Understanding the 2022 Vote

Dateline November 16, In the Year of our Lord 2022

Last week, Judy Woodruff announced she was stepping down from her role as the PBS NewsHour Anchor.  In an interview with CBS's Jane Pauley, Woodruff expressed her concern that America's political divide is so stark that she fears it may come to a literal war.  Her despair seemed to be rooted in more than politics. 

After all was said and done in last week’s elections, it takes some calculus to understand what is happening.  With the economy in bad shape, several pronounced missteps by the Democrat administration, and an uninspiring personality in the White House, things should have gone differently.  Even with gaslighting and the press acting as an arm of the Democrat party, it’s tough to overcome people’s felt experience with their grocery bills.  So, why did people vote the way they did?  Setting aside the possibility of more ballot harvesting, the result of the election seems to reinforce a thesis we put forth in Battle for the American Mind.  Here, I’ll pull together commentary and data from several sources to illuminate how we got here and what we must do.

Jordan Peterson interviewed Newt Gingrich with similar questions about where we are politically.  When asked about the vote, Gingrich replied, "You're really dealing with a secular religion rather than a political movement … you have all the fervor and intensity and blindness of a religious movement.”  To which Peterson responds, "What happens if you don't render unto God what is God's? … The deeper down you go, the more it becomes religious … There's no getting away from the religious … The Political becomes the substitute for that depth."  

So, it seems that two sides now stand, toe to toe, in conflict.  On one side is a secular religion and on the other is an American traditionalist religion (mostly Republican) that, like it or not, has joined a de facto alliance with the faithful Christian church.  

Fractures in the Christian church further complicate this alliance.  To clarify this complication,  Aaron Renn argues that the Christian church's relationship to wider culture has moved from a positive one before 1994, to a neutral relationship between 1994 and 2014, to a negative one post 2014.  "Christians understand that the majority of the public simply does not agree with their social positions," says Renn.  Churches do not seem to know how to respond in this situation.  Zooming out on the timeline helps.

Renn's explanation, though helpful, is similar to the sunburn-like rash that signals the onset of Scarlet Fever.  The rash is merely the topical observation of a much deeper disease—one emerging from a bacterial streptococcus infection throughout the body. 

In Battle for the American Mind, Pete Hegseth and I argue that the time horizon on this problem is much older and much deeper.   

Between 1920 and about 1970, the "American Progressive Paideia" in America’s schools replaced the Western Christian Paideia (the WCP) that had previously been the fount of our nation's culture.  Remnants of this American Progressive Paideia oddly blended into conservative ideology mid-century.

The blend created a frankenstein-esc paideia for graduates of our nation’s schools between 1940 and 1990 — I call this the Americanism Paideia (AP), with the founding fathers as “God” and the U.S. Constitution as divine revelation. 

The AP possesses some merit, but lacks a deep and doctrinally coherent base.  Conservatives are unable to mount a cohesive response to our culture because we have such a shallow base.  Thus G.K. Chesterton observed: “The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes.  The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected.”

Between 1970 and 2000, the AP was gradually replaced by the progressives as they furthered their position. The result—a Cultural Marxist Paideia (CMP)—came into full flower in 2020.  It is now the foundation of our public school system, and it is doing what all education does—it’s producing adults with a paideia that perpetuates its source – in this case, cultural Marxism.  This is why paideia is the most powerful social tool in the world.  As we cited scholar Lawrence Cremin’s observation of the Progressive education system: “If education was to be the principal engine of an intentionally progressive society, then the politics of education would have significance far beyond the control of schools. Or child saving institutions. Or communication organizations; in the end, it would hold the key to the achievement of the most fundamental political aspirations—in effect, the key to the American Paideia.” [p. 96 of Battle for the American Mind] 

In the chart below reflecting last week’s elections, we can clearly see the age divide created by two distinct paideias—the AP and the CMP.  

In 1992, James Carville, Bill Clinton's strategist, famously said the election was about "The Economy, Stupid."  And it was.  Then.  In fact, throughout the 20th century, nearly every conservative and liberal talking point was about money or war.  But, as the cultural Marxist paideia rose in our schools, politics shifted.  In the election last week, the economy could not have conceivably driven the Democratic victories. With the possible exception of student loan debt, political energy among the youth was driven by abortion, gay marriage, LGBT activism, environmentalism, CRT, etc.—and more importantly, by the belief that to practice and enforce their ideals without consequence or limitation is a right and a virtue.  These are social issues that resemble religious convictions more than kitchen table politics.

 The real story is revealed when we look at a longer timeline.

If we look back to 1976, we see something odd.  While the orange (18-29) and blue lines (aged 30-44) move around within the electorate, something happens to the youth vote in about 2002.  The orange line, representing the voters just out of school,  and later the blue line, takes a bold lurch toward democrats.  I used the House Vote because all seats are open each year, but all measures that I found pointed to this same drastic spike since 2002. (source:  AEI)  

The divide is palpable.

From this, we can postulate that a powerful force moved the youth vote over the past 20 years, more so than in the past.  How did this change so fast?  In the mid 80s, “reason” and understanding faded in America’s schools, replaced with a slow ethical shift toward mild Critical Theory-inspired ethics.  By 2000, teachers trained in the 80’s and 90’s started the transformation to a systematic cultural Marxist view, full force.  This timeline comports with stories I’ve been told by public school teachers.  By 2020, we had been graduating students with CMP for a decade,  and this has radically changed the issues that drive politics.  Economics took a back seat to ethics.  The establishment of the Cultural Marxist Paideia has now, or will soon, captivate 70% of our youth.  And, it’s just getting started.  The full-on CMP hasn’t yet been cultivated.  But, we’ve seen its fruits in the past two years.  A new ethical system for the secular religion is on the rise.

Economics change.  Ethics are hard to change.  The future is bleak.  Pretending otherwise does not change our situation.

There is some good news.  During the 1970s and 80s, radical cultural Marxists in the Democrat party represented a small group.  But, they focused on education.  They infiltrated the mechanisms of education with ease because the progressives already controlled the power centers—teachers colleges, teacher unions, accreditation, etc.  A relatively small group managed to reorient the schools to their cause.  

We can do the same, but we have to be willing to be radical.  We have to be willing to take extreme action to get our kids away from the schools that are, and into the schools that will transform the future—classical Christian schools.  And, our classical Christian schools and parents have to take their job seriously.  We must be committed to standing against the world’s foolishness both in how we educate, and in the overt lessons we teach our children—at school and at home.  Pull no punches.  Do not give ground.  Do not interpret Scripture using the new dictionary given to us by the Cultural Marxists. Do not compromise with the ideas they insidiously insert, no matter how small the compromise may seem, even in the name of being winsome.  Read chapter 12 of Battle… and join the insurgency.

If you want to know how, check out what we’re doing at the ACCS, and click “Support the Movement.”