At the always excellent Crooked Timber, John Quiggin considers how everything seems to be grist for the US culture wars meme (arugula, anyone?):
...What really prompted this was the way in which the health care debate, which only a few years back was the province of the wonkiest of policy wonks, is now a battlefield over religious liberty, state control over ladyparts and so on. The same is true in spades of climate change, and environmental protection generally, an area that was pretty much bipartisan at one time.
It’s even more striking in relation to foreign policy. With the exception of unconditional support for Israel (or more precisely for the Likud party line), there’s no longer any core Republican position either on particular issues (which wars to support or oppose) or on general principles like Jacksonian, Hamiltonian and so on.
It’s not that they disagree on these foreign policy issues, it’s the the policy issues are now secondary. What matters is support for the military as an institution, for military values, and for American military greatness as an end in itself. Michael Ledeen’s observation that “Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business” is an exact description, except that the purpose is not to show the world anything but to bolster American self-esteem.
The culture war dominance even extends to the basic issues of class and economic policy. I was always puzzled by the way the term “working class” was used in the US, until I discovered that the standard criterion was not having a four-year college degree. With that definition, and the well-known correlation between education and political liberalism, it’s unsurprising to find that Republicans do well with white “working class” voters, and particular with those members of the “working class” who make more than $50 000 a year, and may even be employers. In this context, the explicit attack on higher education by Rick Santorum (BA, MA, LLD) is particularly noteworthy.
Coming finally to economic policy, Repubs seem to have little remaining interest in arguing that their preferred policies will actually benefit anyone outside the 1 per cent. Rather, it’s all about Donner Party conservatism, punishing welfare queens and so on...
Some call it "Satan's salad."
...What really prompted this was the way in which the health care debate, which only a few years back was the province of the wonkiest of policy wonks, is now a battlefield over religious liberty, state control over ladyparts and so on. The same is true in spades of climate change, and environmental protection generally, an area that was pretty much bipartisan at one time.
It’s even more striking in relation to foreign policy. With the exception of unconditional support for Israel (or more precisely for the Likud party line), there’s no longer any core Republican position either on particular issues (which wars to support or oppose) or on general principles like Jacksonian, Hamiltonian and so on.
It’s not that they disagree on these foreign policy issues, it’s the the policy issues are now secondary. What matters is support for the military as an institution, for military values, and for American military greatness as an end in itself. Michael Ledeen’s observation that “Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business” is an exact description, except that the purpose is not to show the world anything but to bolster American self-esteem.
The culture war dominance even extends to the basic issues of class and economic policy. I was always puzzled by the way the term “working class” was used in the US, until I discovered that the standard criterion was not having a four-year college degree. With that definition, and the well-known correlation between education and political liberalism, it’s unsurprising to find that Republicans do well with white “working class” voters, and particular with those members of the “working class” who make more than $50 000 a year, and may even be employers. In this context, the explicit attack on higher education by Rick Santorum (BA, MA, LLD) is particularly noteworthy.
Coming finally to economic policy, Repubs seem to have little remaining interest in arguing that their preferred policies will actually benefit anyone outside the 1 per cent. Rather, it’s all about Donner Party conservatism, punishing welfare queens and so on...
Some call it "Satan's salad."
No comments:
Post a Comment