Saturday, July 12, 2003

One distressing aspect of Justice Scalia's Lawrence dissent is his embrace of the phrase "culture war": It is clear from this that the Court has taken sides in the culture war, departing from its role of assuring, as neutral observer, that the democratic rules of engagement are observed. Many Americans do not want persons who openly engage in homosexual conduct as partners in their business, as scoutmasters for their children, as teachers in their children's schools, or as boarders in their home. They view this as protecting themselves and their families from a lifestyle that they believe to be immoral and destructive. The phrase "culture war" is a favorite of Pat Buchanan, Robert Bork, Gary Bauer, Bill Bennett, and others.  "We are in a culture war, a battle to define America", Buchanan declared in his address to the 1992 Republican Convention.  I have no quarrel with the phrase being used in a political speech or in an opinion column.  It is a highly-charged rhetorical phrase which carries strong ideological connotations.  I am dismayed, however, to see a Justice of the Supreme Court use this phrase, in all deadly seriousness, in his written opinion.  It demeans him, in my eyes, because it represents his declaration of fealty to a position on a social and ideological issue.  We would rather have our Justices keep above that sort of thing. "Culture war" is commonly found in the same paragraph as "liberal elites" or simply "elites".  Those using the word "elites" in this context are very seldom challenged to define precisely who or what is meant by the term.  It is a convenient term that is used disparagingly to refer to a varying array of personages -- to academics, to lawyers, to judges, to the executives and screenwriters who produce mass entertainment, to writers whose articles appear in intellectual magazines.  It always, of course, refers to others.  No one will dare consider himself to be a member of "the elite".  That words conveys its own sense of concordance with other words of derision, including "effete" and "effeminate", and thus suggests without ever really saying so a tie to the gay lifestyle and to another disdainful ideological phrase adopted by Scalia, the "homosexual agenda". 12:26:06 PM     "Lincoln's war overthrew that Constitution." So states Pat Buchanan in a widely-read and widely-commented upon column published on July 6, entitled "The Supreme Court is not Supreme".  Pat was making the point, echoing William Quick, that the original Constititional division of power was rearranged after the Civil War, and indeed no one can deny that the structure of our national edifice was dramatically altered after that cataclysmic event.  But no one in blogdom who has commented on Buchanan's column, and the good and bad points it makes, has mentioned the import of the phrase "Lincoln's war".  In just two words, Buchanan reveals a great deal about his own political attitudes and, no doubt still, his ambitions.  Buchanan has always played to blue-collar conservatives, and a good deal of his message resonates with some Southerners.  The use of the phrase "Lincoln's War" is calculated to pander to the neo-Confederate impulse in the Southern states.  And of course it resounds with others in the backwaters of certain styles of "conservatism" as well. 9:39:50 AM

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