Why The Right Needs To Reclaim Creativity
- Caroline Lanier
- Jan 4
- 5 min read
MAKE CONSERVATIVES CREATIVE AGAIN, VOL. 1
What do you think of when you think of a liberal arts college campus? Do you think of conservative Christians? Do you think of how many conservative voices emerge into the world of politics and speak outwardly about their teachings at Parsons School of Design? Do you recall the notable alumnus who calls CalArts their alma mater?
The answer to all of these questions is almost always "no." Artistry & creativity are almost never related to conservatism and almost always related to liberalism. There are plenty of reasons for this, but I can think most recently in modern history of the showing of this phenomenon during the Civil Rights Movement. We can look back on people expressing their distress in a variety of ways that may not have seemed controversial to the general population had they not been expressing something that went against the status quo. These artists were expressing their struggle with accepting a truly racist society. Because of this, people had more of a problem with the content of the art rather than the art itself, leading to a distaste for the art altogether.
Some of this artistry could be direct in the sense of artistic activism (craftivism), or it could be shown through how black people were making their own kind of music that white people would hate simply because it was made by black people. The black people were deviating from the societal normative representation of music. People were not giving new art the time of day because it was not exactly what they expected, so they pushed it aside.
This reminds me of a quote my dad likes to refer to. He would tell me how he would go to a barber shop as a kid, and a quote would be on the wall:
He never could remember exactly how the quote was written, but I would later find out that this wasn’t just a cool sign his barber hung up on the wall when he was a kid. No, this was a well-known quote sometimes attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt, Socrates, and Henry Thomas Buckle. The quote may not mean much to some, but it explains a lot of how I feel in my own life.
Growing up in a small town meant that I grew up with a lot of “simple-minded” people. I don’t mean they were unintelligent or anything of the sort, but rather, these people did not have the desire or the will to think as deeply about things as I felt that I did. These people would dress the same as their peers with no desire to deviate or accept those who did. The girls would all dye their hair blonde and tan as much as possible because that was the cool thing to do, and would gravitate towards following the crowd when their anxiety would tell them it was easier that way. They would go to college (but no further than 5 hours away) and study physical therapy, nursing, or search for their M.R.S. degree. After college, whether they graduated or not, they would move back home, find a local job, marry someone they knew from high school they had reconnected with, and live out the same life that the adults in their childhood did. That was what was expected of them, and whether they wanted to accept that or not, that’s how their life would be, too.
These small-town, simple-minded people also would gravitate towards conservatism. This could be because they all truly found their way there on their own, or it could be because that’s how they were raised, so that’s how they would live as adults. They would most likely be Christian because they grew up in church, but it might have been a lukewarm relationship with Christ where they go to church on holidays & their mother’s birthdays, but they couldn’t tell you the last time they read their Bible.
These are the people I would refer to as “simple-minded.” Deep down, they resent change because they themselves don’t know how to change, nor are they comfortable with the idea of it. Comfort is at the top of their list of “Life’s Must-Haves.” They look for the perfect picture on their Christmas card to send to their relatives, not the connection they get with others when they ponder a question that’s been eating away at them.
Many times, “creativity” is interpreted as strange because it deviates from the social norms most people are used to. Many people who struggle to adapt to new ways of thinking and new ways of being aren’t always doing so because they do not like the product, but instead are unable to understand why a product is being made or how a person would get to the creation of said product. Mark Rothko's paintings don’t make sense to people who do not allow themselves to experience the pieces as intended or do not wish to step outside of their comfort zones to interpret something that doesn’t explicitly make sense to them at first glance.
I write none of this to hate on traditionally conservative people for disliking art or misunderstanding it. Instead, I write this to highlight the way people on the right treat those who make art. For a long time, creativity has been hijacked by the left and completely neglected by the right. This happens because many people on the right who would identify as conservative in their beliefs, with most of these people being Christian, are outcast by the right and inevitably pushed on the pendulum to the other side of the political aisle (usually at a younger, more impressionable age) to the left, which is historically more accepting of alternative lifestyles, because they too had been pushed out by conservative/traditional people, whether that be for the right or wrong reasons.
As conservatives, we must do better. We cannot continue to look at young creatives and push them aside, deeming them weird, unnatural, and unwanted. Because when you give a person nowhere to go and no place to belong, they create a place of belonging for people like them, which usually includes the doctrine of outcasting those who outcast them first. And if they don’t create their own sector of society, they will find it in those who prey upon them and groom them to become the people they want.
We hear the left scream about protecting trans kids, and at face value, this is a noble thought, if we ignore the fact that transgender ideology only leads to death (spiritually and physically). This idea of protecting our youth and letting them be who they truly are is a good thing. Transing our children is NOT a good thing, but I digress for the sake of this article, pushing that aside for later.
Many of our children are creative, just as God created them to be. Many of them know how to express themselves through art, with many different forms of art branching off just from that. We cannot look at these children as every adult class has looked at young artists in the past—as weird, “out there” kids who have no future, no purpose, and no drive to be anything in life. We must change the way we look at creativity and accept the ones in our own party and allow these creatives to be creative. Art is not always weird. Art is the future. Art has always been the future.
Let them make art, and make conservatives creative again.
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