170. Culture From the Conservative Perspective - Alan Cornett Interview

Today, many people don’t understand what it means to be conservative. In fact, the whole conservative perspective is often misrepresented and misunderstood. However, I think that is largely due to to bad branding rather than bad arguments. Here, you’ll get a great discussion about culture with Alan Cornett, creator of the Cultural Debris Podcast and the Eat Kentucky Podcast.

In this conversation, we covered a bunch of topics related to culture. Here’s some of what we discussed:

Social media
Post-election divisiveness
What conservatism means
Roger Scruton, Russel Kirk, and other great thinkers

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What is the Conservative Perspective?

“All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change.”
– G.K. Chesterton

Basically, the conservative perspective is to hold onto what works until there’s sufficient reason to turn away from it. Rather than casting aside anything old, the conservative seeks to cherish, uplift, and celebrate traditions. Instead of severing the link between ourselves and our ancestors, the conservative works to strengthen those bonds.

In order to understand our culture fully, we must know how conservatives and liberals approach the different problems facing us. Where do they put the strongest emphasis? How do they understand and tackle problems? In this episode, I get a thoughtful, conservative perspective on the culture.

Russell Kirk’s Influence on Conservatism

“Men cannot improve a society by setting fire to it: they must seek out its old virtues, and bring them back into the light.”
– Russell Kirk

Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind was instrumental in shaping the next half-century of conservative thought. Although conservatism has a bad brand, it is a tough philosophy to contend with. Over his lifetime, Kirk worked hard to forward conservatism and argued in favor of the conservative approach.