Conservatives abandoned social values. The growing socialist mov't is the result

As a young conservative living in Michigan, it is both bewildering and incredibly alarming to see the sinister specter of socialism — which Winston Churchill aptly described as “the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance and the gospel of envy” — become more corporeal daily in my home state.

Clearly, the eerie fervor amongst many young voters surrounding millionaire senatorial candidate Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed and the DSA brigade of malcontents isn't just some spontaneous eruption of misinformed idealism. Rather, it's the fruit of a decades-long institutional harvest, and conservatives unwittingly planted the seeds by refusing to tend the field.

Christian intellectual C.S. Lewis warned us in The Abolition of Man, published in 1943, that
education without moral formation produces “men without chests” — people with heads
(intellects) and bellies (desires), but no chest — no moral center wherein one might recognize
what is truly good and defend it with conviction, or where one might see what is truly evil and
combat it with vigor.

Those who recently united behind Michigan’s socialist moment are, I contend, “men without
chests.” Either Lewis was ahead of his time, or King Solomon was right: “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9 ESV).

Likely both.

Now, there are multiple “brands” of conservatism under the sun that one might subscribe to. The brand I subscribe to is known as fusionist conservatism, which has three pillars: free markets, a strong national defense, and traditional social values. Each of the three pillars is a load-bearing wall. Should any of these walls be removed, that which rests upon them will collapse.

When Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed and socialism’s “men without chests” began to reject
traditional social values — particularly traditional sexual ethics, conjugal marriage, and the
family — and when conservatives in courts and legislatures treated this like a negotiable
constituency management problem, they assumed they lost one fight. They couldn’t have been more wrong. In effect, they hollowed out the very thing that made the other two pillars
intelligible to the next generation, throwing open the door and practically inviting Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed and chestless people like him to occupy the American house.

Traditional social values serve to form people morally, to form a chest. A socialist, chestless person doesn't arrive at economics or defense policy with the same rules as fusionist conservatives or establishment liberals. They arrive with their own rules, constructed to help them in their Bentham-esque pursuit of whatever makes them happiest in the moment.

Conservatives ceded ground on social values, as though it was a fight not worth the capital.
Without conservatives contesting the lack of moral formation happening in institutions around
the country, is it any surprise that young voters have emerged unwilling and unable to defend
free markets, often indifferent to national defense, and drawn to socialism shoddily dressed as
liberation?

Fusionist conservatism isn't outdated or disproven; it's been abandoned. The mistake was
removing the load-bearing wall of traditional social values, creating a crack which Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed and his ilk can slither through.

We must recommit to forming chests, whatever the electoral cost, rather than continually
abandoning traditional values for a more “electable” conservatism. Fight for the moral formation happening across our nation’s institutions, because it is the precondition for everyone caring about markets or missiles at all. President Ronald Reagan was right that freedom isn't inherited by blood; it must be perpetually fought for. People can't fight for what they were never taught to love.

Rebuild the chest, and the rest will follow.