“Culture wars” are not characterized by two approximately equal sides who play by the same rules. They are, at this moment in our history, stand-offs between an entrenched leftist establishment that has nothing to gain from real debate, and an upstart movement of skeptics (usually parents) who have nothing to lose by challenging the left’s premises. Conservatives win if they succeed in pressing their questions. They lose when they are silenced, excluded, or encouraged to accept a “compromise,” which is just defeat by another name.
The constant message (via CRT; the 1619 Project; Diversity, Equity, Inclusion [DEI]; “abolitionist teaching;” “anti-racism;” “belonging;” “social and emotional learning,” and a dozen other pedagogical devices) is that America is a rotten place, founded on hollow principles. The only good way forward is to attach yourself to an identity group that is committed to its own claims of “social justice.” The left doesn’t really have a single term that encompasses this collection of ideological maneuvers. Some have called it “successor ideology” because it promises to be the successor of old-fashioned American confidence in the principles of freedom and equality. Be that as it may, the goal is to teach national self-disdain, and the result is demoralization.
A demoralized country is a weak country, and a weak country is one open to conquest. The culture wars sit adjacent to the possibility of real war.
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