Or Lose the One We Have

I was reminded yet again this morning about how worldviews work. For those who want to read a bit more on this, you can check this out.

One of the reasons conservatives have been outmaneuvered on the same sex mirage deal, even while knowing it to be a mirage, is that they have not engaged in every place where the battle was being fought.

A worldview wheel has four spokes — and all worldviews (in order to be genuine worldviews) must necessarily have all four. We have only been using one spoke, which means we have had to treat it like a jerry-built pogo stick. And that, in turn, means we cannot roll. We have not yet progressed to the development of the wheel. This means we must either regain the other three, or lose the one we have.

The four spokes are catechesis, lifestyle, narrative, and symbol/liturgy. We have generally wanted to fight a catechetical battle about lifestyle (which is not the same thing as living a lifestyle). Generally we have neglected narrative (or have accepted the left’s narrative and tried to work within it, which cannot be done), but that is another topic for another time.

The thing I was thinking about this morning was the potency of symbol, the meaning of signs. Think about how much of this has been driven by signs and logos — in the last few weeks, we have all been at daggers drawn over the Confederate flag, the Redskins trademark logo, the rainbow flag and all rainbowy other things, bridal gowns, the American flag, and wedding rings.

Battles over such things include two aspects — offense and defense. In a real battle, the point is to make your adversary embarrassed by his signs and your own people proud of theirs. And this is why all the big city shame parades are called pride events. I don’t know. When a middle-aged guy in a thong and a feather boa prances out of the Castro District for the big event, the word pride is not the first thing that should pop into your head. The phrase ludicrous fatuity is more like it — but the reason he gets away with it is that he is covered by more than that leopard spotted thong. He is “covered” with all the culturally assigned signs and symbols. He is covered over completely by a big metaphorical rainbow sheet.

A prophet, one of your own, once said this:

See the little faggot with the earring and the makeup
Yeah buddy that’s his own hair
That little faggot got his own jet airplane
That little faggot he’s a millionaire.

Now I wouldn’t use language like that myself, but I do have the song in my playlists, so I suppose I am culpable to that extent. The reason radio stations will now frequently drop that verse when they play Dire Straits’ Money for Nothing is that the risible must not be allowed to be shown up as risible. The left knows the potency of symbol, and they fight accordingly. We don’t yet.

These tactics — offense and defense both — have been employed non-stop, 24-7, by our adversaries against us. The most conservatives will do is offer up lame defenses of some of our symbols, in a kind of Okie-from-Muskogee way, in a way that leans into the cheesy charge that our enemies have successfully made stick.