Only the left can turn down the heat in the culture war, because it is the left that has cultural power in America. Our cultural institutions, from higher education to legacy media to the entertainment industry to the tech industry, are run by people whose politics range from left-liberal to socialist. Even sports, business, and finance are increasingly left-wing, especially on cultural issues—Black Lives Matter is brought to you by Wall Street and Big Business waving a rainbow flag on ESPN.
Leftists are the culture war aggressors. This is part of their self-image, in which they are fighting for liberation from the oppressive strictures of traditional society. Thus, they are always discovering new limits to overturn. This is why in a few years we went from debating same-sex marriage to shutting down dissent over transgender children, and from legislatures rethinking the prominence of Confederate monuments to mobs tearing down statues of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and even Abraham Lincoln.
To be a conservative in the culture war is thus to fight the long defeat, punctuated by the occasional grueling effort at a counterattack. In contrast, the left can de-escalate the culture war whenever it wants. Either the radicals could chill out a bit, or the moderates could stand up to them.
What we see, however, is radicalism intensifying across institutions and the moderates caving. The same dynamic has played out politically. Joe Biden has moved left on everything from abortion to crime, and he won’t even renounce the court-packing schemes being pushed by the activist base of his party.
They don’t want tolerance, they want dominance. Once in power, they require the rest of us to affirm their orthodoxies (e.g., a woman can have a penis). The menace of the left holding unified cultural and political power is therefore a large part of why conservatives are willing to support President Trump, despite his sins.
The political party that won’t stop harassing the literal Little Sisters of the Poor should not wonder at religious conservatives refusing to hand the presidency to them. Democrats are eager to unleash government against Christian institutions, from charities to hospitals to schools, and they have delighted in using lockdowns to treat us as second-class citizens—such as by privileging slot machines over the sacraments.
read more:
https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/27/why-the-right-can-never-end-the-culture-wars-by-capitulating/
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