Cultural wars are dirty wars, much like guerilla warfare in the jungles, with no regard for
the rules of the Geneva Convention. Warfare over traditional values versus avant-garde
values is raging all across the United States today, from the art galleries to the armed
forces, and from the kindergarten to the Supreme Court. At issue is whose cultural values shall
prevail and who shall make the decisions that reflect those values. The categorical language
of “rights” is widely used as a weapon in these cultural wars. Those who are pushing
a woman’s “right” to go into military combat, for example, are in effect saying
that the decisions of the military commanders responsible for the lives of thousands of
troops, and the decisions of the American society as to the social roles of the sexes,
are all to be superseded by the visions of self-anointed and politically organized feminist
advocacy groups. The particulars of the arguments—the physical strength of the sexes, the performance
of women in the military, etc.—are in one sense all beside the point. The question is
not what to decide, but who is to decide. As elsewhere in the cultural wars, the issue
is whether a vocal elite should get the power to pre-empt the decisions of others. To the
anointed, the use of words like “rights” is sufficient to put one coterie’s opinions
above discussion and the word “stereotypes” is enough to put the values of the society
at large beneath discussion. They don’t want discussion, they want power. One of the
more remarkable “rights” to emerge in recent years is the right to the taxpayers’
money for anything that chooses to call itself “art”—regardless of whether the taxpayers
or voters like what is produced, and regardless of whether the clear intent of this “art”
is in fact to insult the values and beliefs of the public. For people to decide what their
own money is to be spent for is “censorship” in the Newspeak of the anointed. More generally,
the cultural wars are being waged to get decision-making powers transferred to elites who do not pay,
either in money or in other ways. Family responsibilities, for example, have been taken over by schools,
courts, social agencies, and others who pay no price if their decisions turn out disastrously
for children or their parents, or for the whole society. The basic thrust of the so-called
“consumer movement” is likewise a drive for pre-empting the consumer’s choice, not
simply informing it. The “consumer must be protected at times from his own indiscretion
and vanity,” Ralph Nader said in his first article, published in The Nation in 1959.
It is much the same story in the economic sphere, where having an economic “plan,”
or perhaps even an “industrial policy” or an “energy policy” are all widely and
uncritically regarded among opinion elites as good things in themselves. But government
“planning” is not an alternative to chaos. It is a pre-emption of other people’s plans.
Whether the sphere of activity is art, military combat, law, schools, or the economy, the
issue is whether elite pre-emption shall replace both individual autonomy and democratic choice.
The courts are a major battleground in these wars over cultural values, for they are well-positioned
to pre-empt the decisions of others by “interpreting” the Constitution to ban or promote whatever
the judges want banned or promoted. The bitter struggles over Supreme Court nominees in recent
years have reflected this key role of the courts in imposing policies so repugnant to
the public that elected representatives would not dare vote them into law. Criminals’
judge-created “rights,” busing, affirmative action, and abortion, are just some of the
policies pre-empted from the democratic process by judicial fiat. The issue, as Judge Robert
H. Bork has said, is whether “intellectual class values” shall “continue to be enacted
into law by the Supreme Court.” The concern expressed by Justices O’Connor, Kennedy,
and Souter as to how their ruling in the recent case of Planned Parenthood v. Casey would
be seen by “the thoughtful part of the Nation” suggests that elite pre-emption is still in
favor, even among Justices labelled “conservative.” The pre-emptive class is undoubtedly sincere.
People are never more sincere than when they assume their own superiority. Nor are they
ever more ruthless. J. A. Schumpeter said that the first thing a man will do for his
ideals is lie. Disingenuous words, twisted statistics, and misleading labels are all
part of the dirty war over cultural values. Cultural wars are so desperate because they
are not simply about the merits or demerits of particular policies. They are about the
anointed’s whole conception of themselves—about whether they are in the heady role of a vanguard