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I sympathize both with the lost-causers and with your criticism. The tide has moved constantly to uproot family, nation, religion, and God throughout my lifetime. Since World War II, each rally for conservatism ended in defeat, leaving us in a worse place than when we started.
But it is a mistaken to think that the purpose of our work is victory. Scholars and thinkers do not work for victory, much as we may desire it. We work to lay the better foundations for a time when a future generation may triumph.
In this sense, it is important to distinguish politics from the work of advancing ideas. Politicians are always concerned with what can be done in the here and now. This means that they are necessarily restrained by the constellation of forces in the here and now.
A scholar or a thinker is not contrained by this horizon. On the contrary, he seeks to shape the horizon itself. We cannot expect a book to do its work in the course of a few years. It takes time for a new perspective to find its audience. Time for the audience to absorb it.
It's also important not to be confused by the glory of the best-seller lists. For the sound and fury of a popular book has little to do with its ultimate triumph or failure. I think of Bergson, whose philosophy was so celebrated it won the Nobel Prize, and was promptly forgotten.
A writer who sees himself as having to achieve his aims in his lifetime will always suffer incalculable disappointment. And this, perhaps, leads him to abandon faith with his countrymen, whom he feels he cannot trust.
But if one is willing to look past the present horizon, the picture changes. We know nothing of what our children will face or what strengths they will possess. We need to leave them an inheritance they can work with, a compass to guide them and tools to permit their success.
A scholar or writer needs to judge his own success on the basis of this standard: Did I leave the next generations with the equipment they will need to be able to take advantage of their own moment, and to achieve a great victory in their day?
Any signs of success in our time, we should receive with gratitude, for they are a blessing, encouraging us as we carry our burden. But we should not place our trust in this moment, which will soon be gone. Place hope, rather, in a future time, for which we pave the road.
