PrintMay 19, 2009
The GOP's Prejean Moment
She's young, beautiful, articulate, patriotic, Christian, and most importantly, courageous. To many on the left however Carrie Prejean, the current Miss California, is a bigoted, shameful, and intolerant homophobe. What Carrie Prejean represents, in other words, is a modern day inkblot test of inestimable value to America's frustrated and exiled GOP. If there was ever a time in this modern day Alice in Wonderland cultural climate for conservatives to take a stand on something and shake the political world upside down, that time is now.
What can Carrie Prejean do for America and the GOP? For starters, she can drive a very deep wedge into the heart of "Generation Y" - those legions of swooning Obama youth who may have single handedly delivered America over to the radical left in the last election. While many liberals fashion their identities by atoning for anything traditionally American, Prejean can help persuade young people that patriotism, faith, marriage and tradition are actually, despite what the left may say, pretty cool.
While Obama and the Democrats actively seek to establish a Big Brother type intrusion of the Federal Government into our daily lives, Prejean can show her youthful cohorts that dependency isn't very hip. She can argue that part of growing up means being self-reliant; it also means that in order to preserve freedom, one's family, friends, and faith should be consulted, not just the federal government. Prejean can argue that although the Generation Y contingent should love their parents individually, on the collective level their Baby Boomer parents are helping to install an East Berlin style future for them.
While Baby Boomer leftists defined themselves over several decades by their antipathy to American "bourgeois" values they unwittingly detached our culture's restraint mechanisms from the engine of conspicuous desire. When family, marriage, religion and classical learning were buried under this leftist assault, all that remained were "choice" and "rights." When these dubious values meet the free market the end result is a culture mired in debt, pornography, and juvenilia. With the old restraint mechanisms destroyed, many Baby Boomers selfishly looked to big government to bail them out without regard for the crushing burden their kids will inherit.
Generation Y could end this relentless assault on bourgeois America and demand a culture that values marriage, commitment, responsibility, and limits. Instead of "change" Prejean's new movement could chant something their parents abhorred: "restore," as in restoring what has been squandered by the Boomers. Do America's youth want to inherit a country with an oppressive tax structure, Soviet style health care, draconian speech laws, heavy-handed conformity in education, and the drab, gray, and stagnant government cesspool that will, under president Obama, drown opportunity and entrepreneurship?
Instead, Prejean should summon her courage and demand that her generation deserves to inherit an optimistic America where dreams and initiative are celebrated, where local communities call the shots and not the Feds, where individuals are judged and rewarded on their merits, where marriage, children and monogamy are celebrated by the media and entertainment industry, and where freedom once again returns to embrace truth - its battered and long abused sibling. Simply put, Prejean should demand that her generation be allowed to inherit the same America that the progressive left squandered and destroyed.
Prejean's generation should recognize that the current Democratic administration has little trust in their parents. On a deeper level President Obama seems to think that normal Americans are incapable of governing themselves. Both Obama and the Democrats therefore plan to regulate everything from health care to education and the media. The nasty byproduct however is that America's youth won't be trusted either. They'll languish in a perpetual nanny state and discover too late the eternal truth that real compassion means encouraging independence, not dependence. This is a core conservative belief expertly shrouded by liberal control freaks in education and the media.
Will standing up on a national level for Carrie Prejean stoke the flames of controversy and vitriol? Absolutely. Will openly defending Miss California carry the risk of personal attack and vicious smears from self-loathing leftists who despise Christianity and traditional marriage? Probably. Will taking a stand for traditional American values drive a wedge into the soul of the Democratic Party? Yes, this most certainly will happen too. Last November for example over 70% of Black Americans and over 60% of Hispanic Americans supported gay marriage bans in states like California and Florida. Writer Jonah Goldberg has called election results like this evidence of an "Achilles Heel" in the progressive movement.
While the clueless GOP sits on its collective behind Carrie Prejean is single-handedly preparing to rescue traditional marriage from the clutches of the left's militant commissars in education and in the media. With the help of the National Organization for Marriage, Prejean will become part of a national advertising campaign that promises to inspire Americans of all colors to defend their views on traditional marriage.
In Prejean's words:
"This is not about me. It's about the future of marriage. It's about my children and my children's children. It's about me standing up for something I'm extremely passionate about."
Here we have a bright, beautiful and passionate young woman who has a special insight into the heart of all great civilizations: the nuclear family. It's an insight shared by Hindus, Buddhists, Confucian Chinese, Christians, and Muslims. This is why each of these traditions has established unequivocally that marriage is between a man and a woman.
No offense to Michael Steele, Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, and other GOP standard-bearers but the future of the Republican Party will rest with passionate and politically attractive young people willing to step up to the plate and take an uncompromising stand on issues vital to the survival of this great Republic. In these disturbing times courage will in the end count much more than compromise.
Really, when you think about it the Carrie Prejean moment is the left's worst nightmare. Next to Prejean in other words Barack Obama looks depressingly unattractive and sullen. His endless lecturing and gloomy platitudes seem so tired and stale compared to Prejean's deep seated and passionate convictions. Her courage and faith inspires while Obama's critical edge deflates and cheapens. In short, Carrie Prejean might just convince America's youth that a future built on faith and family promises to be more of an adventure than a future designed by dull bureaucrats and boring socialists.
While Barack Obama promises trillions in goodies to a generation of immoderate Americans, Carrie Prejean worries about her "children, and [her] children's children."
Take a hint GOP -- someone here has obviously grown up.
