11-10-2016, 06:44 PM
(This post was last modified: 11-10-2016, 06:55 PM by Anthony '58.)
Now that the conservatives are the "ins" and the liberals the "outs," will we now see a return to the days of the left seeking a "Second Amendment solution" to what they see as the nation's problems - the days of the Black Panthers ambushing police officers en masse, the Weather Underground blowing up buildings, and the "Zebra shootings" of whites in and around San Francisco?
On the cause of states' rights, a role reversal is even more likely - as voters defied the federal government on both raising the minimum wage and legalizing recreational marijuana use Tuesday, with ballot initiatives on those two issues going a combined eight for nine. And with the repeal of ObamaCare now imminent, liberal states - and even some conservative ones; e.g., Utah - are sure to move heaven and earth to see to it that the newly uninsured are given some sort of safety net.
And according to this piece, states' rights could be the key to diffusing the Culture Wars once and for all:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/proje...ia-fits-in
Can Trump End The Culture Wars?
By Daniel K. Williams
Donald J. Trump was elected with a higher percentage of the white evangelical vote than any other Republican presidential candidate has ever received, and he has received strong support from prominent Christian Right leaders. Yet if Mr. Trump delivers on his promises, he will not give the religious right what its leaders have traditionally demanded or what the Republican Party platform calls for. Indeed, he will give them very little national legislation at all, but will instead offer them maximum latitude to pursue their agenda at the state level — a shift that may portend a potential breakthrough in the nation’s polarizing culture wars.
National legislation has long been the goal of the religious right. When the movement emerged in the late 1970s, evangelical leaders such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson sought federal constitutional amendments to ban abortion and restore school prayer, because they wanted to reverse what liberal rights activists had done at the national level through the Supreme Court. In the early 21st century, leaders such as James Dobson continued this trend by persuading President George W. Bush to endorse a constitutional amendment proposal to define marriage as exclusively heterosexual.
In recent years, evangelicals have become so concerned about protecting their own religious liberty against federal mandates or court decisions that they have given less attention to imposing a moral agenda on the rest of the nation. Although the Republican Party platform continues to promise a constitutional amendment protecting human life from the moment of conception, the pro-life movement has not made any serious attempts to pass that amendment since the 1980s. Nor has there been much talk in the last decade of a national ban on same-sex marriage.
Mr. Trump is well positioned to promote a further shift away from national moral regulation. For much of his adult life, he held culturally libertarian views on abortion and gay rights, and he evinced little interest in the religious right’s agenda. Early in his campaign, he expressed discomfort with conservative evangelicals’ opposition to the rights of transgender people to use the public restroom of their choice. But he quickly came to embrace a “states’ rights” position on same-sex marriage and transgender rights, a position that would allow culturally liberal New Yorkers the right to pursue different policies than cultural conservatives in Mississippi or North Dakota. And while Mr. Trump stumbled over abortion during his campaign, the policy that he ultimately reverted to was to leave abortion legalization up to the states — an outcome that he would try to ensure by nominating conservative Supreme Court justices who might overturn Roe v. Wade.
Mr. Trump has gone further than any previous Republican presidential nominee in a generation in insisting that the religious right should enact its agenda at the state, rather than federal, level. Although this was the policy position of many Republicans during the 1970s (including President Gerald Ford), religious right activists persuaded the G.O.P. in the early 1980s to abandon its states-rights approach to abortion and other social issues, and promise national legislation to implement the religious right’s agenda. Mr. Trump is leading the party back to its more traditional stance.
While many liberals will find this outcome unsatisfactory — since it offers them no opportunity to secure national protection for individual rights that they consider inalienable — it may be the only compromise solution that can give both conservatives and liberals the freedom to pursue their own agenda at the local level without fear of a national backlash.
If a socially libertarian New Yorker can deliver this compromise to the conservative white rural evangelical voters who put him in office, both conservatives and liberals should see that for what it is: a landmark opportunity to move beyond the culture wars.
Daniel K. Williams is a professor of history at the University of West Georgia and the author of “God’s Own Party: The Making of the Christian Right."
On the cause of states' rights, a role reversal is even more likely - as voters defied the federal government on both raising the minimum wage and legalizing recreational marijuana use Tuesday, with ballot initiatives on those two issues going a combined eight for nine. And with the repeal of ObamaCare now imminent, liberal states - and even some conservative ones; e.g., Utah - are sure to move heaven and earth to see to it that the newly uninsured are given some sort of safety net.
And according to this piece, states' rights could be the key to diffusing the Culture Wars once and for all:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/proje...ia-fits-in
Can Trump End The Culture Wars?
By Daniel K. Williams
Donald J. Trump was elected with a higher percentage of the white evangelical vote than any other Republican presidential candidate has ever received, and he has received strong support from prominent Christian Right leaders. Yet if Mr. Trump delivers on his promises, he will not give the religious right what its leaders have traditionally demanded or what the Republican Party platform calls for. Indeed, he will give them very little national legislation at all, but will instead offer them maximum latitude to pursue their agenda at the state level — a shift that may portend a potential breakthrough in the nation’s polarizing culture wars.
National legislation has long been the goal of the religious right. When the movement emerged in the late 1970s, evangelical leaders such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson sought federal constitutional amendments to ban abortion and restore school prayer, because they wanted to reverse what liberal rights activists had done at the national level through the Supreme Court. In the early 21st century, leaders such as James Dobson continued this trend by persuading President George W. Bush to endorse a constitutional amendment proposal to define marriage as exclusively heterosexual.
In recent years, evangelicals have become so concerned about protecting their own religious liberty against federal mandates or court decisions that they have given less attention to imposing a moral agenda on the rest of the nation. Although the Republican Party platform continues to promise a constitutional amendment protecting human life from the moment of conception, the pro-life movement has not made any serious attempts to pass that amendment since the 1980s. Nor has there been much talk in the last decade of a national ban on same-sex marriage.
Mr. Trump is well positioned to promote a further shift away from national moral regulation. For much of his adult life, he held culturally libertarian views on abortion and gay rights, and he evinced little interest in the religious right’s agenda. Early in his campaign, he expressed discomfort with conservative evangelicals’ opposition to the rights of transgender people to use the public restroom of their choice. But he quickly came to embrace a “states’ rights” position on same-sex marriage and transgender rights, a position that would allow culturally liberal New Yorkers the right to pursue different policies than cultural conservatives in Mississippi or North Dakota. And while Mr. Trump stumbled over abortion during his campaign, the policy that he ultimately reverted to was to leave abortion legalization up to the states — an outcome that he would try to ensure by nominating conservative Supreme Court justices who might overturn Roe v. Wade.
Mr. Trump has gone further than any previous Republican presidential nominee in a generation in insisting that the religious right should enact its agenda at the state, rather than federal, level. Although this was the policy position of many Republicans during the 1970s (including President Gerald Ford), religious right activists persuaded the G.O.P. in the early 1980s to abandon its states-rights approach to abortion and other social issues, and promise national legislation to implement the religious right’s agenda. Mr. Trump is leading the party back to its more traditional stance.
While many liberals will find this outcome unsatisfactory — since it offers them no opportunity to secure national protection for individual rights that they consider inalienable — it may be the only compromise solution that can give both conservatives and liberals the freedom to pursue their own agenda at the local level without fear of a national backlash.
If a socially libertarian New Yorker can deliver this compromise to the conservative white rural evangelical voters who put him in office, both conservatives and liberals should see that for what it is: a landmark opportunity to move beyond the culture wars.
Daniel K. Williams is a professor of history at the University of West Georgia and the author of “God’s Own Party: The Making of the Christian Right."
"These, and many other matters which might be noticed, add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation" - Justice David Brewer, Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States, 1892