Farewell to the Culture Wars

In diagnosing why Sarah Palin’s arguments have not gained more traction among voters, Peter Beinart suggests it is because the culture wars—the conflict between those who agreed or disagreed with the upheaval in attitudes thrown up during the ’60s—are about to end. Palin is “depicting the campaign as a struggle between the culturally familiar and the culturally threatening, the culturally traditional and the culturally exotic,” writes Beinart in The Washington Post. “But Obama has dismissed those attacks as irrelevant, and the public, focused nervously on the economic collapse, has largely tuned them out...Although she seems like a fresh face, Sarah Palin actually represents the end of an era. She may be the last culture warrior on a national ticket for a very long time,” he writes.