The end of the culture wars

Peter Beinart:

Forget Iraq and the economy. Barack Obama’s greatest feat may be ending the ruinous, decades-long battle over race and religion that has plagued the Democratic Party.

For several decades now, analysts have divided American politics into three categories: economics, foreign policy, and culture. About categories one and two, Obama is voluble. On economics, he wants to stimulate short-term economic recovery while laying the foundation for greater long-term stability and equity. On foreign policy, he wants to restore America’s diplomatic capacity so we don’t have to rely so heavily on the military, and restore our good name, so we can help solve common global problems like climate change. But on culture? Here Obama goes mute. When was the last time you heard him speak unprompted about abortion or gay rights or gun control? He has positions on those issues, to be sure. But he’s determined not to be too publicly associated with them. That’s why he chose Rick Warren, who disagrees with him on abortion and gay marriage, to give the invocation at his inauguration. It’s why he chose not to repeal the Bush administration’s ban on U.S. aid to international organizations that provide abortions on the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade. He did so the day after instead, so his decision would garner less attention. “It’s time,” he declared, “that we end the politicization of this issue.”

When it comes to culture, Obama doesn’t have a public agenda; he has a public anti-agenda. He wants to remove culture from the political debate. He wants to remove culture from the political debate. He wants to cut our three-sided political game back down to two.

[...]

Obama’s effort could fail. After all, he’s not offering to split the difference with cultural conservatives, only to make his cultural liberalism less conspicuous. And while gay marriage may gradually fade as an issue as public attitudes shift, immigration may well gain in salience, perhaps igniting a whole new kind of culture war, pitting not white against black or secular against religious but immigrant against native-born.

Still, culture wars do end. In the 1920s, immigration, Darwinism, and the Ku Klux Klan dominated political debate, but in the 1930s, they receded as Washington turned its attention to the Depression and the specter of war. It is no surprise that the end of the last culture war coincided with a shift from conservative to liberal dominance. If Obama can end this one, liberals may be in power for a very long time.

Sadly he has a point here. The right, at present, is driven by cultural issues. And the population, as a whole, isn't sufficiently educated about libertarian principles.

So when culture goes off the table, progressive economics wins. Voters don't sufficiently grasp the inefficiencies, and won't until we hit 1980 again (which ought to take anywhere from 16 to 40 years).

But ending all the fruitless cultural bickering is still the right thing to do. Live and let live.