It seems more unquestionable by the day that, in the next few years, the Zapatero project to change Spanish society is going to intensify, widen, and deepen. First, just as the Equality Ministry shows, he is starting with the institutions. Moreover, at the same time, working from them, the social acculturation – the “acceleration” of history in progressive terms we have been experiencing lately – will intensify. The President is right when he speaks about “a project for the Spain of the future.” He has a project and it is for real.

           

It also seems more evident that the Popular Party – absent until now regarding cultural and moral issues – will participate, grudgingly, in Rodríguez Zapatero’s moral and cultural project. Beyond economic or institutional aspects, the party has renounced to present an alternative classical liberal- conservative project to match the socialist one – and it will instead go with the flow due to electoral and sociological needs as a means to reach power. It is already doing that.

 

The opposition exercised during the last years by the Spanish classical liberal-conservative civil society has arrived late and it just served to scratch the surface of the problem. It did not achieve its objective in March 2008. And it happened for a powerful reason: Rodríguez Zapatero is possible because a certain conception of man, politics, and society itself – that favors the appearance and permanence of certain figures of which he himself is the best example – has caught on in Spanish society. 

 

It is a real culture that can be referred to in many different ways (progressivism, groupthink or pensée unique, do-goodism.) Nevertheless, it is culture given that it polishes and educates society; besides, it favors and allows certain policies such as the lies about the ETA negotiation process, yielding to Jihadism or to minorities that rally around that culture – a kind of culture that has been there before Rodríguez Zapatero’s coming, but that it has only intensified because of him.

 

In the next four years, the cultural winds that have been blowing for a long time are going to crystallize politically and institutionally. The Left senses intuitively and correctly that in order to change the State’s basic institutions, it must first change the social mentality, teach society pedagogically – something the Left has been doing for years. The well-worn “battle of ideas” should respond to that. 

 

Engaging in the battle of ideas is something that not because one repeats it over and over, becomes real; it is more a common idea than an idea with content. Neocons, classical liberals, conservatives demand to wage it, but the fact is that they are not waging it. The Right gets stuck in too generic ideas; individual freedom, dignity of man, free market. That discourse has two problems: First, it is too generic; it is equivalent to saying nothing regarding the day-to-day political life. Secondly, since it is generic, it can even be assumed by the Left as a sanctioning discourse to go on turning the screw.

 

Today the diagnosis is extremely worrisome; the Right seeks to reach power only when economic problems demand its intervention. However, once in power, it proves incapable to do something more than just managing and reorganizing the administration; the Left returns later on for another turn of the screw regarding more profound ideological, moral, and cultural questions, but with the State enjoying a healthy economy. The eight years of the Popular Party in power represented economic progress for Spain; however, the party left unscathed the moral and ideological foundations that socialist Felipe González left in 1996. Therefore, in 2004, Rodríguez Zapatero only had to resume where González left off, so that in 2008, Zapatero could carry the arguments one step further.

 

The policies favoring divorce, gay marriage, euthanasia or abortion are not policies advancing minorities, much less constituting “social rights.” It does not answer to the needs of a social group – no matter how small. It is above all a way to educate society, communicating that this is good; homosexuality is good, euthanasia is good, moral relativism is good. The example of divorce express is valid; it conveys the idea that divorcing fast is a right. Consequently, people divorce more, since it becomes natural and positive in social circles. Since it is the natural thing to do, the stable marriage becomes less and less natural. And the same goes with respect to the life of terminal patients or the unborn. Little by little, insisting and going deeper on these “rights,” society is educated in a set of values, all of them contrary to what liberalism or conservatism mean, but close to intellectual relativism, moral nihilism, and the hyperlegitimation of the State to the detriment of individual conscience.

 

This policy of “giving rights” and vindicating them generates the need to deepen the concepts, because it creates a certain mindset about man and his future. And so on. They educate society – in the amplest sense of the word. That leaves the Right completely out of the game; the more time goes by, the more difficult it is to reverse that trend. It places the Right in a Catch-22 situation – it must either renounce the idea of winning elections or it must give up being the Right. In other words, the Right must not fight the established progressive dogmas and it should instead make them their own in order to try to win over voters. In GEES, we have described this historic political asymmetry in two articles: Batalla de las ideas: Asimetría cultural, and after the elections, Elecciones 9-M. Agravar los problemas o empezar a solucionarlos. 

 

History in Spain advances in progressive terms, half of society is increasingly joining the leftist persuasion and those persons who do not, find themselves morally on the defensive. Naturally, this is not a historical need – as the Left pretends to portray – it is simply the result of its cultural activity besides the complacency and reticence of the Right. It says nothing about historical progress, the loss of prestige of family law, affirmative action or patient deaths in charge of the State. Nevertheless, it educates the society it addresses, just in line with the new engineers of the human soul; be it anti-liberals, anti-conservatives, anti-Christians or totalitarians. 

 

This circle can hardly be broken by appealing to the wallets of Spaniards, or to “moderation.” Historically, whatever one does to avoid going to the bottom of a problem or to reject the idea in full, implies accepting its logic. The Right may try to water it down, refine it, clarify it, but it ultimately accepts the general logic of destroying the foundations of an open society. Consequently, the Left accuses the Right to accept “progress” grudgingly. In fact, the Left is right in its assertion; however, not because that thing is progress, but because the Right’s moral apathy pushes history to the left. And it is not really history; it is the will some have to create it while others refuse to do it which makes society tilt increasingly to the left. And it is not either that society really tilts left; in historical terms, it really translates in the suicide of Spain as a nation and as a disaster for liberal democracy in our country and Europe.

 

 

From our point of view, historical fatalism has nothing to do with this; the fact that liberalism is increasingly weakened has nothing to do with some determinism, but instead to concrete and sustained decisions in time. The controversies about minority rights, euthanasia or the separation of Church and State are not a matter of rights – or not exclusively of rights. Neither was the Spanish anti-war campaign a simple protest. Above all, they imply a moral project for the future, a campaign to discredit the premise of the individual conscience, but to praise public/state interventionism, the creation of a new order.

 

It is a project that the Right should bother to nip in the bud – if it wants to have an opportunity to reach power within four, eight or twelve years. If the Right wants to get rid – and also rid Spanish society – of this historical trend, it must go to the core of the main historic-cultural issues that currently entice classical liberals or conservatives. In the case of cultural and ideological policies, it means presenting a closed defense of the family, eliminating its comparison with gay marriage, penalizing abortion, going after euthanasia, controlling mosques, toughening up on mandatory education. And at the same time it means defending active policies in favor of large families, enhancing the protection of terminally-ill patients, and developing the rights of parents and the unborn. The Right is scared to death about these issues; it usually avoids them using excuses and internal discussions and that gives the go-ahead to the Left so it can push history towards the leftist side.

 

The Right’s abdication to put forth these problems has also provoked in it a need to look obsessively for the Left’s consent and permission – and the Left has not only been disrespectful but it has tightened the screws on history. It has kidnapped history by controlling the political and moral agenda because it does control the cultural and moral agenda. That is why liberating history demands going to basic cultural, anthropological sources – those that still resist the sway of progressive dogmas. The nature of marriage as a social need as well as the need to protect Judeo-Christian morality above the others.

 

That is the pending task – not any other one. Elections can be won by controlling the propaganda, but this control cannot change history, not even liberate it. Are classical liberals, conservatives or neocons ready to confront what today seem to be undisputable rights? Are they ready to go against what seems to be modern and liberating achievements?  Are they ready to turn what today already seems to be reactionary into a political bet at least as worthy as the progressive version? This would certainly be the only way to liberate history from a fate that threatens to swallow them all because in the leftist dream paradise, neither traditions nor the individual nor the free market will have a place. 

 

 

It must be done because the consequence of the present situation is not that nostalgic people see society going without a clear destination or that the Spanish moral drift offends religious people. The consequence is that, since the Center is increasingly permissive with the Left and these leftist forces are moving even faster and further to the left, the ideas that during centuries have constituted the essential part of Europe’s ethos and debates seem to be harmful now. Every day, whole parts of the Right movement are singled out as suspicious reactionaries or radicals. It is only natural, if gay marriage is good for society, if mercy killing is progress, then, there are reasons to consider the Right as something reactionary – the Right movement as a whole. 

 

It is necessary to discuss about all the myths of the Left regarding history, religion, sexuality, education, the past, the future, “rights” – from an antithetic alternative compared to the progressive one. And when the Right reaches power, it will be necessary to do and undo things using the Government in the same fashion the Left does and undoes: By institutional, political, and social means. Only the Law and common sense put the limit. It is necessary to roll back the version of history that progressivism advances; and make it advance in the opposite direction that the Left pretends because it is at least as legitimate as the contrary. It is  not only legitimate: it is better for Spaniards as well as for Europeans.

 

The task is trying to liberate history from progressivism’s ideological kidnapping. If classical liberals, conservatives and neocons do not succeed in this endeavor, within four years we will be worse off than now; we will live in a society culturally leaning more to the left and a Popular Party in identical position – a party in which certain ideas will become increasingly annoying and bothersome. For that reason, it is necessary to get down to business and start as soon as possible, from mass media outlets, organizations, and, by all means, think tanks. It is necessary to rebalance history, even if it is only to redeem the democratic game. It is time to liberate history.