Despite Palin's Resignation, the GOP Needs Culture Warriors
Reader Comments
Wars, including Culture Wars, need money for soldiers
"Pay Christian Soldiers" is the motto of generals leading the Far Right "Culture Wars." Palin raised huge contributions for the GOP after she was chosen by the Old Boy Network to be one of those generals. She turned out to be too maternal at her stage of life. It's very hard to hold and care for a child while holding aloft the flag with the Cross on it. She needs a rest. With a ghost-writer, she should be able to comfortably retire. Roe v Wade has been working since 1973. There truly are fewer people being born to poverty, abandonment or welfare rolls. At last, Obama made a law forcing employers to pay women the same wage as men for the same work. That means fewer women will be forced to be prostitutes. From brothels, all nations expect a lot of unaborted conceptions to be cast out to become tax burdens. I blame Palin and other Ban=Abortionists for loading us taxpayers down with these "little strangers." The GOP was wrecked when Goldwater and Reagan stole its assets and gave the money to the Far Right. Reagan said his presidency was guided by the pope, who is the Big Cheese of Po-Life political action.
moral high ground in rural v. urban
David of ID says, "It's about moral values. For conservatives, moral values are like the Basalt Boulders that make up the Rocky Mountains. They are eternal principles and never change." Simply being rigid in social norms doesn't always spell morality. It can be just the opposite, considering that this nation maintained slavery nearly 200 years, justifying it with quotations from the Bible. Sometimes the critical thinking skills that come with a liberal education are helpful in breaking down the "traditions" that discriminate against those who would be our citizens.
Additional comment on Urban vs. Rural
I wondered about that urban Democrat/rural Republican divide... With the economy doing frightening things, and stories of the Great Depression swirling around, I came to a conclusion.
City dwellers depend on networks of others to survive. What would happen if food and water ceased to flow into the cities, the garbage wasn't removed, and the cops ceased to protect the public? Starvation, chaos, crime, and violence - that's what! Urban dwellers count on others every day to make it work. The alternative is almost unthinkable.
Rural dwellers look at the same crisis like the Great Depression and think, "We can expand the vegetable garden and preserve more food this year. The hens will still lay eggs. And if we have to we can slaughter the cow..." They generally have more options for self sufficiency. They can afford to take an attitude like, "Let Rome burn - we will make it through..." These folks understandably see themselves as off to the side, in another category, not so foolishly vulnerable! We call it "Rugged Independence". And understandably, they are not as interested in participating in that more inclusive City Dweller reality.
Of course, if things got really grim, the countryside wouldn't be much safer than the city. Any perceived differences between urban Democrats and rural Republicans are largely superficial, despite all the yelling and condemnation. Ultimately we all sink or swim together. We have a choice every day.
Heaven on Earth, anyone?
Hypocrites & pretenders need not apply
Sam ,you do get it.However, values some loudly proclaim to stand for, then fail to practice , compromises the message & promotes cynicism .Honor,virtue ,truth,mercy,courage .All can fall short of these ideals.Regardless of nationality or race ,people have always looked for leaders that embodied these attributes to lead them out of the wilderness of war, ignorance, famine ,economic tumult etc.Enough people in blue & red states still hold out for someone to stand for these principles.We had a sorry assortment to choose from last few elections I'll grant ,but liberal Harvard grads of late have few places among the honorable needed to act as our Nation's champion.
Hypocrites & pretenders need not apply
Sam ,you do get it.However, values some loudly proclaim to stand for, then fail to practice , compromises the message & promotes cynicism .Honor,virtue ,truth,mercy,courage .All can fall short of these ideals.Regardless of nationality or race ,people have always looked for leaders that embodied these attributes to lead them out of the wilderness of war, ignorance, famine ,economic tumult etc.Enough people in blue & red states still hold out for someone to stand for these principles.We had a sorry assortment to choose from last few elections I'll grant ,but liberal Harvard grads of late have few places among the honorable needed to act as our Nation's champion.
For conservatives, moral values are like the Basalt Boulders that make up the Rocky Mountains
Only some conservatives. A lot of republicans couldn't care less, but they pretend to so they can get elected. The Colbert Report last night ran a bunch of old news clips of "outraged" moral, repulican, cultural warriors venting against the "moral failures and lies" of Bill Clinton. Every single one of them was later ruined politically by "moral failure" and they all lied about it before they confessed and apologized. It IS politics we're talking about here.
Reagan Coalition
How do you hold that together? The hard core, evangelical right are violently opposed to illegal immigration, but the big money contributors want the cheap labor. They don't want reform at all and if it is forced on them, they will insist that they NEED a guest worker program. The cultural warriors on the other hand tend to be the ones who are marginalized and hurt the most unemployment and wage depresssion that is caused by massive illegal immigration. George Will is not the same kind of Republican as the people who love Sarah Palin. Those people probably can't even tell that Will is conservative.
rural versus urban divide
You hit the nail on the head. Texas is among the reddest of the red states, but if you look at the 2008 election results, all Of the large cities (except Fort Worth) were blue. That's right. Dallas, Houston, Austin, San Antonio, El Paso all went for Obama. It didn't matter because Texas is so big that the "red" rural voters vastly outnumber the urban voters. Oklahoma with almost no big cities was almost 100% red.
Is it because the urban population is better educated? The better educated you are, the more likely you are to vote Democrat. The right will scream about the "liberal college professor" stereotype, but come on. Really? I graduated from college and I couldn't tell you if my professors were liberal or conservative. How would you know if your calculus or biology or COBOL teacher is liberal? You might be able to make a guess about someone who teaches history or political science, but is taking two classes in your college career going to turn you into a raving liberal? Isn't it just educated people read more and are exposed to more ideas and don't buy into simple solutions for everything?
It's not about culture...it's about moral values
Well written and nice words Rich of CT. But it's not about "culture" as you believe. It's about moral values. For conservatives, moral values are like the Basalt Boulders that make up the Rocky Mountains. They are eternal principles and never change. Sure people change and make choices. But doing so does not mean the moral values have changed; only that the person changed. The "Moral Values" war will always exist as long as people adhere to moral conviction. It's a rather denigrating believe that technology/community makes small, back-water communities open their eyes and helps them become informed. I will grant, though, that the technology does make the screaching, wailing, and gnashing of teeth from the left a little louder.
To understand the "culture wars" substitute "rural" for "culture"
Most analysis of the "culture wars" misunderstands the underlying basis of the conflict, which is the rural versus urban divide as old as the country (the unfair creation of the US Senate by the founding fathers, which gave rural states a built-in advantage, is part of our current political problem). But advances in communication and transportation have been shrinking insular rural culture for a century and now the sweeping mobility of the population is battering down rural cultural isolation in its own capitals. Obama's win shows the urban immigrants into the red-state heartland are softening up the old social conservative base and moving the country to the middle. The base which Karl Rove cultivated and Palin clings to is a shrinking one which will be all but dried up by the time Obama ends his second term...
