Pat Buchanan was roundly and universally criticized for referring to a “culture war” way back in 1992. Can there be any doubt today that he was right? No one would dare to use the term today, but – just to use one example - what do you call the clash between people who, aware of the war we are in, express concerns about meeting Muslims on planes and those who call those who express those concerns racists bigots? What do you call the chasm between those who believe that marriage is between a man and a woman and those who believe that definition represents homophobia?
The last president who represented the views of Middle America was Ronald Reagan. Bush-1 wasn’t; he could not wait to shed his presidency of Reagan’s cultural conservatism. His “thousand points of light” was a way to say that he was more culturally enlightened than Reagan. Of course Clinton wasn’t even close to being a cultural conservative. The first act of his administration was to open the military to homosexuals; later pulled back under furious assault from the military and the country to “don’t ask don’t tell.” And Bush-2, despite his avowed Christianity, focused like a laser beam on the war; letting stand all the bastions that liberalism gained in the past.
Obama represents the Liberal side of the culture war on steroids. He’s a true 60s radical animated by all the beliefs and hates that energized the Left during that time. He’s the Left side of the culture war in distilled and purified form. And that’s what the Tea Party movement is about; it’s Middle America mobilized because the troops that were supposed to represent their side were too weak, too dispirited … in fact many had switched sides like the ladies from Maine, Arlen Specter, Mike Castle and many, many more. Do you really expect Orrin Hatch to lead anyone’s charge against the encroaching Nanny State or the next assault on traditional values found in the penumbras and emanations of the constitution?
Tuesday's election, too, will be no embrace of the GOP, but rather a repudiation of what Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi have come to represent. All are seen as power-hungry politicians of an out-of-touch regime that is seizing control of private wealth and private lives as it fails in its duty to win our wars, balance our budgets and secure our borders.
Republicans will be the beneficiaries of this repudiation, as Republicans are, almost everywhere, the only alternative on the ballot, and because they are seen correctly as having opposed the Obama agenda with near drill-team solidarity.
Every Republican in the Senate but Arlen Specter and the ladies from Maine voted against Obama's stimulus bill. Every Republican in the House, save eight, voted no on cap-and-trade. Every Republican on Capitol Hill voted no on Obamacare. More GOP senators opposed Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan than opposed any Supreme Court nominee in memory.
Tuesday, obstructionism reaps its reward.
The cultural chasm between town and gown has never been deeper during my lifetime. The student radicals from the 60s are now the deans and professors. Who can doubt the distance between the Right and Left in the media. The Left is calling the Right panicked know-nothings who deny science. Now we are seeing the revelation that there is an economic chasm between highly compensated public employees and their poorer counterparts in private industry. And need we mention the relegation of religion to its own ghetto by the culture and the courts?
I don’t think that many Republican officeholders realize what this is all about. They know that something is going on, but make the mistake in believing that Middle America will be satisfied by a seat near the foot of the table. They are under the impression that forcing Obama and the Left to compromise parts of his agenda will be perceived as a victory by the Tea Party movement. They could not be more wrong. The Right side has suited up and come on to the field and they are not just fiscal conservatives but culture warriors.
Many on the Libertarian side of the debate also misunderstand this movement. I don’t know how many times I have heard references to that fact that the Tea Party is focused on economic issues; leaving cultural issues alone. The MSM, when they try to give what they perceive as an unbiased look at the Tea Party, echo this theme. If you want to understand why this is wrong, attend a Tea Party rally and see the moms and kids; the middle class workers and the retirees. And then look at the gigantic rally that Glenn Beck managed to assemble in Washington; a rally that was purely about the culture. This rally was the Tea Party as culture warriors.
The next two years are, in my opinion, going to be like this nation in the 1850s when a very powerful, organic movement began to take shape. It was a time like today, when people saw something very wrong with the structure of the nation, not just the politics du jour. Quoting Emeril Lagasse, the culture war is going to turn the heat on this country “up a notch.”
Both parties have lost the mandate of heaven, and neither knows if its economic philosophy even works anymore.
We are in uncharted waters. The country is up for grabs.
4 comments:
Fantastic post. You are perceptive. Ordinary people have gotten fed up with their tax dollars going to the victimization industry and ne'er-do-wells. We're sick of jobs going overseas, of people claiming they do jobs "we won't do," of the courts spitting on the will of the people, of religion being mocked and shunned when in fact there is still enormous amounts of mystery that science hasn't come close to explaining, and the arrogant haughty attitude of those who've never done a day of hard work in their lives and yet believe they know what's best for us.
TV,
I'm afraid you don't get what scares the left and independents when it comes to the right.
It is not the social positions of the Right. It is the effort to enact them into law.
I do think a Culture War is a very good idea. As long as it is privatized. It is when the Right wants to get government guns behind their social positions that it gets serious opposition.
Sign seen at a TEA Party:
DRUG WAR = BIG GOVERNMENT
Government backed Culture Wars empower the left. After all if government can fix the abortion problem and the drug problem why not use it to fix the poverty problem?
1 Samuel 8 warns about this kind of thinking. Evidently it is not a very popular part of the Bible.
If the Right had a lick of sense it would work to solve these cultural problems without a drop of help from government.
Here is a group in my town that operates on that premise. I met them at a TEA Party:
Rockford Pro Life
BTW Anon. I have no problem mocking religion. God talks to me directly. So what do I care? Mocking religion affects my communications with the Head Office not a whit.
Translation: the religious will be offended by the mocking of religion. The spiritual will serenely ignore it.
The problem in America is too many religious people and too few spiritual people.
Go back and read Samuel again. It is not a new problem. Those without God need big government.
M. Simon,
I’m afraid that you either mistake or are trying to obfuscate the issue of religion in the public sphere. Religion should not be ghettoized by non-religious people, yet this is being done in the name of “freedom of religion.” Why should a high school valedictorian be prevented from expressing her faith in Jesus if that is what animates her life? You refer to the Right desiring to enact their social positions into law, yet it’s the Left that is doing so via the courts, administrators and the regulatory agencies. When the Right sees these tools being used by their opponents is it any wonder that they do not wish to be disarmed in the culture war? Rather than referring people to your favorite bible verse, why don’t you study up on the “prisoner’s dilemma?”
You then go on to refer to the war on drugs. The fact is that “The Right” as you refer to them is not big enough or powerful enough to enact anything over the will of the majority of the people. The “war on drugs” had broad based backing just as prohibition had broad based backing. It may been a bad idea or a good idea, but to accuse “The Right” of ramming drug laws through the legislature – as ObamaCare was rammed through congress is simply ignorant.
What 1 Samuel 8 refers to is the fact that Samuel’s sons “perverted justice.” Note that this passage warns that the king will take as much as one-tenth of their income. Would it not be great if the Left only took 10% of our income in taxes? But to get back to Samuel, under those circumstances people seek relief from that perverted justice. The deal Americans made at the founding is that they would have a government and would not live under judges. We are not a tribe wandering in the desert in case you had not noticed.
I personally don’t care what your personal spirituality is or if God talks to you directly (you may want to adjust that tinfoil and have your fillings replaced). What I care about is the right of Americans to live freely, labor freely, worship freely and that means expressing their faith freely in a public setting. And I reject your claim that independents are opposed to this. Before you enlist all the independents in your cause you may want to ask them what they believe rather than presuming to speak for them.
Thanks for your comments.
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