Waging Culture War by Political Means
What do conservatives mean when they say they want to use political power to win cultural battles?
The most interesting and thought-provoking thing I read last week was a single paragraph from conservative columnist Ross Douthat as part of his contribution to a New York Times roundtable on the launch of the presidential campaign of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Here is that paragraph:
The thing that many of his critics loathe most about DeSantis, his willingness to use political power directly in cultural conflicts, represents the necessary future of conservatism in America. The line between politics and culture is always a blur, and a faction that enjoys political power without cultural power can’t serve its own voters without looking for ways to bring those scales closer to a balance. There are good and bad ways to do this, and DeSantis’s record is a mixture of the two. But the project is a normal part of democratic politics, not an authoritarian betrayal.
That really does distill an important aspect of what’s distinctive about the post-2016 right, even if Donald Trump himself could never have expressed it that clearly and concisely.
But is Douthat correct that using politics to try and change culture is “a normal part of democratic politics”? I think the evidence is mixed, with the case being stronger at the state level. When it comes to the federal government, using politics to win culture-war battles will require more novelty—a combination of the right copying the left and trying entirely new things that go quite a bit beyond politics as usual.
To me, this sounds like a form of corruption, with elected governments no longer attempting to create a level playing field for free economic exchange among private entities but instead playing favorites with businesses and actively seeking to incentivize decision-making that will please right-wing voters.
When Politics Was Downstream from Culture
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Notes from the Middleground to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.