Why social conservatives shouldn't despair -- even if liberals win the culture war

It’s worth considering whether there are some trends or ideas advanced by others that are inadvertently conservative, and potentially very much so.

Consider feminism. The occasional overlaps between feminists and social conservatives are well known. The cause of liberation is now often confused with “prudishness,” by both critics and promoters. The 1989 cultural freakout over the 2 Live Crew album As Nasty As They Wanna Be was fueled by the religious right, which viewed it as a threat to purity and chastity. Today it would be much more effectively opposed by feminists as a retrograde product of “bro-culture” and an encouragement to rapists. I leave it to others to figure out which charge is more moralized. Although there are important differences, 90s-era parental warnings about obscenity are not entirely different to trigger warnings today. Ask any libertine. Both imply that some souls are too innocent and vulnerable for adult themes.

Then there’s environmentalism and the desire for organic, natural, and sustainable products. Conservatism as a political doctrine is supposed to connect the energies of the living to the interests of the dead and the unborn. Today the moral movement that speaks for our great, sacrificial duties to posterity is the environmental one. Conservatives should consider whether a movement so dedicated to protecting the lives of yet unborn animals and endangered ecosystems can forever remain hostile to the claims of unborn children, or allow the logic of the market to completely destroy the natural family. The desire to be organic and authentically human yields already surprising results. Even “natural family planning” methods that were the secret knowledge of extra-chaste Catholics and extra-crunchy liberals are now a hot investment in Silicon Valley.