On Moral Majorities

It occurs to me that the people who seek morality through politics and government come in three flavors. One is now the lifeblood of the GOP, one represents low-hanging fruit for GOP operatives, and the third will find them selves in uneasy alliance with the GOP, but only when the tent isn't too big. They are, respectively:

Cultural Fascists

These are the Brent Bozells, the Bill Kristols, and the Pat Robertsons. They are the faction that seeks to impose their view of morality on the country at the point of the government's gun. They bark incessantly about the trash on television and radio, positions most of us can sympathize with, but they carry the big stick of the FCC. In their world, no one is smart enough to find the power button on their television set or to pick up a good book instead of zoning out in front of the tube. In their world, we have acquiesced to the television-as-babysitter mentality. They yodel about the immorality of the public schools and acknowledge them as havens for sexual deviants and cesspools where the brothel is the only morality taught. Yet they fail to acknowledge that it is the very nature of government-run schools to become what they have. Their proposed solution is to impose their morality on the schools, but no one really knows the parameters of that morality.

Cultural Luddites

These are the people who are lost and afraid in American post-modern culture. They know something's not quite right, but they are at a loss as to how it can be fixed. They are harvested by the cultural fascists as grist for the mill. They represent a sure and constant straight ticket vote. Before the Reagan Revolution, they had nowhere to go. They stick with the GOP because the vast chasm of cultural uncertainty and the American Left's cultural nihilism scares the pants off them. They have the niggling doubt that accompanies the dim awareness that it was the GOP itself that put down the Reagan Revolution, but the scary dark outside is way too much for them to risk. Some of the braver souls jumped ship in the past over to the Constitution Party, but the vicious in-fighting there sent them scurrying for cover back to the GOP. This group will be the last to leave and only after someone else has turned out the lights and locked the doors. They are the reason the GOP continues to gain power and why it won't lose that power for some time to come. This is Joe and Jane Sixpack.

Cultural Accomodaters

These are the folks who liked the fact that the GOP represented the cultural counter-weight to the hedonistic Left in the 1970s and 1980s. They are also the people most alarmed at the pace at which the cultural fascists have taken control of the party. They are aware that the particular brand of cultural fascist that owns the party, the neocons, are also Marxists at heart. These people wanted a balance in the actions of government in social and cultural contexts. These people are the small-government Republicans and fiscal conservatives who set off the Reagan Revolution. Many of them have already left the GOP and more leave every day.

I agree with Vox as well, but until that middle group has somewhere to go, they'll keep drinking the Kool-aid, regardless of how irrational it becomes. They'll keep voting in the Foleys and other morally damaged pols on the word of GOP insiders who characterize them as "good, Christian men." This won't change any time soon. The Democrats are too busy with demagoguery and pandering to the thousand different fringe interests they have cultivated over the last thirty years. The rest of the organized political parties are still battling the chaos that comes with being the home of the outcast and forgotten "kooks" from the two factions of our single main political party.

Depressing, isn't it?