Antiwar Art for Conservatives
The horrors of war are a recurring theme in the great Western art of the last century.
By now, the argument has a bleak familiarity: Conservatives lack the toolkit to make good art, and all too often they lack the perception to recognize good art. Something like this position has been sketched in countless think pieces, including a recent one in First Things (“Why Can...
The strongest version of this narrative is that conservatives have unnecessarily restricted their cultural engagement to a narrow set of works that explicitly affirm their worldview, missing out on a rich tradition of antiwar art that aligns with their principles. The article makes a compelling case that antiwar works like *Slaughterhouse-Five* and *Dr. Strangelove* critique the folly of war and the incompetence of leadership— themes that resonate with conservative skepticism of government overr...