December 14, 2004
WHAT'S RIGHT WITH AMERICA?:
Brad Carson: The culture war is real, and it's about modernity (BRAD CARSON, December 7, 2004, Dallas Morning News)
Vote righteously! In 13 months of campaigning across Oklahoma, I must have seen or heard this phrase a thousand times. But it was not until that September Sunday in Sallisaw, one of the most Democratic towns in Oklahoma, that I first understood that the seemingly innocuous phrase "vote righteously" was the slogan not of a few politicized churches, but the cri de coeur of millions – millions who fervently believe that their most deeply held values are under assault and who further see this assault as at least tolerated by the Democratic Party, if not actually led by it.As a defeated Senate candidate in the most red of red states, many people have asked me for insights into the Democratic Party's failure to connect with culturally conservative voters. Much has already been written on this topic, and scholars will add more. But I do know this: The culture war is real, and it is a conflict not merely about some particular policy or legislative item, but about modernity itself.
Banning gay marriage or abortion would not be sufficient to heal the cultural gulf that exists in this nation. The culture war is about matters more fundamental still: whether nationality is, in a globalized world, a random fact of no more significance than what hospital one was born in or whether it is the source of identity and even political legitimacy; whether one's self is a matter of choice or whether it is predetermined, before birth, by the cultural membership of one's family; whether an individual is just that – a free-floating atom – or whether the individual is part of a long chain that both predates and continues long after any particular person; whether concepts like honor and shame, which seem so quaint, are still relevant in a world that values only "tolerance."
These are questions not for politicians but for philosophers, and, in the end, it is the failure of liberal philosophy that we saw on Nov. 2.
For the vast majority of Oklahomans – and, I would suspect, voters in other red states – these transcendent cultural concerns are more important than universal health care or raising the minimum wage or preserving farm subsidies. The voters aren't deluded or uneducated. They simply reject the notion that material concerns are more real than spiritual or cultural ones.
The political left has always had a hard time understanding this, preferring to believe that the masses are enthralled by a "false consciousness" or Fox News or whatever today's excuse might be. But the truth is quite simple: Most voters in a state like Oklahoma – and I venture to say most other Southern and Midwestern states – reject the general direction of American culture and celebrate the political party that promises to reform or revise it.
Meanwhile, Democrats are comforting themselves by reading Thomas Frank and assuring themselves that if only their economic message were getting out they'd still be winning. Posted by Orrin Judd at December 14, 2004 11:36 PM
For the vast majority of Oklahomans – and, I would suspect, voters in other red states – these transcendent cultural concerns are more important than universal health care or raising the minimum wage or preserving farm subsidies. The voters aren't deluded or uneducated. They simply reject the notion that material concerns are more real than spiritual or cultural ones.
The irony here is that so many of Carson's fellow Democrats seem to believe spirituality can only be found through non-traditional sources (Kabbalah being the current flavor of the month) that have few followers in the dreaded Red States. That's mixed with a belief that those who follow a more normal path are closet racist/sexist/hoomophobic hypocrites obsessed with the tacky materialism best expressed by the rubes in those flyover cities flocking to their local Wal-Marts (thousands of trees will needlessly die in the future to handle all the angst that will pour out of the pages of The New York Times when Wal-Mart opens its first store in the city three years from now).
Posted by: John at December 15, 2004 12:57 AM
The members of the supposed party of the eeeevvviiilllll capitalists renounces the party which puts economic gains above all?
You mean there's more to life than money?????
Quick, burn my expired RNC card!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Posted by: Sandy P at December 15, 2004 1:15 AMIt took him 13 months to figure out what "vote righteously" meant?
The guy must be really thick.
Proof is that he thinks the Republican party promises to "reform or revise" American culture.
Posted by: Randall Voth at December 15, 2004 3:51 AMA Democrat politician who transcends his party's committment to culture-treason continues to be as chemerical as a moderate Mohammadan.
Do they want to rejoin America? Good. Let them lose the Marxists, lose the queers, lose the un-folkish racists who put their color above their country.
Posted by: Lou Gots at December 15, 2004 6:59 AMDid Ketchup Boy have an economic message other than marry a rich widow and you too can run for nationwide political office?
The current Kabalah craze has as much to with Kabalah as an Etch-A-Sketch with the Sistine Chapel. Students of Jewish mysticism voted for Bush.
Posted by: Bart at December 15, 2004 10:33 AMUh-oh, this Carson fellow is spot-on. I hope this guy is considered a nut within his own party.
Posted by: JimGooding at December 15, 2004 1:06 PMThe left still derives its intellectual basis from Marx and his crackpot "materialism." Not only is materialism philisophically unsophisticated and just plain wrong. Hume demolished philisophical materialism in the 18th century.
In a materialist world, ideas are unimportant and men who are similarly situated cannot entertain different ideas. Materialism has led leftists into the persistent error of blameing their intended victims for false consciousness (i.e. believing things that the left does not want them to believe) which was obviously created by the mass media such as Rush Limbaugh and Fox News (CBS and NBC are corporate can't be properly leftist).
This is not new stuff. It goes back to Germany in the 1930's and the work (i.e. propaganda and self justification) of marxists like Theodore Adorno and Walter Benjamin.
Balderdash like Tom Frank (not to be confused with Gen. Tommy Franks U.S.A.R. Ret.) of course only alienates the victims. Which will in turn causes the leftists to work even harder.
Rousseau (Rousseau, sir is a very bad man, a badder man has not been transported from the Old Bailey in many a long year -- Samuel Johnson) wrote that in a properly run state if a citizen was not free, he would be forced to be free. In a properly run leftist state there would be re-education camps to cure false consciousness and for hard cases, the ultimate cure for false consciousness -- a bullet in the back of the skull.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at December 16, 2004 10:43 AMRobert,
That Samuel Johnson quote is fabulous.
In order to be a materialist, you either have to be an incredible egotist or not get out much, or both, because it just flies in the face of what we all know empirically to be true. Of course, for those reasons, one can see the French buying it, as a Frenchman will never let reality get in the way of a good theory. However, in America, steeped in the reality that free markets create, it is amazing whenever I see someone spew the Marxist claptrap.
Did Tom Frank ever speak to a Kansan? Did he ever even fly over the place? He sounds like he's never been west of Columbus Avenue let alone the Hudson.
Red Staters read the papers, the web, watch TV news etc. If they have economic concerns, they are not convinced the Democrats address them any more than Republicans. And as human beings, they are more than mere homo oeconomicus, just as people who live anywhere else in the world are more than mere economic agents. Frank's views are at best fatuous.
Posted by: Bart at December 16, 2004 8:51 PM