The Culture Wars
I've been thinking a lot these past three days about how in the wake of the election I find myself not on the losing side of the economic polocy, foreign policy or national security discussions as much as on the losing side of the culture debate.
It's surprising since my personal opinions on matters of morality and social behavior seem so darn moderate, and so did John Kerry's.
Is it simply a failure to capture the language of the debate, ceding the terms of moral righteousness to George W. Bush and Company? Is it the horrible impression created in the so-called heartland by Michael Moore, Barbra Streisand, Alec Baldwin, Tim Robbins, Sean Penn, The Dixie Chicks, John Stewart, et al.? Is it possible that even The Boss offends? And if so, why don't the celebrity opinions of Britney Spears, Toby Keith and others bother the Red State voters?
I think that there may be something else. A couple of times in the presidential debates, Kerry tried to give complicated answers to ethical or religious questions while Bush gave simple and unambiguous ones. Maybe Kerry and progressives in general have not sufficiently acknowledged the honest moral questions raised by political hot topics like abortion, embryonic stem-cell research, etc.
Now that I think of it, I'm not so zealously pro-choice that I can't see how defensible the other side is. From what I understand, "partial-birth" abortion is a fairly rare procedure. It might be very sensible for a political moderate to support a ban on Federal funding of that procedure. I might support that myself.
Isn't embryonic stem-cell research just a tad controversial to a moderate, too? It certainly is when conservatives speak of the harvesting of embryos for research purposes. That may be a bit of a misrepresentation, but moderate progressives might take more care to acknowledge that there is a valid moral question there, not just a scientific one. If adult stem cells could yield scientific breakthroughs, but at a slower pace, shouldn't we consider the trade-off?
Finally, how about couching the strong suit of moderate progressives, social justice, in the form of freedom, human rights, environmental protection, etc. in terms of morality rather than in terms of governmental meddling?
Barack Obama was on to something important when he said that people in the blue states worship an awesome God and people in the red states don't like the government worrying about what library books they read.
It's surprising since my personal opinions on matters of morality and social behavior seem so darn moderate, and so did John Kerry's.
Is it simply a failure to capture the language of the debate, ceding the terms of moral righteousness to George W. Bush and Company? Is it the horrible impression created in the so-called heartland by Michael Moore, Barbra Streisand, Alec Baldwin, Tim Robbins, Sean Penn, The Dixie Chicks, John Stewart, et al.? Is it possible that even The Boss offends? And if so, why don't the celebrity opinions of Britney Spears, Toby Keith and others bother the Red State voters?
I think that there may be something else. A couple of times in the presidential debates, Kerry tried to give complicated answers to ethical or religious questions while Bush gave simple and unambiguous ones. Maybe Kerry and progressives in general have not sufficiently acknowledged the honest moral questions raised by political hot topics like abortion, embryonic stem-cell research, etc.
Now that I think of it, I'm not so zealously pro-choice that I can't see how defensible the other side is. From what I understand, "partial-birth" abortion is a fairly rare procedure. It might be very sensible for a political moderate to support a ban on Federal funding of that procedure. I might support that myself.
Isn't embryonic stem-cell research just a tad controversial to a moderate, too? It certainly is when conservatives speak of the harvesting of embryos for research purposes. That may be a bit of a misrepresentation, but moderate progressives might take more care to acknowledge that there is a valid moral question there, not just a scientific one. If adult stem cells could yield scientific breakthroughs, but at a slower pace, shouldn't we consider the trade-off?
Finally, how about couching the strong suit of moderate progressives, social justice, in the form of freedom, human rights, environmental protection, etc. in terms of morality rather than in terms of governmental meddling?
Barack Obama was on to something important when he said that people in the blue states worship an awesome God and people in the red states don't like the government worrying about what library books they read.
posted by Anonymous at 1:33 PM [permalink]
1 Comments:
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