Liberals have sometimes deviated from our basic stance of tolerance for all non-harmful ways of life. In The Great Culture War I believe we have done so for the same reason that the War rages on year after year though lots of people on both sides are sick of it: fear.

In this respect this war raises the same burning question as lots of others have over the centuries--what will the other side do to us if we capitulate?! Having cleared a space for diversity in the US over a mere 40 years, we liberals fear that we could all be brought back by the Religious Right's political action to the Bad Old Days when there was onne approved Path to follow through life, and all else was deviance.

And, on the other side, the reason for abiding fear on the part of religico-traditionalists is obvious. When your subculture prescribes a host of rules for living, many of them onerous, it will have trouble retaining its young people if next door there is a subculture that lets it all hang out. I think this is the cultural foundation for the absolute fury of the Religious Right.

The economic foundation of that rage remains a separate issue, and is founded in the fact that Americans have had almost all class consciousness propagandized out of them by 60 years of anti-communism. There is just a remnant of it left--enough be whipped up into hatred of intellectual elites by the Limbaughs of the world, when the elite that is actually doing harm to the poor and working people is the same as it's always been--the wealthy.