Continuation of my reflections from the March on Washington last week.
The point of tying these posts together was to go on from the Tea Parties to the ACORN scandal. Odds are by now, anybody even remotely connected to the right wing blogosphere has seen the sting videos exposing ACORN’s easy willingness to assist in underage prostitution, illegal immigration, and tax evasion. When you take this and add it to the Van Jones affair, you can start to grasp the potential power of the emerging Conservative Media Establishment.
On the whole the fact that an informal coalition of conservatives with the power to actually influence news cycles is a good thing, and the astonishing speed with which Andrew Breitbart’s new biggovernment website (along with bighollywood) have grabbed the megaphone is nothing to take lightly (FYI, Hot Air is reporting a Michael Savage interview with Breitbart, hinting that biggovernment has another bombshell in the works, looks like the NEA Conference Call fiasco).
When you take separate phenomena such as huge numbers of Conservatives taking to the streets, and media outlets (from Rush, to Fox, to the blogosphere) and put them together, I think it’s fair to say that that the so-called kulturkampf is changing, solidifying, entrenching lines. The phrase “culture war” was originally applied more to the more isolated battles over social issues, but I think it’s escalating, turning into a real fight between two opposing cultures. The opposing sides have their respective political parties, geographical boundaries, and even intellectual and cultural outlets.
Back at the beginning of the year when the conventional wisdom was that Obama was initiating a new era of liberal hegemony, I was skeptical along the general rule that, when just about everyone is absolutely convinced about a new trend, it’s a good idea to start looking in the opposite direction. The wildcat offense swept the NFL last year and had everyone predicting a complete transforming of the game of football, so I’m pretty sure every defensive coordinator knows how to stop it now.
The very fact that so many people made so much noise about the new liberal hegemony and that it caused such acrimony is to me an indicator that Conservatism is starting to define an entire swath of the country beyond the mere voting booth. Lots of people bemoaned Obama’s Notre Dame speech, but Jimmy Carter was almost as pro-abortion as Barry, and he gave a speech there too, which doesn’t seem to have created as much controversy. Yeah we can worry about the encroaching tendrils of Liberalism seeping into the culture at large, but it’s been happening since the sixties. The fact that the Right is consciously worried about it on a large scale suggests that popular conservatism is actually much stronger than it was thirty years ago, we’re much closer to waging this fight on an even playing field. And now it’s getting to the point where isolated blogs and commentators are talking about Democratic corruption and policy failures, we’re taking the offensive by marching in the streets, getting environmental czars thrown out of office, and in a single week doing incredible damage to a pillar of leftist radicalism. So rather than talk about the incredible weakness of popular conservatism right now, I think we’re much stronger than most would appreciate, and that we stand to get stronger still.
In part three, I’ll have more to say on why this all scares me to death.
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