Conservatives tell themselves a story about stories. It goes like this: I’m too busy with my business, my job, my family, or my church to waste time on fiction. Stories are frivolous, unimportant things — better left to children or dreamers. Real life is about work, not imagination.
That narrative feels practical, even virtuous. But it’s also false — and dangerously so. Because stories are not optional decorations on culture. They are its foundation.
Even the most hard-headed conservative already knows this, if they pause to notice. Jesus Himself didn’t lecture in policy papers; He told parables. A Samaritan on a roadside, a prodigal son crawling home, a shepherd leaving ninety-nine sheep to search for one — these are stories that have shaped the moral imagination of the West for two thousand years.
Ronald Reagan understood this. He didn’t just talk about tax policy; he painted the image of a “shining city on a hill.” He told stories of small-town heroes, brave soldiers, and ordinary families striving for a better life. Reagan’s genius was that he gave Americans a way to imagine themselves.
Abraham Lincoln did the same. His speeches were laced with parables, homely humor, and moral tales. The Gettysburg Address is pure narrative: a nation “conceived in liberty,” tested in battle, reborn in freedom. He gave meaning to sacrifice by weaving it into a larger story of national destiny.
And Donald Trump, in his own way, told a story that millions believed. America had been betrayed by corrupt elites, ordinary people forgotten, but together they could “Make America Great Again.” That is a classic story arc — fall, betrayal, redemption — and people didn’t just hear it. They felt themselves inside it.
Conservatives revere these stories, repeat them to their children, and live by their lessons. Yet somehow, when it comes to the wider culture, they convince themselves that stories don’t matter. Meanwhile, their opponents pour every resource into novels, movies, music, and memes — capturing the imagination while conservatives are busy dismissing the whole enterprise.
Revolutionaries Lead With Story
Revolutionaries, however, have always understood the power of story. They know that statistics and manifestos don’t move people. Stories do. And so every major movement has led with narrative, reshaping how ordinary people imagine themselves and their world.
The French Revolution was fueled less by bread prices than by the tale of decadent nobles feasting while the people starved. The “let them eat cake” line — false though it was — captured an injustice in a single, unforgettable image.
Communism dressed itself up in charts and theory, but what spread wasn’t Das Kapital. It was the story of the oppressed worker rising against the fat capitalist, hammered into the imagination through Soviet posters, films, and novels.
The American Revolution didn’t win hearts with abstract legal disputes. “No taxation without representation” was a story of a people abused by a tyrant. Paine’s Common Sense painted liberty as a living character, fighting for her life.
The Civil Rights Movement didn’t ignite America through legal briefs but through vision. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a dream” offered a story of children walking hand in hand, of valleys lifted up and mountains made low.
Why first? Because every revolution begins in the imagination:
- Narrative shapes identity — “Who am I? Who are we?” Without that, no revolution coheres.
- Narrative creates villains and heroes — revolutions need oppressors and liberators.
- Narrative bypasses logic — people may argue policy, but a gripping story lodges in the gut.
- Narrative spreads fast — a story can be repeated, dramatized, and believed by those who never read the manifesto.
That is why revolutionary leaders from Lenin to Hitler to Castro obsessed over art, posters, songs, films, and even children’s literature. They knew the iron law of politics: if you win the story, the politics will follow.
Where Conservatives Stumbled
And this is where conservatives have stumbled. While revolutionaries pour energy into stories, conservatives dismiss them as frivolous. Too busy with business. Too busy with family. Too busy with church. Stories don’t matter.
But stories do matter. They come first. And by abandoning that ground, conservatives have guaranteed that the other side gets to set the narrative. We are always reacting, always on defense, because the villains and heroes have already been cast before we open our mouths.
When schools, Hollywood, news outlets, and even superhero franchises saturate the culture with stories that paint white, conservative, Christian men as oppressors, we can hardly be surprised when people cheer their downfall. The script was written years ago. All we’re doing is walking onto a stage where our part has already been assigned.
I said over a decade ago that conservatives had ceded not just the cultural story of America, but even the story about conservatives, to liberals. We let them write us as the villains — backward, bigoted, ignorant, dangerous. And we failed to fight back, even though the structure of the Hero’s Journey itself makes plain who the heroes and villains are.
That failure has had consequences. Entire generations have grown up with no narrative of the noble farmer, the faithful pastor, the dutiful soldier, or the hard-working father who provides for his family. Instead, they have been told — over and over — that such men are hypocrites, oppressors, and threats. When tragedy strikes, the audience has already been trained how to react.
Taking Back Our Story
Now it is imperative that we take back our story, if we want to retain our culture. Without reclaiming narrative, every business built, every policy debated, every election won will eventually be swept away. Because once the imagination is conquered, the rest follows.
Reclaiming the story means more than writing op-eds or fact-checking bad headlines. It means putting our energy where revolutionaries always have: into the imagination.
We need books that remind children of courage and sacrifice. We need films that show fathers as protectors, not punchlines. We need songs that celebrate beauty, family, and faith. We need schools and churches that pass down not just doctrines, but living stories of who we are. We even need to resurrect the old practice of telling family stories around the table — because children who know their ancestors’ sacrifices stand stronger in the world.
And we need people to buy those books, view those films, listen to those songs — our artists must be supported, or they will give up. Stories die if they are not sustained by communities willing to carry them forward.
This isn’t optional. It’s survival. If we don’t reclaim the imagination, the left will keep scripting us as villains until our culture believes it has no heroes left. But if we do — if we tell stories rooted in truth, beauty, and goodness — we can reset the narrative. We can show America not just what we are against, but what we are for: faith that redeems, families that endure, freedom that uplifts.
Every business built, every law passed, every battle fought rests on this foundation. The story comes first. If we win the story, we win the culture. And if we win the culture, the politics will follow.
It’s time to stop living in someone else’s script. It’s time to tell our own.
Editor’s Note: Help us shape the stories that will fuel conservatism in the future.
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