“Culture Warriors Get Laid Off”?

[nerdgirl 0]

Are there other parallels of the last decade or so with 1920s & 1930s beyond just economic bubbles and bursts?

(Or is it just an example of seeing patterns and historical parallels where there are none?
Humans have an amazing ability to find patterns ... sometimes they're *very* real & they're more like the Virgin Mary on a grilled cheese sandwich.)

The 1920s had Prohibition and the rise of the anti-evolution sentiment – the Scopes Monkey trial was in 1925. “The Anti-Saloon League was the Moral Majority of its day, the vanguard of a powerful fundamentalist movement that pushed anti-evolution legislation as vehemently as it did its war on booze.”

Frank Rich’s Op-Ed column from the Sunday NY Times, “The Culture Warriors Get Laid Off

“Much as Obama repealed the Bush restrictions on abortion and stem-cell research shortly after pushing through his stimulus package, so F.D.R. jump-started the repeal of Prohibition by asking Congress to legalize beer and wine just days after his March 1933 inauguration and declaration of a bank holiday. As Michael A. Lerner writes in his fascinating 2007 book _Dry Manhattan_, Roosevelt’s stance reassured many Americans that they would have a president ‘who not only cared about their economic well-being’ but who also understood their desire to be liberated from ‘the intrusion of the state into their private lives.’ Having lost plenty in the Depression, the public did not want to surrender any more freedoms to the noisy minority that had shut down the nation’s saloons.”

We’ve had President Obama overturn the ban on federal funding for research on new stem cell lines and overturn the “Global Gag” rule.


This past week the Chairman of the GOP, Mr. Michael Steele, indicated (before retracting a few days later; under pressure?) that he supported a women’s right to choose – not supported abortion but supported the right of an individual adult with XX chromosomes to make that choice.

M: The choice issue cuts two ways. You can choose life or you can choose abortion. You know, my mother chose life [& put Mr Steele up for adoption as an infant-nerdgirl]. So, you know, I think the power of the argument of choice boils down to stating a case for one or the other.

Q: Are you saying you think women have the right to choose abortion?

M: Yeah. I mean, again, I think that’s an individual choice.”

A return to traditional conservative values of individual liberty … or something else? The conservative American Spectator characterized Steele’s comments as

“an effort to seem more inclusive, Steele tried to appropriate the language of the left by saying life is a choice, but then he allowed himself to be backed into a corner in which he said that women have the right to choose abortion -- by definition, a pro-choice postion(sic).

“He is proving himself to be a shape shifter who is trying to please everybody, but in the end delivering a completely muddled message. Ultimately no pro-choice independent or Democrat is going to be more inclined to become a Republican as a result of that GQ interview, because Steele comes off like a bumbling clown who is trying to have it both ways.”

While I concur heartily that it is unlikely that pro-individual choice, pro-science, pro-civil liberties, pro-secular government voter is going to vote for anti-choice, anti-science, pro far-right-wing religious fundamentalism candidates … but instead maybe it’s the shift in away from the last 25 years back to “remember what [the Republican Party] once was”?

So perhaps not only is the economy cyclical but also are the culture wars?

/Marg

Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters.
Tibetan Buddhist saying

[Butters 0]

Quote

The 1920s had Prohibition and the rise of the anti-evolution sentiment – the Scopes Monkey trial was in 1925. “The Anti-Saloon League was the Moral Majority of its day, the vanguard of a powerful fundamentalist movement that pushed anti-evolution legislation as vehemently as it did its war on booze.”

Frank Rich’s Op-Ed column from the Sunday NY Times, “The Culture Warriors Get Laid Off"

“Much as Obama repealed the Bush restrictions on abortion and stem-cell research shortly after pushing through his stimulus package, so F.D.R. jump-started the repeal of Prohibition by asking Congress to legalize beer and wine just days after his March 1933 inauguration and declaration of a bank holiday. As Michael A. Lerner writes in his fascinating 2007 book _Dry Manhattan_, Roosevelt’s stance reassured many Americans that they would have a president ‘who not only cared about their economic well-being’ but who also understood their desire to be liberated from ‘the intrusion of the state into their private lives.’ Having lost plenty in the Depression, the public did not want to surrender any more freedoms to the noisy minority that had shut down the nation’s saloons.”

If this happens it would be a better parallel.

"That looks dangerous." Leopold Stotch

[quade 4]

If it's all culturally cyclical, then here's the story and leader of a country that worries me the most.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1160972/The-far-right-march-rise-fascism-Austria.html

quade -
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