Against Libertine Conservatism

Conservatives cannot conserve the traditions of the West while engaging in a crude culture war.

Written by Bo Winegard.

Conservatism is not at war with human nature. But it does attempt to restrain it, discipline it and even elevate it. To this end, it seeks to suppress base impulses and desires and to channel them into something higher. It accepts the crooked timber of humanity, yet it does not celebrate our foibles.

Since Donald Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party, however, this difficult but necessary task has been largely abandoned. Many conservatives have embraced instead a kind of libertine conservatism, an attitude that delights in whatever crude, crass, boorish or salacious cultural artifact most offends progressives. Liberal tears are apparently more rewarding than moral rectitude.

Thus, when American Eagle released its hyper-sexualized ads featuring Sydney Sweeney, built around the double entendre “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans,” many on the Right—including self-professed Christian conservatives—rushed to praise them while mocking progressives for hysterical overreaction. Unsurprisingly, Trump, a notorious vulgarian, called them “the hottest ad out there.” More strikingly, both J. D. Vance and Ted Cruz, proud and even ostentatious Christian conservatives, defended the ads and mocked the Left for opposing “beautiful women.”

That self-described conservatives would celebrate such salacious materialism indicates how far the movement has drifted from its old admittedly thankless but necessary defense of chastity and modesty. An ideology that once upheld sexual restraint as a moral duty now applauds the commodification of women, so long as it rankles progressives.

Lest one think I am being too prudish or making too much of conservative reaction to what are ultimately “harmless” YouTube spots, I would note that these advertisements, and the many titillating “good jeans” videos they inspired, fit the very definition of pornography offered by Irving Kristol:

Pornography differs from erotic art in that its whole purpose is to treat human beings obscenely, to deprive human beings of their specifically human dimension. That is what obscenity is all about.

What is more, they directly contradict mainstream Christian teaching. The Catechism of the Catholic Church reminds us that:

There is a modesty of the feelings as well as of the body. It protests, for example, against the voyeuristic explorations of the human body in certain advertisements, or against the solicitations of certain media that go too far in the exhibition of intimate things. Modesty inspires a way of life which makes it possible to resist the allurements of fashion and the pressures of prevailing ideologies.

The point is not that these advertisements were similar to hardcore pornography, but that they were obscene in a straightforward way. They used a woman’s body as an object to sell clothes. Nothing new about that of course, but it is something which traditionalists have long bemoaned.

If even thoughtful Christian conservatives succumb to tribal temptations and celebrate the very vices their own tradition condemns, then conservatism has ceased to be a custodian of the traditional moral order and has become a mirror of the decadence, the crassness and vulgarity, it once resisted. This of course is the essence of libertine conservatism—to revel in vice so long as it offends the enemy.

The conservative reaction to the Sweeney advertisements is not an isolated lapse in judgment or a temporary suspension of sensibility. It is a symptom of a deeper, more pervasive disease that has ravaged conservatism since the rise of Trump. Profanity, vulgarity and mockery have become routine features of conservative discourse. Online, “owning the libs” has replaced serious debate or persuasion. The prevailing instinct is no longer to turn the other cheek but to strike back twice as hard. Even mocking an orthodox nun for her appearance is acceptable if it humiliates a supposed political enemy.

This spectacle of cruelty, hypocrisy and vulgarity can only be seen as a grotesque parody of conservatism as it was once understood. It is a dark conservatism through the looking glass of tribalism. The tradition, at its best, rejected petty partisanship and the celebration of humiliating one’s enemies. It sought instead to preserve what Edmund Burke called the “moral imagination” of a people. Conservatism has always accepted original sin and therefore man’s irremediable flaws. But it never revelled in debauchery nor excused moral looseness as a necessary weapon in partisan politics. Rather, it prized restraint, manners and virtue as the indispensable foundations of any civil order.

Earlier conservatives did not consider virtue mere ornament. Losing “sir” and “ma’am” may or may not portend civilizational doom, pace Sheriff Bell from No Country for Old Men. But manners are essential to any broad and peaceful social order. Without restraint and civility, liberty is impossible, for man cannot govern himself until he has tamed the tempests of his own soul. This is why Christianity was indispensable for the making of the West. It taught that modesty and restraint were not eccentricities but vital virtues that nourished the soul and preserved social harmony. The conservative ideal was never the boorish partisan or the cruelly clever cultural warrior, but the dignified gentleman or lady, whose graceful manners bore witness to an inner discipline and peace.

The cost of this betrayal of moral rectitude is not trivial. By abandoning an ethic of modesty and restraint, conservatism destroys its own moral authority. A movement that once proudly claimed to defend family values cannot credibly denounce the excesses of popular culture, of Hollywood or even of pornographers, if it simultaneously celebrates its own vulgar icons. By cheering the endless obscenities of Donald Trump, conservatives trample the very premise they once championed, namely, that self-discipline is necessary to be fully human and to preserve social order. For bestial appetites cannot conserve, cannot build, cannot inspire; they can only consume. A libertine conservatism may win attention, may win a round or two in the culture war, but it cannot win the battle for the soul, and it cannot sustain a civilization.

I am not naïve. To win elections requires a broad coalition of voters, many of whom will find the austerity of traditional conservatism alienating. And most of us, if we are honest, indulge our desires from time to time, whether in ogling a woman by a muscle car or mocking a political opponent. These sins are not inescapable paths to perdition. But if conservatism moves from tolerating human weakness to actively celebrating it, then it loses its very reason for being. To be sure, some “conservatives” may gain fame, may gain the White House, may even gain the world. But as one great Teacher once asked: “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”

Bo Winegard is an Editor of Aporia.

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