Thursday November 15, 2012

WHEN ALL YOU HAVE IS A CULTURE WAR, EVERYTHING LOOKS LIKE A REVOLVER. More of that culture-war guff I mentioned in my post-election column is cropping up among the tighty righties. Michael Auslin at National Review goes full Goebbels:

Without getting too bogged down in esoterica, it seems uncontroversial to say that, at the end of the day, politics is culture (and of course, political systems reflect the cultures from which they grow). If that’s the case, then we will be in ever greater danger at the national level unless we start winning on the cultural battlefield.

This is where they get the ugly term "culture war" in the first place -- they think of art as propaganda by definition, existing for no other reason but to advance an ideological agenda, and so see all artistic efforts as part of a war effort. And you're either with them or against them.

The further Auslin gets in his diatribe, the more obvious this becomes: He adopts a wounded, we-are-too-childish-foolish-for-this-world tone, and his self-pity pushes him into a fantasy of vengeance:

There’s also a huge temptation to play dirty, the way Ted Kennedy and his ilk did against Robert Bork; I’m not so sure that’s wrong. They play dirty against us in academia, and mock us on television. We hold ourselves to higher standards, but that’s not much help in an increasingly liberal, dependent society. Maybe we shouldn’t flinch from playing dirty (or dirtier). It certainly hasn’t delegitimized liberals among their supporters. But we have to attack their ideals, their dangerous utopianism, and not the individuals. We shouldn’t pull any punches in highlighting their hypocrisy or their radicalism, the way that McCain pulled every punch in 2008.

They "mock us on television." All bets are off! And this time we won't pull any punches -- release the Crowder!

Someone send this poor guy a Bob Ross paint kit and some valium.