Going into the 1992 Republican National Convention (RNC), Pat Buchanan ran for and lost the 1992 Republican presidential nomination to incumbent president George H.W. Bush. After conceding the Republican nomination, Buchanan gave a passionate thirty-minute speech at the 1992 RNC–later dubbed as the “Culture War Speech”. For most of his speech, Buchanan praised President Bush, waxed about former President Ronald Reagan, and criticized Democratic presidential nominee Bill Clinton. As a defender of traditional values, Buchanan decried cultural movements that had led to the noticeable decline in American and family values—forces such as radical feminism, the LGBT movement, abortion-on-demand, women in military combat, and environmental fanaticism.
However, Buchanan’s speech shifted once he made an interesting comment toward the end of the speech. Here’s the quote from that speech:
“There is a religious war going on in this country. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we shall be as was the Cold War itself, for this war is for the soul of America.”
All the way back in 1992, Buchanan signaled the divided America that came about after the end of the Cold War. At the time, critics panned the speech. Much of the news media claimed that Buchanan was declaring a culture war in America. Based on the quote above, Buchanan was only observing what was already going in America society. The 1990s was a pretty stable and peaceful time, so no one truly wanted to deal with this underlying current.
The Republican party back in the 1990s (and still does for the most part) did not want to engage in this culture war. Creating tax cuts, enacting welfare reform, protecting gun rights, and fighting Islamic terrorism/nation-building in the Middle East were polices that the Republican party heads had in mind for the next two decades. Since Buchanan’s rhetoric and desired policies ran counter to establishment Republican politics, the GOP banned him from speaking at 1996 RNC. Indeed, Buchanan finished second in the 1996 Republican presidential nomination, but that fact didn’t matter to the neoconservatives ruling the GOP. Clearly, his warnings didn’t mean much to the GOP and neocons back then.
Fast forward to almost thirty years later, the culture war is raging and getting worse. People now can get fired for a tweet they made in high school. Americans now longer trust their institutions—the education system, Congress, churches, the news media, and Corporate America. Americans don’t even trust each. Politically, the 2000, 2016, and 2020 presidential elections were some of the hotly contested presidential elections in United States history. We could go on and on about the many symptoms of the ongoing culture war.
To end his speech, Buchanan encouraged the audience to “… take back our cities, and take back our culture, and take back our country.” He was not calling for people to resort to physical violence. Instead, Buchanan wanted Americans rebuild and strengthen the building blocks of civil society—namely the American family and American churches. As a side note, many people believe–including myself–that Buchanan’s preferred policies and verbal discourse set the stage for President Trump’s presidential run over two decades later.
Again, the mainstream American conservative movement and the GOP did not heed Buchanan’s warning for the next two decades. Conservatives and Republicans figured out how to keep winning elections, but they lost American culture in the process.
Fortunately, patriots in the past several years have finally sought to reverse the stranglehold that the political left holds on nearly all of American institutions. Two examples—which I have personally witnessed—are occurring among the younger conservatives. The first is Turning Point USA (TP USA). Back in 2012, American conservative activist Charlie Kirk started this conservative student organization, which saw substantial growth during the Trump presidency. Today, this organization now boasts over 2,000 college and high school TP USA chapters across the country. People like Charlie Kirk are looking to change this nation for the better. The second organization is PragerU (and its subsidiary PragerForce). This non-profit media company was started in 2009 by famed radio host, writer, and political columnist Dennis Prager. Using its digital platform, PragerU’s mission has been to produce short internet videos and other internet content that provide conservative views from informed experts—on topics such as economics, history, religion, foreign affairs, and political science. With much of the PragerU audience being high school and college-aged students, this organization has aided in the fight to push back against the leftist indoctrination propaganda occurring in American schools. I mention both of these organizations because they both benefitted me personally. What’s more, TP USA and PragerU are positively advancing the conservative cause in the hostile American culture war.
My hope is that we—the ordinary American patriots—are willing to finally heed Buchanan’s warning to take our country back. The last few generations of American conservatives did not deal with culture war. The time is now to deal with.
Here’s a link to a YouTube Video that shows the whole “Culture War” speech: