Kudos to Rachel Maddow for recognizing that tea party extremism is essentially leftover reaction to the Sixties. The word she’s looking for — the noun that describes this kind of regressive politics in which history is re-fought, from Texas schoolbook boards to Kentucky Senate races and passing through the town halls of August 2009 — is Kulturkampf. I prefer the German term because I’m a political scientist, and it sounds far more scientific than “culture war.”
I refer now to a post I wrote years ago, back at the beginning of this particular blog:
Kulturkampf is never a call to conversation; Kulturkampf stops all conversation. Kulturkampf is not a call to debate; it is The End of Debate. Negotiation and resolution are impossible — all that remains possible is annihilation of the other side. The only thing left to say is that “they” are wrong.
And on the related subject of “Lost Cause” mythology in February 2009:
In that dialectic of Kulturkampf, Obama destroyed the unspoken bastion of the GOP’s political theology just by being elected. The GOP sees his agenda — health care for all, peacemaking abroad, and active, competent governance — as a threat to their very ability to wage Kulturkampf. Not for nothing have they fostered mistrust of the very word ‘government’ and conspired to “drown it in a bathtub.” There was no coincidence in the Bush doctrine of incompetent government.
Kulturkampf is both means and end to the Culture Warriors. It is no coincidence that their target demographic has bought 60,000,000 copies of the apocalyptic Left Behind series: this is their political End Times.
The Bush era ended with conservatism in collapse. The tea party was an attempt to create a new American right, but what the astroturfers have actually done is resurrect the settled issues of the past. Rand Paul may be walking back his position on the Civil Rights Act, but he cannot help himself; between now and November he will be the gift that keeps on giving. David Frum describes Paul thusly:
Thus far, Democratic efforts to create a vote-enhancing villain had failed. Now Rand Paul has contrived to volunteer himself. It’s as if his mission had been to walk across an empty room without tripping. Instead, he stepped out of the room, rummaged through a hall closet, found a vacuum cleaner, plugged it in, extended the wire, took a dozen steps backward, and then raced forward to catch his ankle, plunge face forward and break his nose. As unforced errors go, this may be one of the most impressively self-destroying in recent U.S. electoral history.
As a libertarian, Rand is likely in favor of the right of suicide. But thanks to him, the damage will now be felt by others too, who will now be called upon to explain where they stand on every fruitbat idea ever aired in back issues of the Ron Paul newsletter.
And how. Even worse than Paul will be the Paulites. Argue with them, and you’ll find yourself rehashing the Civil Rights Acts, the gold standard, and the question of a central bank that was argued and re-argued throughout American history until the creation of the Federal Reserve. They want to undo history; they are all about going back to some mythical, golden utopia of their imagination. Along the way, they would undo every advance of American society and politics.
Lest you think I exaggerate, look at who Rand Paul hangs out with.
