It Takes Two Sides to Fight a War – The Dispatch

Dear Reader (excluding DJ Jazzy Donald),

This FiveThirtyEight headline caught my eye like the squirt from a grapefruit when the spoon goes in for the first time (if you dont like that analogy, be grateful I didnt go with the wayward fishhook one I worked on for too long and then abandoned):

I think the analysis in the piece is a mixed bag. Theres some stuff I think is wrong or tendentious and other points are well-taken or defensible. The authors, Alex Samuels and Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux, begin with a highly critical account of how then-candidate Glenn Youngkin made critical race theory a centerpiece of his campaign and then, once elected, signed an executive order banning critical race theory in schools. But, they add, the impact of this executive order is less straightforward than it seems, because critical race theory isnt actually taught in Virginia public schools. And then they add:

This kind of tactic is increasingly familiar in politics today. Republican politicians, in particular, build entire campaigns around false or misleading information, then implement policies that respond to those falsehoods, cementing them further in our political landscape.

Now, I have any number of objections I could raise. For instance, the claim that Virginia didnt incorporate CRT in schools to one extent or another is at least more contestable than the PolitiFact piece the authors rely on suggests. But even if you agree with PolitiFacts analysis, I dont see anything inherently wrong with a politician promising to keep what he and many voters think is a bad pedagogical approach from becoming entrenched in public schools.

Think of it this way: If there were a growing movement to teach white supremacy in public schools, I doubt many liberals would denounce a politician vowing to keep that movement from spreading to their local schools. Note: Im not saying that CRT is equivalent to white supremacy, Im merely illustrating the point that what public schools teach is a perfectly legitimate question in local or statewide elections.

Similarly, I think many of the authors claims about abortion are deeply flawed. I wont dwell on all of it, but the claim that pro-life Republicans are peddling myths and falsehoods in their opposition to late-term abortion (something they fairly accuse Donald Trump of doing) ignores efforts and statements by pro-choice Democrats that make pushback from pro-lifers understandable and defensible. For instance, a Democratic Virginia state delegate introduced legislation in 2019 that would have, in her initial explanations of her own bill, legalized abortion through the 40th week, including during labor. She later cleaned up her remarks in response to wholly defensible blowback. Then Gov. Gary Northam, a pediatric neurologist, explained in an interview how very late-term abortions were carried out in his experience: The infant would be delivered, the infant would be kept comfortable, the infant would be resuscitated if thats what the mother and the family desired. And then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.

Northam also cleaned up his remarks. Still, theres a certain one-hand-clapping nature to complaints about Republicans opposing late term abortions of viable babies when Democrats often lend rhetorical or policy support to their concerns. It was Sen. Barbara Boxer who infamously said that a new human has recognizable rights when you bring your baby home, when your baby is born the baby belongs to your family and has all the rights. When then-Sen. Rick Santorum responded, Obviously, you don't mean they have to take the baby out of the hospital for it to be protected by the Constitution, Boxer didnt say,of course I dont mean that. She said, I don't want to engage in this.

Damn those Republicans for taking Boxer literally or seriously.

Kulturkampf ber alles.

Okay, with that out of the way, I actually want to talk about that one-hand-clapping thing.

Lets start with the headline, Why Democrats Keep Losing Culture Wars. This gets at a long-running point David French and I have been making for a long time. Both sides of the culture war are convinced that they always lose. Heres a Newsweek piece from last April, Why Conservatives Keep Losing the Culture Wars. And heres Dinesh DSouza saying the same thing. The idea that conservatives always lose the culture war has been a staple on the right for a long time and was central to the case for Trump in 2015-16.

Its a simple fact of logic that if combatants on either side of a war or wars think they are losing or always lose, then someone is at least partly wrong. Yes, yes, theres a venerable pacifist point of view that holds that everybody loses in a war, and theres a lot of truth to that. But thats not what people mean when they say they always lose.

Second, culture wars are nothing new and there is nothing inherently illegitimate about arguing about the kind of culture you want to live in.

Now, I personally believe that the left wins culture war conflicts more often than the right does. And despite being a conservative, Im sometimes glad for it. For instance, the civil rights movement was far more bipartisan than Democrats sometimes like to acknowledge, but I think its fair to say that it was predominantly a movement from the left. More broadly, its undeniable that the cultural left has wracked up any number of big wins over the last half-century, from abortion to gay rights to the role of religion in public life.

Importantly, this also requires acknowledging that the left is very often the aggressor in the culture war. It drives me crazy to hear resistance to cultural offensives from the left described as aggression. If existing law says that nuns shouldnt be required to pay for birth control, its just ludicrous to cast their pushback as aggression. If you stick to the millennium-old view that men cant get pregnant, youre not the aggressor in the fight to overturn that view.

Indeed, taking immense pride in your movements history in delivering change and progress is fine. But dont play the victim when some of the institutions and individuals youre steamrolling object.

Both sides is real.

But my objections to the FiveThirtyEight piece arent merely philosophical or rhetorical. The notion that Democrats dont routinely initiate culture warsin the way the authors attribute to conservativesstrikes me as preposterous.

Consider the brouhaha over a Tennessee school district removing the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel Maus from its curriculum. Countless outlets have described this as a ban and part of the rights culture war. Heres Barrons: The Maus ban added to the list of so-called culture war fights in which conservatives have forced local schools to proscribe books, particularly those written with the perspectives of ethnic and gender minorities. And heres CNN anchor Christine Romans:

All right, to the culture wars nowthe fake culture wars. The Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel Maus is back on bestseller lists. This, after that Tennessee school district pulled the book from its eighth-grade curriculum for what it said was rough and objectionable language. Maus is an account of the author's father's experiences with the horrors of the Holocaust depicting Jews as mice and Nazis as cats.

First, let me say upfront, I think removing Maus from the schools curriculum is a mistake, and I share a lot of the scorn from liberals for the decision.

But removing books from required reading lists, course curricula, or even individual libraries is notand has never beena ban. Saying students wont be required to read something is not the same thing as banning them from reading it.

But if youre going to say that this sort of thing constitutes book banning, then that requires you to acknowledge it is wholly a bipartisan practice. Indeed, barely a week ago a school district in Washington state banned To Kill A Mockingbird because it contains the n-word, among other thought crimes. In 2019, Democrats in New Jersey tried to ban Huckleberry Finn. Both books have apparently been banned in Minnesota since 2018.

I disagree with these decisions, too. But that misses the point. Wheres the bowel-stewing panic or sophisticated condescension about mule-headed and retrograde Democrats waging a culture war and banning books? And by the way, who made the banning of Maus a national culture war issue? Hint: It wasnt Republicans. Conversely, who usually makes anecdotal cases of Huckleberry Finn being banned national issues? Hint: Its usually not Democrats.

The FiveThirtyEight authors insist that Republicans peddle misinformation and distortions in order to appease their whipped-up votersand they have a point!

But Democrats often peddle misinformation and distortions in order to appease their whipped-up voters, too.

What is the constant invocation of Jim Crow 2.0 if not a rich cocktail of misinformation and distortion? I listen closely every time a cable news talking head or Democratic pol rails against the Republican refusal to extend the Voting Rights Act. They virtually never point out that the Voting Rights Act doesnt need to be extendedits the law of the land. The extension stuff is entirely about one narrow aspect of the law invalidated by the Supreme Court that reasonable people can believe doesnt need to be extended. Reasonable people can also disagree, but they cant reasonably insinuate that those on the other side of the argument are akin to Bull Connor or other segregationists.

At the rhetorical level, the war on women is often little more than culture war boob bait. Pay disparities between men and women often vanish when you control for all sorts of relevant factors, starting with the individual choices of women. The way Democrats talk about guns is shot-through with culture war dog whistles, misinformation, and distortion.

My point isnt that liberals dont have colorable arguments on any or all of these issues. Nor is it that Republicans are always right when they ignite culture war fights. When Dr. Seuss estate opted to pull a couple of his more politically incorrect books from its catalog, Kevin McCarthy thought it was more important to read the unbanned Green Eggs and Ham than to stand in the way of Bidens $1.9 trillion spending spree. Im happy to mock that.

No, my point is that its fine to complain about culture war contests if you have a reasonable complaint. Its also fine to wage culture war fights if you have a reasonable complaint. But pretending that this is a one-sided phenomenon is itself a form of distortion and misinformation. It takes at least two sides to fight a war.

If I could offer one piece of advice to writers and editors of all stripesopinion and straight newswho want to expose the bad practices of one party or camp in the culture wars, or in politics generally, it would be to first ask this question: Does the other side do it, too?

For instance, dont wag your finger at the GOP about gerrymandering without at least acknowledging that Democrats are often just as bad. (And dont cover it under the guise of Republicans say.)

If I can close with a modest plug for The Dispatch, we dont hide the fact that we come from the right side of the ideological aisle. But part of the reason Steve and I launched this thing is to make precisely this point. It took the rise of Donald Trump for me to fully appreciate the degree to which the Republican Party and many conservative institutions are part of the problem in our politics. I also believe Trump made those problems not just more apparent, but objectively worse. But admitting the scope of partisan corruption doesnt require relinquishing ones commitment to conservative policies or principles.

For instance, Liz Cheney is still a principled conservative, but shes not willing to ignore or downplay the facts about January 6 because of that. The Republican National Committee just voted to censure her (and Adam Kinzinger) for this fact. The upshot of this is that Paul Gosar, Madison Cawthorn, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, and the other gargoyles of the right can spew their bile and be considered Republicans in good standing and receive help from the party. The censure resolution begins, WHEREAS, The primary mission of the Republican Party is to elect Republicans who support the United States Constitution and share our values. Donald Trump, it is now abundantly clear, endeavored to invalidate a constitutionally valid election, with the full support of such poltroons and gibbons. But support for the thrice-married serial adulterer and coup-plotter, is considered consonant with our values but seeking the truth isnt. Thats because Trump has become the personification of our culture war conflicts.

If thats what defines the culture war, Im happy to sit on the sidelines with my colleagues and simply tell the truth as I see itabout the GOP and the Democrats.

Various & Sundry

Canine & feline update: The dogs are doing just fine. Pippa found a wonderful, super-terrific stick the other day (yes, I let her bring it in) and she remains quite proud of it. Shes also upping her camo game. Zo is bossier these days for reasons I cant quite identify. Well return to the subject another time. But the big quadruped news is that Chesterour neighbors cat and the late Ralphs chief frenemyis basically stalking Gracie these days. Technically, Chester is waiting for the Fair Jessica to give him treats, which she does daily. But then he hangs around staring at Grace. Lots of people want us to let him in. This would be a bad idea. Hes kind of a bully and Gracie is getting up there in years and doesnt need any confrontations. Also, I think Zo and Pippa would see this as a fundamentally unacceptable breach of security protocols.

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It Takes Two Sides to Fight a War - The Dispatch