Kevin Drum has a post up today in which he describes the origins of the culture war, stating that liberals started it by pushing for things like marriage and gender equality. He thinks that liberals really ought to own it:
Every time I hear some liberal complaining about the way that conservatives keep turning everything into a new front in the culture war, I feel a twinge of chagrin. Why are we complaining? We’re the ones who really own the culture war, and we should be proud of it. It was a war worth starting and a war worth winning.
While I agree with the larger thesis here, I have to quibble with the point above. I think the complaint about things being turned into a culture war is entirely valid when discussing things entirely unrelated to culture.
Take, for example, climate change. At issue here are scientific questions (is the climate changing? If so, why?) and policy questions (what are the implications? What, if anything, should be done?). The scientific questions are largely settled within the scientific community. The policy questions are entirely unsettled, and a vigorous debate on them is very reasonable. But what is not reasonable is the attempt to twist a scientific issue and a policy debate into a biblical narrative or some kind of weird us vs socialists nationalism.
Take for another example this post, describing the culture-war-ification of the Chevy Volt. Why should a car be debated along “conservatives should buy SUVs” and “liberals are smelly hippies” lines?
520 Chestnut 
Leave a Reply