime and dysfunction is not merely the job of the State, it is the job of every person. Imagine if there are two fentanyl addicts passed out on the playground equipment in your local neighborhood. Your children’s ability to enjoy a public space, that you surrender some of your income for, is seriously affected. You call the police who are overwhelmed, who say they may show up soon. People might film or complain or instruct their children to try to avoid the junkies while they play but everything so far has been a performance. What if, instead, every adult in the neighborhood shows up and directs those people to leave, the more people the better. Scale that to the house everyone knows is the drug house in the area. The Police can’t do anything for months and months while they gather evidence. What if instead 50 people show up with signs that read “death dealer lives here” and when people show up to go in or out they are accosted and made to feel uncomfortable. The drug dealers will move on quickly because these activities rely on a social consensus of everyone following a script and people taking such actions are choosing not to follow the script. Right Leaning types must leave the cave and take suitable action that could involve some risk because if they don’t they risk losing everything.
The conservative cave is a nasty place that only leads to resentment, bitterness, and decay. Conservatives need to leave the cave to ensure their place and their voice in society. Retreating to the countryside is not a realistic option. Conservatives must not follow the script they are told to follow by Progressive media, and terminally online personalities, who gain fame by getting emotional based reaction from their content. Instead, Conservatives and The Right overall, must reacquaint themselves by being pragmatic, community orientated, and involved in society.
Russell is a Conservative and Catholic who wants you to spend less time on social media and more time in with your family and community. Use the online sphere as a place to learn & network. Turn that into action where you are needed most and help people become stronger. His article today is a loose take on the Allegory of the Cave by Plato.