[Kulturkampf]

Our lives are defined by our own actions and efforts; our joys are our own, our pains are our own, and our honor and dishonor is entirely relative to ourselves. There is a personal choice in everything that we do, and perhaps that is the scariest thing of all: that we can do as we please, live as we please, and we are only governed (essentially) by physical laws of nature. In short, we are our own people, we are our own society, and there is no one who can take away our freedom.

Prominent psychologist Albert Ellis once said:

The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny.

The quote illustrates an important point of a conservative ideology: that we are responsible for ourselves, and that our problems are our own (as are our achievements). Even when it comes to receiving help from another or taking good advice, it is still our choice to go that route.

Certainly, there are a myriad of influences out there, and we can easily become susceptible to bad ideas. The difference between the good man and the bad man, the strong man and the weak man, is that when the good man makes the wrong choice and messes up, he is prepared to correct his errors and go down a new path, whereas the bad man keeps succumbing to his bad influences and becomes dependent.

A culture that accepts defeat and succumbs to its' own bane is a culture that will destroy its' own nation.

The United States culture is headed in that direction: we believe we can solve our problems through drugs to make us happy like Prozac, or solve our problems through welfare programs and 'saving the trees.' People bring meaning into their life through a political agenda.

Economist Thomas Sowell noted that the one thing that really destroyed black America was President Johnson's "Great Society" that intended to build up large, urban house estates for impoverished people to live in (who at the time was greatly made up of blacks). Pres. Johnson succeeded only in establishing poor districts that became places of last resort, and establishing a local economy and a public school system that offered little help.

The society was never integrated, and due to an environment of total negativity, few people escaped it. The 'Great Society' made a sub-society dependent on government hand-outs, and these hand-outs humbled a group of people to unemployment and tough times in urban districts. In the end, nothing was accomplished, but rather, the fabric of a society was destroyed by this welfare attempt.

This is what a kulturkampf is about: a struggle for a positive society where hand-outs are frowned on, and men understand that their fates belong to themselves as opposed to being dependent on a government hand-out, and this becomes the empowering element for a society.