The Conservative Case For Quitting The Whining & Winning the Culture Back

The price we pay for our boldness is lower than it’s been in years. It’s go time.

At one point in J.R.R. Tolkien’s the Lord of the Rings, the wizard Gandalf describes how the Ents, a mysterious tree-like race of beings who existed for thousands of years in relative apathy to the wider world around them, are suddenly about to make the choice to depart from this apathy and take a stand against the Dark Lord Sauron, the primary villain of the trilogy’s universe: “A thing is about to happen that has not happened since the Elder Days,” says Gandalf, referencing the tree people’s slow, building anger against the forces of darkness: “The Ents are going to wake up and find that they are strong.”

Whether or not the next four years truly usher in a Golden Age for America, there’s little doubt that ordinary Americans on the center and right are realizing once again how strong they are. The cost of being bold on behalf of conservative values, and of being unapologetic about cherishing faith and freedom is arguably lower than it’s been in years. This isn’t theoretical — I see the reality of this fact playing out in real time at my job, managing shareholder engagement at Bowyer Research, one of America’s fastest-growing pro-fiduciary corporate engagement firms.

Every day, I see ordinary Americans stepping up to the plate with boldness, willing to stand up and be counted as holding beliefs that were, until recently, deemed out of sync with the zeitgeist of our most prominent cultural institutions.

I see ordinary investors willing to use their financial influence, and more importantly to be known as people who use their financial influence, to engage with the companies they own and urge management to correct leftward drift in the boardroom, from ditching divisive DEI policies to ceasing corporate support for the extremes of gender ideology. And that work has given me a profound new look at how advocates of the timeless ideals of freedom can actually make headway in the culture — not through vapid ‘influencer’ culture but through creating actual influence within the spheres of life in which they have leverage.

Since the election of Donald Trump and the oft-referenced ‘vibe shift’ that somewhat preceded and certainly followed his second ascendancy to the White House, there’s been much talk about how truly effective many of the Right’s heralded changes will be. Is DOGE likely to succeed in curbing government waste, or is it simply playing on the margins? Can Trump’s slate of executive orders actually make headway against rooting out race discrimination under the guise of DEI in our institutions of education and business (answer: yes but it’s harder than anyone thinks)? And, especially among people who gravitate towards the center of that center-right constituency that’s been elevated to new cultural prominence, what about the excesses? Is there a place for the “normal right” in an era where the so-called “New Right” seems culturally dominant?

I hear this question asked all the time, mostly in the context of think pieces or panel discussions that offer far less answers than might be hoped. Indeed, the Trump-lukewarm (and certainly the Trump-critical) wing of the political Right often seems infected with a spirit of hand-wringing and sideline criticism, instead of new energy and optimism about cultural headway that can be made. This is an error, and in large part an unforced one. Swaths of the right that view MAGA as something less than the second coming believe they are somehow weak, politically defanged, and that the correct attitude to assume during Trump’s second presidency is one of perpetual criticism of the right.

It doesn’t have to be.

Outside of the political ivory towers, the reality is that conservatives of many stripes, from the classically liberal to the traditionally conservative, have a new opportunity to create positive growth for the country in arenas historically controlled by the left and its acolytes, who see individual liberty and markets as obstacles to be overcome, instead of promises to be seized with both hands.

Again, here the work of corporate engagement provides examples. The recent spate of executive orders targeting discriminatory DEI programs have been excellent fodder for conversations with major corporations looking to understand better the perspective of their investors who lean conservative. Trump’s renewed focus on energy independence has been an excellent pivot for conversations with energy companies looking for a perspective to balance out the anti-energy climate activists that have been haranguing them for years, and lecturing them about how awful it is for oil & gas companies to do business in oil & gas. Is that not a win? Many corporations we dialogue with have unbelievably limited exposure to how their conservative or religious shareholders think and perceive their brands. If this new vibe shift makes them more open to that dialogue, it’s hard to be cynical.

The classic idiom of ‘a rising tide lifts all boats’ applies to momentum just as much as it does to poverty alleviation or any other application. The center-right has momentum on its side now — that much is certain. There certainly are extremes on the right that need to be rooted out, and a conservative identity can and should be forged that doesn’t involve nativism, or blatant authoritarianism, or vapid social media savvy own-the-libs-ism (because being on the Right doesn’t require either of those things). Some things (and people) create so much drag they can’t be ignored if we want forward momentum. But for the love of all that matters, let’s not spend all our time focusing on what we’re not.

We’re supposed to be the defenders of the only system that brought billions of people out of poverty. We’re supposed to be the champions of a robust anthropology, one that prioritizes the innate dignity and responsibility of the human person. And we should be spending far more time and energy pushing that vision forward in the culture, from academia to the arts to the corporate sphere, than we do wallowing in self-pity about how ‘our version of true conservatism’ isn’t trending on X. In 20 years, people will not look back on this moment and think fondly of the people who pointed the most fingers. They’ll think of the people who built real institutions and laid the path for real cultural change. There is no reason we can’t be those people. We have a chance to accept that our values and skills, combined with a culture that has less barriers to conservative boldness than it’s had in years, is a unique opportunity that we can’t afford to waste on whining and apathy.

We have a chance to wake up and realize that we are strong. Because if we don’t do it now, we never will. And that’s just what the people who want us — yes, all of us — to fail are banking on.

Author bio: Isaac Willour oversees shareholder engagement at Bowyer Research, America's leading pro-fiduciary proxy consulting firm. He is an award-winning journalist and frequent commentator on ESG, DEI, and the culture war, with work in USA Today, National Review, The Daily Wire, The American Mind, and the Wall Street Journal. A graduate of Grove City College, Mr. Willour has appeared on shows ranging from Fox to the New York Times Opinion, and can be found on X @IsaacWillour.