>Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema wrote:
>
>>Many leftists may think this is simple foolishness, or even
paranoia,
>>but consider how the solid verities of a couple of decades ago
actually
>>have changed.
>
>You're right. I started writing a response yesterday to Max's
>assertion that we live in a conservative culture, but time was short
>and I wasn't happy with what I'd typed, so I trashed it. But in many
>ways this isn't a conservative culture, even though the conservatives
>have a disproportionate share of the soapboxes. "Traditional"
>attitudes towards sex, gender roles, childrearing, and lots of other
>things have been completely turned upside down over the last 30
>years. Conservatives' ire about The Sixties may seem pretty funny,
>but their despair over having lost the culture wars is pretty
>justified. We - i.e., those lefties who aren't cultural
>conservatives, closeted or open - should be happy about this.
I'm ambivalent about the victories gained by the cultural left. I wouldn't want to live in the U.S.A. of fifty or sixty years ago. Yet it often seems that the most substantial victory gained by women and gays was to be recognized as a consumerist demographic. Certain aspects of United States were turned upside down, but the notion of individuals as mere consumers remained the same. Also, being the beneficiaries of such achievements doesn't necessarily make you political conscious. For instance, the mainstream gay culture strikes me as being blithely elitist as well as ignorant of the problems facing the working class.
What drives the Falwells of the world nuts about modern-day culture is the cross-matching between free markets and liberal culture. They had advocated the former as a way of exterminating the latter. The idea was that 'good capital' (the money of wholesome Christian mid-westerners) would triumph over 'bad capital' (the cash of those decadent big-city folk.) Instead, the gays went to Disneyworld, Eminem became a best-seller, and the large corporations didn't care who was sucking Clinton's dick as long as he came through with NAFTA.
-- David