{"id":415037,"date":"2021-04-12T17:58:36","date_gmt":"2021-04-12T21:58:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=415037"},"modified":"2021-04-12T17:58:39","modified_gmt":"2021-04-12T21:58:39","slug":"knowles-culture-can-be-downstream-of-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/knowles-culture-can-be-downstream-of-politics\/","title":{"rendered":"KNOWLES: Culture\u00a0Can Be\u00a0Downstream Of Politics"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">10<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fknowles-culture-can-be-downstream-of-politics%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=415037&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/fb_image-1564.jpeg?w=1200&amp;h=800&amp;ixlib=react-9.0.3\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" \/><\/div>\n<p>Last week, Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson refused to sign into law a bill that would protect children from the predations of perverts who want to pump them full of cross-sex hormones. Governor Hutchinson\u2019s \u201cconservatism\u201d demands that we defend child castration as preferable to any \u201cbig government\u201d regulation that might outlaw it. \u201cI go back to William Buckley, I go back to Ronald Reagan, to principles of our party,\u201d Hutchinson explained, \u201cwhich believes in a limited role of government.\u201d One can almost hear WFB and the Gipper turning in their graves. If preventing the mutilation of minors does not fall within the limits of legitimate government, what does?<\/p>\n<p>Hutchinson dismissed the bill as \u201ca product of the cultural war in America\u201d \u2014 a war that he seems to wish we would all just surrender. The governor has acknowledged \u201cthe fear\u2026that we\u2019re losing our culture.\u201d But, he insisted during an interview with NBC\u2019s Chuck Todd, \u201cYou don\u2019t need to use the instrument of the law, you don\u2019t need to use the state to accomplish that purpose in every instance. There is the Church. There is society. There is your community. And that\u2019s where the culture is impacted or reflected in the future.\u201d In other words, \u201cpolitics is downstream of culture.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Andrew Breitbart\u2019s famous maxim conveys an important truth: cultural institutions shape our politics from outside the halls of government. But \u201cpolitics\u201d influences \u201cculture\u201d too. Indeed, one cannot neatly distinguish between the two concepts because both describe much the same thing: how we all get along together. Is our reality TV star former president a \u201ccultural\u201d or \u201cpolitical\u201d figure? When the Big Tech billionaires who control the flow of information around our public square censor that same duly elected president, do they exercise \u201ccultural\u201d or \u201cpolitical\u201d power?<\/p>\n<p>According to a 2012 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/belief\/2012\/sep\/22\/atheism-east-germany-godless-place\">survey<\/a>, the majority of East Germans are atheists. That percentage falls to 10.3% among their godlier countrymen in West Germany.&nbsp;Politics, not culture, explains the disparity. From 1945 until 1990, an officially atheistic, communist government dominated East Germany. The previously Christian culture of that region did not flow downstream to convert the Soviet puppets who ruled. On the contrary, even after the communists\u2019 political regime collapsed, its culture of atheism remained.<\/p>\n<p>Ask a conservative how Lyndon Johnson\u2019s Great Society programs affected the black family in the 1960s and \u201870s, and even the most ardent disciple of the Breitbart Doctrine will acknowledge the power of politics to shape culture. For too long, craven politicians have exploited Breitbart\u2019s clarion call for conservatives to wield influence in the entertainment industry as an excuse for not doing their own jobs in the political sphere.<\/p>\n<p>Asa Hutchinson seems to think the people elected him to do nothing. He believes \u201cthe party is about\u2026pushing freedom and choice in the free market.\u201d But gelding children does not expand freedom. The governor mistakes licentiousness for liberty, a distinction crucial to the thinking of our Founding Fathers and wise statesmen throughout history. Worse still, he mistakes impotent sloganeering for political leadership.<\/p>\n<p>In practice, Hutchinson\u2019s castrated \u201cconservatism\u201d advances the agenda of the radical Left more effectively even than the leftists do themselves \u2014 an irony I detail in my upcoming book <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Speechless-Controlling-Words-Minds\/dp\/1684510821?dchild=1&amp;keywords=speechless+controlling+words&amp;qid=1618256545&amp;sr=8-1&amp;linkCode=sl1&amp;tag=michaeljknowl-20&amp;linkId=4d177bfbd16132fb952f389c96cf06fe&amp;language=en_US&amp;ref_=as_li_ss_tl\"><em>Speechless: Controlling Words, Controlling Minds<\/em><\/a>.&nbsp;Governor Hutchinson fails to understand that freedom has a purpose. It is a means to an end rather than an end in itself, as our Founders and Framers well understood when they set about to \u201csecure the blessings of liberty.\u201d The benighted governor prattles on about freedom, but he doesn\u2019t grasp its essential feature: liberty has value only to those who know how to use it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><i>The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author\u2019s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.<\/i><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><i>The Daily Wire is one of America\u2019s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a&nbsp;<\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/subscribe\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>member<\/i><\/span><\/a><i>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week, Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson refused to sign into law a bill that would protect children from the predations of perverts who want to pump them full of cross-sex &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1893588,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-415037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=415037"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415037\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1893588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=415037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=415037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=415037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}