David Frum:
The culture war raged most hotly from the ’70s to the next century’s ’20s. It polarized American society, dividing men from women, rural from urban, religious from secular, Anglo-Americans from more recent immigrant groups. At length, but only after a titanic constitutional struggle, the rural and religious side of the culture imposed its will on the urban and secular side. A decisive victory had been won, or so it seemed.
The culture war I’m talking about is the culture war over alcohol prohibition.
It took 14 years, but public opinion turned so viciously against Prohibition that a Constitutional Amendment was passed to make sure rural Christianists could no longer attempt such an outrage. And this was booze, not a core freedom to keep medical decisions private between patients and their doctors.
Kerry Eleveld and I will discuss this thermonuclear political bomb, dropped months before a critical election that will determine whether we survive as a functioning democracy. We’re already seeing generic congressional ballot polling shifting in the Democrats’ direction, and hints of renewed activation amongst our core base.
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We have so much to discuss. I’ve written about how midterm elections go to the party out of power. But what happens when the majority power is so objectively and viscerally disenfranchised? Kerry has been tracking the shifting polls (more here), and talking about privacy as a core Democratic value in the battle for public opinion.
Like Prohibition a century ago, big-government conservative theocrats have imposed their radical, unpopular agenda on the rest of the nation. Let’s hope history repeats itself, but let’s do it in less than 14 years, please. Winning in November would be a big first step toward reversing this travesty.
Sign and send the petition to Congress: Enact federal abortion protections