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Saturday, December 18, 2010

Shaping the Conscience of the Age

Giving the arts a push to the right
In yesterday's National Review piece “Can Conservatives Win Back the Arts?,” novelist/screenwriter Andrew Klavannotes that Hollywood conservatives have too often ceded to the Left "the power to rewrite history and reality in the American mind." But lately there has been hope for a conservative "turning of the tide":


For the last few years, movies promoting the Western ideals of self-reliance, morality, and faith have scored at the box office — see The Incredibles (“If everyone is special, that means no one is”), The Blind Side (“Who would have thought we’d have a black son before we knew a Democrat?”), and Toy Story 3 (a takedown of the nanny state). They have also been more innovative and creative — 300, Gran Torino, No Country for Old Men — than the products of the desiccated and outmoded Left.
I've been writing and speaking about this myself, as a proud member of a surge of conservatives uniting to overcome Hollywood's subversive messages. Klavan mentions some of the same films I often discuss, like the "slew of soporific and dishonest anti–War on Terror propaganda flicks such as In The Valley of Elah and Green Zone."

He ends with this reminder:

The fight for the culture may not always seem urgent, but it truly is. Arguments are won and lost in hearts and minds long before they’re ever decided at the polls. The arts not only reflect the conscience of the hour, they also shape the conscience of the age.