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ideas. The various forms of conservatism converge in rejecting America’s globalized immigrant state—that is, the multicultural, multi-ethnic, change-driven meritocratic system open to all comers from around the world.
    The new conservative message resonates across national and cultural borders. In August 2012, Moscow even encouraged oligarchs to set up and fund a lobby in Britain called Conservative Friends of Russia. The lobby quickly set to work criticizing Pussy Riot. British people, however, felt much sympathy for the band’s predicament and admired the women’s courage; and, as the country that invented punk rock, England certainly didn’t support the Kremlin’s repression. Next, the website of the conservative lobby posted a picture of a Putin critic—a gay Briton who was a member of the EuropeanParliament—in underpants. Perhaps the lobby thought it could influence British politics by destroying regime critics through scandal. It miscalculated, though, and dissolved in a flurry of embarrassment in November 2012 after a number of prominent Conservative members of Parliament who had joined the lobby reconsidered and jumped ship. The lobby reconstituted itself as the Westminster Russia Forum.
    Despite its quick flameout, the lobby speaks volumes about the Russian attempt to make common cause with conservatism abroad. Moscow may have overreached in this case, but we shouldn’t dismiss the audacity and scope of its plan. Social conservatism can bind diverse cultures in common cause against the affluence-producing but destabilizing system of free markets and free speech. Nowhere has Russia demonstrated that fact more powerfully than in its massive internal and external propaganda campaign against Ukraine. It is an effort fueled, says one journalist, by “a cocktail of chauvinism, patriotism, and imperialism,” and it exploits deep-seated feelings in the Russian public—from nostalgia for Soviet power to resentment of the West, from nationalistic and ethnic pride to a desire for order and authority. As The Economist put it: “The public seems intoxicated by victory in a war that was begun, conducted, and won largely through propaganda.” 30
    Any propaganda system that can achieve something like that is formidable. Indeed, the Russian propaganda model is fierce, committed, and cogent. The Western model has none of these qualities.
    CONCLUSION
    A central attribute of the Western ethos has always been the ability to look at issues squarely, to discuss them openly. Openness has practical benefits; it allows debate that produces solutions. Yet the huge amplification of voices produced by proliferating media in recent years—from cable TV to satellite to the Internet—has paradoxically weakened our advantages. Our debates have grown louder and ever more politicized and polarized, leaving leaders unable to resolve a host of major questions.
    Ruling from the top down, making unilateral decisions after only minimum debate, our rivals can address questions on a range of issues: immigration, abortion, ethnic integration, curbs on globalization, the gender wars, the aging population, the contradiction between savings and consumerism, among many other vexing challenges. Despite the constant blizzard of media coming out of the United States daily, we offer fewer and fewer coherent answers to the world’s questions—especially compared with the Cold War days, when we embodied and articulated clear pathways for others to follow.
    Our incoherence in the face of global challenges is also partly due to our reluctance since the Cold War to conduct ourselves as a public example to the world. The discipline imposed by those years gave way to a kind of post-triumph relaxation. We felt that our way of life had won. It spoke for itself. We no longer needed to be aware that the world was watching our every move. We didn’t need to defend our societal choices or bear ourselves consciously as role models with a stake in our own