Culture Wars
Posted on October 21, 2008
According to Wikipedia: “The culture war (or culture wars) in American usage is a metaphor used to claim that political conflict is based on sets of conflicting values. The term frequently implies a conflict between values considered traditional or conservative and those considered progressive or liberal. The "culture war" is sometimes traced to the 1960s and has taken various forms since then.”
The conventional wisdom has been that the culture war was started by conservatives like Pat Buchanan and James Dobson, who have fought against the steady deterioration of moral values in our society.
Democratic pundits like to make the case that Republicans use cultural wedge issues to get lower-income, but socially conservative, Americans to vote against their economic interests.
But in this election, it is higher-income, socially liberal Americans who are clearly voting against their economic interests.
Barack Obama’s plans to sharply raise taxes on people making more than $200,000 a year is a direct attack on millions of Americans who either make that kind of money or want to make that kind of money.
But the biggest proponents for Obama are those wealthier voters.
For example, Hollywood will get smacked by Obama’s higher taxes. But that hasn’t stopped them from swooning over the junior Senator from Illinois, and giving him millions in campaign donations.
You would think that Wall Street moguls would see the financial writing on the wall, but they too have been blinded by culture issues. Not only will Obama raise their taxes, he will also make it harder for them to make money with stifling government intervention. But that hasn’t stopped these so-called capitalists from giving millions to the Obama campaign.
Looking at the vitriol from people like Tina Fey and Colin Powell and Keith Olbmerman towards Sarah Palin, it is clear that they are offended by the Alaska governor’s religious beliefs and cultural conservatism.
But as Palin herself has said, she doesn’t wear her religion on her sleeve. She is not trying evangelize or burn books or any of the other things that she has been accused of doing. Her focus is on reforming government, not converting lost souls.
The bullets from the culture wars are coming from the left. Gay marriage is coming from the left, not the right. The anger, the bigotry, the hatred is spewing from the left, not the right. And the folks who seem to be voting against their economic interests are those relatively affluent moderates who will get absolutely killed by Barack Obama’s much higher taxes.