Tanner Greer writes at a blog called The Scholar's Stage. His most recent topic is summarized in the phrase "culture wars are long wars." He makes several interesting points.
Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone, (is) an investigation of changing social capital, social norms, and social trust in U.S. over the 20th century. Putnam isolates many different reasons for these changes, but in the chapter “Generation to Generation,” he describes most of them as effects of cohort change.
Cultures do not change when people replace old ideas with new ones; cultures change when people with new ideas replace the people with old ones.
Values must be forged. Utopias must be imagined. Ideas must be tailored for mass intellectual appeal. Paths to communicate these ideals must be cleared. The inevitable shall happen: old orthodoxies shall go stale and brittle. New crises shall discredit them in their brittleness. Then the well-placed culture warrior will have both the arguments and the networks needed to inspire the rising generation. That generation will learn how their fathers and mothers created the mess they are now in. Gradually, then suddenly, our people will turn to the light. This is a long process, but a true one. This is the proven path of the culture warrior.
I find his reasoning scary in its persuasiveness, perhaps you do as well. Hat tip to Instapundit for the link.
