Liberals increasingly treat politics as religion. They may have abandoned traditional faith, but they have not abandoned devotion. They possess saints, heretics, rituals, taboos, pilgrimages, and a vision of salvation. That political faith has given progressives the commitment required to capture institutions, build machines, and shape the future.

Conservatives often respond with mockery.

The people you mock are organizing the world your grandchildren will inherit. Build something capable of stopping them.

We’ve all laughed at the childless, blue-haired activists lauding socialism behind their COVID masks. We point at and mock the unemployed polycule, the emotional instability, the theatrical rage, and the childish demands to abolish police, erase borders, and destroy capitalism.

The mockery is usually deserved. The dismissal is not.

Those ridiculous people keep showing up. They organize. They make art. They join committees. They staff bureaucracies. They run nonprofits. They enter classrooms. They write rules. They decide what your children learn, what your employees may say, and what your business must obey.

The joke is on conservatives who laugh while losing.

Conservatives build businesses, raise families, and grow churches. These are real achievements. They are more honorable than spending one’s life screaming slogans outside a courthouse or enforcing ideology from a human resources department.

But honorable work can become an excuse for political and cultural surrender.

Many conservatives tell themselves that activism is merely a symptom of liberal dysfunction. They imagine their own reluctance to organize proves superior health. Politics has become religion for the left, they say, while conservatives seek salvation elsewhere.

All true. None of it excuses the shocking lack of action.

Alexis de Tocqueville identified the American habit that once prevented private life from collapsing into selfish isolation. In “Democracy in America,” he praised Americans for their nearly compulsive desire to form associations.

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They founded churches, schools, hospitals, libraries, fraternities, unions, charities, and local organizations with their own money and labor. These institutions created a dense web of civic life. They restrained individualism, solved local problems, and reduced the need for distant government.

Americans did not retreat from public life because they had families and businesses. They entered public life through their families, businesses, churches, lodges, and communities. That habit has largely fallen by the wayside.

Just a few decades ago, the average right-leaning businessman might also belong to the Elks Lodge, the American Legion, the Rotary Club, or a local church committee. These associations provided mutual aid, mentored young men, supported local institutions, and connected families across generations.

They were also political and cultural centers.

Men decided there to support a friend for city council. Couples organized fundraisers for the orchestra, hospital, or school. Veterans discussed local problems over beer. Business owners pooled money and influence. Neighbors formed habits of trust before a crisis demanded them.

Almost every great political and cultural movement began with passionate, like-minded people bonding over a drink.

The left’s version is uglier because the left is uglier. Progressive organizations often produce coercion, resentment, and ideological fanaticism. Conservatives are right to reject their ends.

But rejecting progressive ends does not justify abandoning organization itself.

If left-wing activists are so absurd, why do they keep winning? Why do they control education, entertainment, philanthropy, corporate bureaucracies, and much of government?

They win because they show up.

Conservative mockery has become a coping mechanism. It allows the right to transform defeat into evidence of superiority. The progressive may control the school board, but at least the conservative has a successful landscaping company and grills excellent barbecue.

The man with the barbecue may be happier and saner. The school board still controls his children’s curriculum.

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Birth rates provide another excuse.

Conservatives correctly note that they are having more children than liberals. They assume demography will eventually deliver political victory. But children do not inherit politics like eye color.

Two obstacles destroy the fantasy of automatic triumph.

First, Democrats import loyal new voters faster than Republicans can raise children, and many immigrant populations have higher birth rates than native-born conservatives.

Second, the left controls the institutions that shape those children. Schools, universities, entertainment, music, social media, and corporate culture bombard young people with progressive assumptions all day.

A weekly church service and a few family dinners cannot compete with 16 hours of ideological formation unless parents build stronger institutions around their children.

Conservatives can fill houses with children and still lose every one of them politically.

I know stalwart conservative parents with five children who all became progressives. Their parents provided food, shelter, discipline, and love. The culture supplied the worldview.

Having children is not a political strategy. Raising them inside a durable culture is.

The same principle applies to business. Building a successful dealership, construction company, or restaurant is admirable. Building a fourth company while ignoring the city council, school board, local arts institutions, and state legislature is strategic negligence.

Politics will eventually enter the business whether the owner enters politics or not.

The left understands this. It does not separate cultural production, political organization, and economic power. It coordinates them.

Conservatives must recover the same seriousness without adopting the left’s fanaticism.

That means forming associations, funding artists, supporting schools, mentoring young people, running for local office, attending meetings, building media, and creating networks that survive one election cycle.

Not everyone must become a full-time activist. Everyone with something to conserve must contribute to the work of conservation. The task is difficult, time-consuming, and often thankless. It will interfere with leisure. It may cost money that could have purchased another boat, vacation, or business expansion.

Progressives understand that power shapes the conditions under which private life unfolds. Conservatives keep hoping private success will somehow neutralize public defeat. It will not.

The people you mock are organizing the world your grandchildren will inherit. Build something capable of stopping them.