Art in this country is made by and for liberals. This is a claim that has apparently endless appeal for all parts of the political spectrum. Conservatives like to believe that liberal cultural touchstones have captured the media wholesale, leaving a few, proud freethinkers to fight against the power. Thus Adam Bellow's recent call (already mocked on Splice by Nicky Smith) for a counter-culture of valiant conservative novelists to "fight back against this liberal establishment with its politically correct regime of thought control." Liberals, meanwhile, enjoy imagining that they are naturally more artistic, funny, daring, and generally aesthetically awesome than their conservative counterparts. "… artists of all types have always been more likely to be liberals—challenging tradition, exploring new ways of seeing—and always will be," Paul Waldman declares smugly, on his way to telling Bellow that his hope for successful conservative novelists is a pipedream. 
 
 So Bellow from the right and Waldman from the left are united in bipartisan amity. That's a rare and beautiful thing… but in this case it's also foolishness. If you don't think there are successful conservative novels with a mainstream profile, I have four words for you. Gone With the Wind. 
 
 Admittedly, Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind is old; it was first published in 1936, almost 80 years ago. But it remains a huge cultural force. A CNN article on its 75th anniversary in 2011 said that there were 30 million copies of the book in print; the 1939 film adaptation with Clark Gable and Vivian Leigh is probably the biggest money-making film of all time. There have been multiple sequels, authorized and unauthorized, with a prequel focusing on Mammy scheduled for later this year. A poll from this March found that the original book was more popular with Americans than Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, and the Catcher in the Rye. In fact, the only book that ranked ahead of Mitchell's novel was that notably liberal tome, the Bible. 
 
 I doubt that either Bellow or Waldman were thinking of Gone With the Wind when they contemplated conservative art. And most fans of the book probably don't necessarily think of it as promoting a conservative agenda. But there's no way around it; Gone With the Wind is really conservative. It obsessively romanticizes the past, which it frames as a place of noble hierarchies, social certainties, and virtue. "Yes, life has a glitter now—of a sort. That's what's wrong with it. The old days had no glitter but they had a charm, a beauty, a slow-paced glamour," as intellectual dreamer Ashley Wilkes muses, in one of many such orations. 
 
 In addition to the nostalgia, Mitchell's book explicitly embraces a conservative political program. Gone With the Wind takes an unyielding stand against federal intervention, condemning centralized intervention in the states as corrupt and intolerable. It also opposes government handouts, arguing that such manipulation of the rules of the game creates a situation in which "honest labor could no longer earn its just reward." 
 
 Mitchell's conservatism is linked closely to her support for the old Confederacy and slavery. When Gone With the Wind opposes federal intervention, it's denouncing the liberation of the slaves. When it calls for a strong law-and-order approach to crime, it's supporting the murder of black people by the KKK. 
 
 Thinking about Mitchell's novel as a conservative book, then, raises some questions for present-day conservatives, who have certainly disavowed the slavery and the KKK, but whose current obsessions—federal overreach, anti-anti-racism, idealization of the past—resonate uncomfortably with Mitchell's narrative. At the very least, conservatives who work themselves into a froth about liberal totalitarianism and natter on (as Bellow does) about Soviet dissidents, could pause for a second and consider our country's actual experience with authoritarian rule. This was conducted first under the name of chattel slavery and then of Jim Crow, and, as Mitchell shows, it was not Stalinist, but conservative in outlook. 
 
 If Gone With the Wind is embarrassing for conservatives in some ways, though, it should also give Bellow hope. Mitchell was incredibly successful as both a novelist and a polemicist. Its political message couldn't be much more open or insistent—she denounces individual Republican politicians by name, damns Reconstruction government in so many words, and endorses Southern Democrats (at that time the conservative party) enthusiastically. And she manages to do it all in the context of a sweeping love story, so that the political failure of the South and the romantic failure of the heroine are wrapped around each other, impossible to tease apart. You fall in love with Scarlett and the Confederacy at the same time. In the face of such thematically and rhetorically accomplished propaganda, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert look like puerile novices, preaching blandly to the converted, rather than insinuating themselves in the hearts of the convertible. 
 
 As for liberals who want to believe the world's artists are on their side… well, Gone With the Wind is a good place to start disabusing. Progressives have no copyright on imagination. Mitchell's hardly alone; the roll of conservative artists, variously defined, includes everyone from Trollope to T.S. Eliot to Yeats to that ardent anti-revolutionary Shakespeare. There have always been eloquent advocates for every point of view, no matter how liberals, or conservatives, might wish there weren't. ||||| Duke Chapel on the campus of Duke University in Durham, N.C. (Jim R. Bounds/Bloomberg) 
 
 As a Christian, I knew that my beliefs and identity would be challenged at a progressive university like Duke. 
 
 My first challenge came well before I arrived on campus, when I learned that all first years were assigned “Fun Home,” a graphic novel by Alison Bechdel. The book includes cartoon drawings of a woman masturbating and multiple women engaging in oral sex. 
 
 After researching the book’s content and reading a portion of it, I chose to opt out of the assignment. My choice had nothing to do with the ideas presented. I’m not opposed to reading memoirs written by LGBTQ individuals or stories containing suicide. I’m not even opposed to reading Freud, Marx or Darwin. I know that I’ll have to grapple with ideas I don’t agree with, even ideas that I find immoral. 
 
 But in the Bible, Jesus forbids his followers from exposing themselves to anything pornographic. “But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart,” he says in Matthew 5:28-29. “If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away.” This theme is reiterated by Paul who warns, “flee from sexual immorality.” 
 
 I think there is an important distinction between images and written words. If the book explored the same themes without sexual images or erotic language, I would have read it. But viewing pictures of sexual acts, regardless of the genders of the people involved, conflict with the inherent sacredness of sex. My beliefs extend to pop culture and even Renaissance art depicting sex. 
 
 I’m well aware that my ethics make me an anomaly on campus, in contemporary culture and even among many professing Christians. However, my principles come primarily from my understanding of the Bible, which I have read multiple times, studied weekly in community for the last seven years, and consider to be the Word of God. 
 
 I don’t believe my position will limit my exposure to essential lessons in history, philosophy or literature. I assume that having to view graphic images of sex for a class will be rare. If it does happen, I will avoid any titillating content and encourage like-minded students to do the same. And I believe professors should warn me about such material, not because I might consider them offensive or discomforting, but because I consider it immoral. 
 
 Still, if my academic experience at Duke is full of thought-provoking stimuli other than pictures of sexual acts, it’s hard for me to believe that it will be incomplete. 
 
 I decided to post about my decision on the Duke Class of 2019 Facebook page to comfort those with similar beliefs. I knew that my decision wouldn’t be well-received. How could it in a country where, according to one study, more than three-quarters of American men between 18 and 24 years old have viewed pornography within the past month. 
 
 But though many students denounced my decision publicly, almost 20 people privately messaged me, thanking me for my post. I received many messages from Christians, but a message from a Muslim man stood out. The man, currently a sophomore at Duke, wrote, “I’ve seen a lot of people who just throw away their identity in college in the name of secularism, open-mindedness, or liberalism.” Is this really what Duke wants? 
 
 Cultural pluralism will lose its value if students aren’t allowed to follow their beliefs, even if they are conservative. Without genuine diversity, intellectual dialogue and growth are stifled. 
 
 I recognize, of course, that Christians on campus and throughout the country have an important responsibility, too. We need to learn how to dialogue across differences. Over the past couple of days, I have received many encouraging messages from a new friend, who considers herself bisexual and a Buddhist. She and I became friends after she saw my Facebook post. Instead of criticizing me, she asked me to explain my beliefs. I, in turn, asked her to explain the Buddhist perspective on sexuality. This is how diversity is supposed to work. We each shared our perspective, and walked away from the conversation with a deeper understanding and compassion for each other. That is what college is really about.
– Pretty much everyone likes to believe that art in this country is made by and for liberals. Conservatives like to believe they're the "few, proud freethinkers" fighting the mainstream narrative, and liberals like to think they're "naturally more artistic, funny, daring, and generally aesthetically awesome," observes Noah Berlatsky at Splice. One National Review columnist even recently called on conservatives to create the great right-wing American novel. But Berlatsky thinks it already exists. "I have four words for you. Gone With the Wind." Fans probably don't think of Gone as a conservative novel. "But there's no way around it; Gone With the Wind is really conservative," Berlatsky writes. "It obsessively romanticizes the past," while taking "an unyielding stance against federal intervention" and opposing government handouts. Now that's all tied up with Margaret Mitchell's support for the Confederacy and slavery, which might be uncomfortable for modern conservatives given how well it resonates with their platform otherwise. But it proves that "progressives have no copyright on imagination. … There have always been eloquent advocates for every point of view, no matter how liberals, or conservatives, might wish there weren't." Click for Berlatsky's full column.