“Republicans are conservatives,” said author and CEO Kenin Spivak recently. “Conservatives are conservative.” This tautology was uttered to answer a question: Why do Republicans lose social and cultural wars despite winning elections?
The topic was raised on Wednesday’s edition of Bill Martinez Live. Spivak, who is also a financier, attorney, and consultant, addressed a line he penned in a June 15 RealClearPolitics article. He’d written that despite an edge in winning elections and appointing 60% of Supreme Court justices confirmed over the last 65 years, conservatives have been on the losing end of nearly every social and cultural battle and most policy disputes.
Explaining how this happened on Martinez’s program, he stated: The Democrats, and progressives in particular, have spent 75 years advancing themselves throughout all of our major institutions—education, federal government, state government, and the media. They’ve really gotten a hammerlock on those institutions. And they’ve used their control to pass regulations, not laws, where someone else in another institution must comply with a rule they issue for a benefit to accrue. Then, in the other institution, they pass that rule—creating a cycle of back-and-forth enforcement. This dynamic has given them victory on all cultural and policy matters.
How does this work? Consider this example:
Government Pressure on Social Media Platforms (Media/Tech/Information Flow)
Mechanism: White House officials, the Surgeon General, CDC, and FBI engaged in repeated communications with platforms like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube to censor content on topics including COVID-19 origins/treatments/vaccines, the Hunter Biden laptop story, election integrity, and conservative viewpoints. This was framed as combating “misinformation” or “disinformation,” backed by threats of regulatory consequences such as changes to Section 230 liability protections.
Cross-institution cycle: Platforms adjusted content moderation policies and algorithms to align with government priorities, affecting what millions saw and influencing public opinion. Documented in the Twitter Files and related court cases (e.g., Missouri v. Biden).
Outcome: Reduced visibility or outright removal of dissenting views on cultural issues, effectively shaping the information environment without new laws from Congress.
This is especially egregious because it inhibits discussions that shape culture. Spivak’s point about regulatory institutional cross-infection is sound—but there’s more. Spivak’s line “Conservatives are conservative” is a legitimate warning; it’s why I long ago ceased identifying as conservative. Philosopher G.K. Chesterton captured this in 1924: “The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected.”
These two ideologies are not fixed positions but processes. Liberalism is the process of changing the status quo; conservatism, the process of maintaining it. Thus, as the status quo shifts, conservative stances adapt. The liberals act as change agents.
Conservatives are simply defending yesterday’s liberal victories within today’s status quo. Imagine this as a cultural land war: only one side takes offense—liberals attack, conservatives defend—but they’re pressured to compromise. Regardless of how much territory is ceded (10%, 3%, or 1%), liberals eventually seize Traditionland entirely. It will still be called Traditionland, but conservatives will continue defending it, oblivious to the fact that their ancestors’ realm no longer exists.
A real-world example: Leftists demanded same-sex marriage recognition. Conservatives softened and capitulated. True defenders would have rejected the attack and demanded restoration of marriage as a solely religious institution—acting with equal passion for preservation as the left showed for degradation.
Another factor: Ancient Chinese sage Confucius noted, “I have never seen one [person] who loves virtue as much as he loves sex.” The left markets vice—a far easier sell than virtue.
That’s why conservatives always lose cultural battles. Remember: If the Founding Fathers had been conservatives, they would have been Loyalists—not founders.
So when pondering whether you’re conservative, ask this: What, exactly, would I be conserving?
Selwyn Duke has written for The New American for more than a decade and has contributed to publications including The Hill, The Observer, The American Conservative, WorldNetDaily, and American Thinker. He is also a frequent guest on radio.
