Pursue Culture, Not Death, This Vacation – The American Spectator

The latest fad is to travel to dangerous destinations. That is, to die. Perhaps there are people who are de facto not so far removed from the postulates of politicians who advocate euthanasia. The trend is not to travel, or to go on vacation somewhere, but to have experiences, and often those experiences include getting your ass bitten by a crocodile, breaking your teeth on a rock while rafting, or trying to survive without food or tools in the middle of a murderous and solitary jungle.

Be that as it may, for the huge group of people who do not want the highlight of their vacations to be a near escape from death, there is always the problem of what to do with their free time. Family, sports, hiking, eating out. You know, summer. But we conservatives can aspire to more than just putting our brains in formaldehyde for weeks at a time and letting life pass us by without too much hassle. We can embrace culture, yes. Read, feel, reflect, contemplate, listen, kiss. We have art. History. Literature.

August is the month when you start reading a big book; it is the time to dust off old movies you have always wanted to watch; it is the ideal time to approach periods of history that you find interesting and that you have not yet mastered, or an occasion to brush up on your old notions of philosophy. After all, rest, they say, is just a change of activity, and no one has said that new activity has to be snoring on the couch in front of the TV.

I am not suggesting that you spend the entirety of your vacations reading Kant and St. Augustine, but I am suggesting that you set aside some time, that you be a little demanding with yourself, that you take a single step in defense of the humanities at a time when they need our support more than ever. And the only real support that can be given to the humanities is to study and read, to go deeper, to know them, to spread them. All the rest is just talk for writers with pretensions of saving libraries from burning, among whom I include myself. 

“I know some who are constantly drunk on books as other men are drunk on whiskey,” said H.L. Mencken, and it serves to remind us that being drunk on words is a happy and useful intoxication, and one that does not leave a dry mouth, or a headache, the next day. I know that readers of The American Spectator are good readers, but even so, we can all take advantage of the vacations to take a step further in our commitment to culture, to bohemia, to the arts, and devote a little more time, or even just a higher quality of our minutes, to it.

As a writer, with this whole culture thing, I often use the communicating vessels theory. That is: As I manage to read at my usual pace, I manage to write at my usual speed. Reading is my fuel. When, for whatever reasons, I don’t manage to read as much as is my custom in the course of two or three days, my prose starts to become lazy, boring, and confusing. The reason is that literature lubricates the mind, loosens the tongue, and blesses the hands with which you will write afterward. 

And I am convinced that the same properties that are so useful to me are also useful to those who have many other very different occupations. I was talking about it the other day with an old conservative. “Itxu, what is the highest priority of a contemporary conservative?” he asked. My answer surprised him (not me, of course): “Moral education.” 

I include “moral” because it is perhaps the word that best encompasses the whole, best represents the skeleton and the nucleus. And yet, it would be fairer to speak of education in a broad sense. The reason is simple: The postmodern Left has become more dangerous than ever, and defending our ideas is increasingly complex in the midst of widespread confusion. That’s why we need to understand the issues, know them thoroughly, and be able to debate them boldly, whether it’s climate change, tearing down statues, trans advocacy, or contemporary journalism. 

Let’s study, friends. Let’s study at the bottom of a swimming pool if necessary. Let’s read the classics. Let us contemplate the art of Greece and Rome. Let us grow, without fear, inward.

Translated by Joel Dalmau.