One way to lose a culture war is to refuse to fight it. Another way to lose it is to let your allies do a lot of unpopular things and then allow the country to believe the only way to stop them is to vote you out of power. jonathanchait writes
“Don’t dodge culture wars; win them” is a slogan that has begun circulating on the left. Jamelle Bouie makes a more considered version of the case in a recent column. Here’s how he begins:
During the McCarthy era, liberals widely grasped Hofstadter’s point that McCarthy’s main target was not communism but liberalism. He wished to use allegations of communist subversion to discredit the New Deal. In that sense, the episode was very similar to modern culture-war issues: an emotional hot-button appeal that allows the Republican Party’s right wing to change the subject into more favorable topics than popular liberal economic policy, on which Democrats enjoyed solid majority support.
One of the main flash points of the culture war of this era was a State Department official named Alger Hiss. Conservative Republicans accused Hiss of being a Soviet spy, a charge he indignantly denied. Hiss’s legal travails provided a captivating forum for the broader culture war over communist subversion. Liberals, including Cold Warriors like Harry Truman, defended Hiss’s honor and bitterly attacked his accusers.
But the debate within liberal circles never quite ended. And some liberals did not want to concede any ground on the communist issue, because doing so would force them to break ranks with their progressive allies, some of whom were communist or worked closely with communists. The 1948 Henry Wallace campaign, a left-wing splinter faction that opposed the Democrats but which stirred a fervor on the left, was run largely by members of the Communist Party.
On the broad suite of issues the right is using today to wage a culture war, its accusations, like McCarthy’s, mostly consist of lies. Indeed, to the extent that Republicans endorse clearly hysterical claims about grooming, or open the door to wild lawsuits against teachers who tell their students they’re gay, they give Democrats an opportunity to turn these attacks to their advantage.
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