Posted on 09/03/2010 10:36:13 PM PDT by neverdem
For decades, liberals won the culture wars and, consequently most of the elections that reshaped America. More than politics is changing in this crossroads year of 2010—Americans are reasserting traditional culture. You won't read or see it in the mainstream media, but this fact is driving the political story.
The Republican Party is not resurgent (although it may be the beneficiary); America is resurgent.
Generations of Americans have never known any culture except the progressive, politically correct left.
Beginning in the 1960s, God was driven out of American public life because liberals said the Constitution demanded a separation of church and state.
Planned Parenthood was part of a campaign that convinced many Americans that killing unborn babies was really a defense of a woman's constitutional right to choose.
The ACLU sued to define "free speech" to include vandalism, sacrilegious art, and spitting on returning veterans of the Vietnam War.
Even more depressing, the drive for equal rights for liberated slaves, begun by Republicans during and after the Civil War, morphed into a liberal affirmative action program which reintroduced privilege based on skin color.
In 2010, the tide has turned.
This year, liberals demanded Americans respect the triumphalist mosque near Ground Zero as an expression of American commitment to religious freedom. At the same time, liberals sued to remove a cross in a remote area of California's Mojave Desert and sponsored hate crime legislation that would put Christian pastors in jail for reading Biblical passages condemning homosexuality.
The hypocrisy had gone too far. Americans noticed the one-sidedness; they saw “The Agenda” at work. Americans by 70% oppose the Ground Zero mosque and Obama's support of it has hurt him and his party going into November. The liberals lost the culture conflict and, consequently, the political momentum.
In the 2008 campaign, liberals promised Planned Parenthood that healthcare "reform" would include all "reproductive services" (read: federally funded abortions). But in the debate over healthcare legislation, Rep. Bart Stupak and a small band of pro-life Democrats joined with Republicans in demanding the continuation of a ban on federally funded abortions.
Based on promises made by Pelosi and Reid, Stupak and enough others caved and the "reform" passed. But the "ban" was watered down in the final bill drafted in secret; abortion coverage was made subject to further rule-making by the federal bureaucracy.
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was given the power to write regulations governing required coverage in all health insurance plans under the Obamacare bill. A notorious pro-abortion advocate, Sebelius prepared to require abortion as a covered procedure, with federal funding for those who could not afford it.
The deception was too obvious. Americans noticed. Obama, Reid, and Pelosi would say or do anything (or bribe anyone) to advance a federal takeover of our healthcare choices.
Americans by 60-70% want this "reform" repealed. Obama and Co. won the legislative battle, but lost the culture. Now they are losing the politics as well.
The Obamacare debate awakened what Nixon called the "Silent Majority." Silent no more, the Tea Party gatherings starting in the summer of 2009 galvanized American grassroots opposition. Liberal attempts to scold, denigrate, and marginalize this movement backfired. Now, incumbents of both parties are being thrown out of office in a political bloodbath that will reach a crescendo in November.
Al Sharpton's pathetic counter demonstration to Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” event in D.C. is only the latest highlight of the perversion of the civil rights movement by its current self proclaimed "leaders." More and more American blacks have come to realize that the Democratic government plantation is not so different from the Democrat's original version in the pre-Civil War South. Dependency is dependency. A welfare check and food stamps are doled out by the new "massa”—same as the old "massa".
Americans of all backgrounds have noticed. Equality of opportunity has degenerated into new privileges based on skin color. Most Americans want a return to an opportunity society with "equal justice for all." The Voting Rights Act should apply to the New Black Panthers, too.
Too many commentators have looked only to the economy and Obama's failed economic policies to explain the Democrats swift fall from grace and the growing belief that the November election will turn the House, and maybe the Senate, over to the Republicans.
Underlying all politics is the culture. It is changing. The dominant liberal culture has yielded division and decay in American society—and a government-directed economy destroying our standard of living. The rejection of liberal culture has begun; the rejection of liberal politics will follow.
Roger Hedgecock is a nationally-syndicated radio talk host. Visit rogerhedgecock.com. The Roger Hedgecock Show is syndicated on the Radio America network.
So desperate they have been to re-define what “mainstream” is. The mainstream doesn’t buy it. Progressivism is fringe and always will be.
Ridiculous.
Liberals have won the culture war. Since the Great Depression, the United States has shifted left both socially and economically. Conservatism has served only to slow this shift, not to arrest or reverse it. And even conservatism has gradually been redefined to the left.
Look at the nation we live in today compared to the nation our grandparents and great-grandparents lived in. To claim that liberals have lost the culture war, that there has been a rejection of liberalism, is just preposterous.
Wishing this were different doesn't make it so.
An excellent commentary on the culture by Roger Hedgecock.
He’s put into words something that most of us Tea Party rebels have been feeling for years, and that is; Americans have reached the end of their tolerance and patience with left-liberalism.
The American people naively accepted that the left truly wanted to improve this country, and allowed them to slowly and incrementally violate our Founding Principles, our traditions, and our Constitution, in a million ways, large and small.
The cumulative damage done to the country by nearly 100 years of left-liberal destruction has brought us nearly to the brink of collapse.
I think that most of us have seen that brink approaching, and are now applying the brakes with everything we’ve got. This is the natural, and predictable response of a great people.
So desperate they have been to re-define what “mainstream” is. The mainstream doesn’t buy it. Progressivism is fringe and always will be.
This is the spiritual revival that Palin and Beck have been advocating and will be happening all across the country.
Ah....one of FR's brightest rays of sunshine weighs in.
No, Drew. No one's rejecting liberalism, the Democrats are going to win even MORE seats in Congress this fall, and everybody just loves Obama.
Unfortunately, I have to agree with you. Witness George W. Bush's "compassionate conservatism" which resulted in a huge Medicare benefit increase for prescription drugs, and also in an Administration which looked the other way while illegal immigration got completely out of hand. Today, the Republican Party is pandering to homosexuals. It's all about the votes and power, there is no principle.
we need to change the liberal, commie brainwashing happening in U.S. schools everywhere. It is one critical breading ground for all of this mess.
1994. Where are we now?
I’m not ever giving up but Drews point is what it is.
You are correct, sir!
And as far as culture war issues go, the left has won on abortion. I doubt that Roe vs. Wade will ever be overturned, and even if it were, it would simply return the abortion issue to state laws. Liberal states would pass laws allowing abortion on demand. Some conservative states might severely restrict or outlaw abortion if Roe were overturned, but abortion on demand would still be the law of the land in much of the country.
And we’re on the verge of seeing federal courts impose homosexual marriage on all 50 states. It may take a few years but the seeds for that one are planted too.
And even if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns the challenges in federal court from Mass. and California, bit by bit we will see liberal states vote to allow homosexual marriage. If society continues on its current track of being more open and accepting of homosexuality, then homosexual marriage will be institutionalized in our culture.
Good article here.
I'm surprised you have to ask, with all of the articles posted here on that very subject.
In short, the Republicans polled about 5 points ahead of the Democrats in the Generic Congressional poll, just before they took over Congress in 1994.
Today, the Republicans are polling close to ten points ahead of the Democrats, which portends a massive shift to the right in November. Many observers are saying that this will likely be the hugest shift of Congress in our history.
That's where we're at.
Drews point is what it is.
Which means what? That his point is valid? If you're a liberal who refuses to see the reality happening before your very eyes, I guess it's valid. The rest of us see exactly what Roger Hedgecock sees.
There's a fundamental, tectonic shift in attitudes occurring in America, which is resulting in a growing rejection of left-liberalism. The country is turning back toward its Founding Principles with a vengeance. The long experiment with (and tolerance for) the progressive agenda is over.
Sadly, I agee with you - I see the Sacco and Vinzetti trial as the turning point. We’ll never get a foothold there - the Right abandoned culture generations ago.
In this country, things can change swiftly, so I am hoping that 2010 will mark a change of the magnitude such as marked the 1820s. Time will tell. Pols like Miller and Rubio belong to a generation born after the last of the Boomers. Not all the Boomers were liberals, and DeMint is evidence of that.
You’re right. The AAL (Anti-American Left) has lost some recent skirmishes, but they’ve won so much for so long that it will take herculean efforts to bring America forward to its Christian roots.
“Wishing this were different doesn't make it so.”
Exactly and well stated. The gays have won so much that they can't ever be criticized, even by the church. We have no real freedom of speech. Look at a woman the wrong way and you can be charged with sexual harassment. Crimes against minorities have double penalties because of hate crimes legislation. The Log Cabin Republicans just had a big party led by Bush's out of the closet campaign manager, while Freepers galore here twisted themselves into knots saying that they didn't even care about homosexuality.
Television is a wasteland of half hour long commercials because most old time programs and movies can't get past the invisible curtain of political correctness.
But we supposedly won the culture war, according to this guy. Liberals lost on guns, the ERA and the death penalty, but they filled up the judiciary with judges that won't enforce that third item, so they won there too. They have won so often and so much that their horses have to stop and rest. That's all.
This is a single election, and afterwards the press will blame Republicans for everything from snow storms to hurricanes to toilets not flushing. And the same idiots that believed the media liars since 2004 and for sixty years before that will believe them again.
I hate to spoil the party. Enjoy the win. It will be a win. Just remember we only get one of these every twenty years, and only after the Dems achieve full and total power and begin to drink the people's blood.
Every now and then we slow the train down. That's about it.
Good article.
It would take a major shift in November to bring to a halt to the worst excesses of the liberals. It is not a good sign that even some of the headliners are soft-peddling the gay marriage issue. It was a big mistake agreeing to the so-called civil union. But as the gay activists correctly pointed out, the real dagger in the back of traditional marriage was “fault-free” divorce. No partnership of such importance ought to be dissolvable on a whim.
great article regarding the Bolsheviks relentless march.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/09/the_drumbeat.html
Pass this on to everyone you know.
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