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In the year since Gov. Bill Lee issued his stay-at-home order, weve seen the pro-life and pro-choice tribes largely swap values. Pro-lifers are now claiming a right to choose to defend their decisions and pro-choicers argue for restrictions in the name of preserving life.

Separated from the issue of abortion, what do these terms mean? To me, pro-choice emphasizes the liberty part of our inalienable rights. Obviously, you cant actively kill someone as that would infringe upon their right to life, but even an actively dangerous lifestyle is acceptable if others can distance themselves from your danger.

Even though smoking is detrimental to your own health and those near you, people can still see the light and plumes of your cigarette and choose to avoid you. They are informed and capable of avoiding you, so it is your choice.

Pro-life, it then would stand to reason, promotes the right to life more heavily than liberty. If it means protecting life and that certain choices should be taken away.

Some people will hang out with you regardless of your habits. Therefore, you should not be allowed to light that cigarette since second-hand smoke can be lethal.

Obviously, this doesnt just apply to smoking. Indeed, I want to focus on that C word weve already heard too much of: COVID-19.

Here in Tennessee, Lees stay-at-home order expired within a month and he declined to issue a mask mandate, instead encouraging personal responsibility to curb the pandemic. Many who consider themselves pro-choice were irritated, believing the lockdown should have been longer and that a mask mandate would have been prudent.

But if you are actually pro-choice, why would you want a mask mandate? If your chiropractor chooses not to wear a mask, you can choose another chiropractor.

Its possible, however, that no chiropractor in your area wears a mask at work, meaning you have to decide between risking COVID-19 exposure and severe back pain. If you additionally had a weakened immune system, that would be an especially cruel choice.

The other side has its share of hypocrisy, too, and its probably worse.

There are good odds (around 40%) that you will be unaware if you have COVID, and if you do have COVID, the chances also are such that infecting just seven customers while working at the caf will kill one person between those customers, their friends and their families.

Masks may not eliminate coronavirus transmission, but science agrees that they reduce it (by 40% to 70%). Nevertheless, it doesnt take long in Blount County to find a pro-life business owner who doesnt require masks.

Naturally, this is a generalization, but it is certainly ironic that those labeled pro-life on the abortion issue are more likely to defend their actions on a principle of personal choice while those labeled pro-choice tend to favor mandating what individuals wear.

The logical question remaining is why? A pro-choice pro-masker may point to the aforementioned cruel choice dilemma or assert the pandemic is different since the life being protected is already realized. A pro-life anti-masker might cite natural selection or skepticism of mask efficacy.

In truth, this role reversal mostly comes down to a perceived culture war especially for anti-maskers. The pandemic has become an extension of the broader political divide, with the pro-life and pro-choice camps largely defaulting to their conservative and progressive identities, respectively.

YouTuber CGP Grey summarized it well, noting how the pandemic quickly went from a humanity-uniting event to fracturing in the usual tiresome ways with two groups each creating a totem, they can yell about how the other side is not just dumb but maliciously evil.

That attitude has always destroyed civic trust, but in the past year it has destroyed lives. There is no cost to wearing a mask, yet many pro-lifers are happy to take an arbitrary stand against the progressives at the cost of their health and that of their loved ones.

As conservative columnist David Brooks said on the PBS NewsHour, The mask issue has become not a scientific issue, not a public policy issue, just a symbolic issue. And we seem to take every practical issue and turn it into a culture war issue.

In the long-term, our country would be better off not making every issue about the culture war. Rather, we each should identify our values and consistently use them as guidelines for personal, political and policy decisions.

But in the short term, I encourage us to remember that we humans ultimately value both choice and life. In these final months of the pandemic, we all have some choice. Lets choose life. Until we are fully vaccinated, lets wear a mask, watch our distance and wash our hands. Lets all do our part and care for the good of our neighbors.

Francisco A.J. Camacho of Friendsville is an undergraduate student at the George Washington University, writes for The GW Hatchet, and has contributed to The Tennessean in Nashville and The Daily Times. He welcomes responses, comments and questions relating to his pieces at P.O. Box 363, Friendsville, TN 37737.

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Coronavirus, conservatives and the culture wars | Opinion | thedailytimes.com - Maryville Daily Times

The return of the wolf and grizzly bear to the northern Rockies are two success stories that came out of the Endangered Species Act. In 1975, when grizzly bears were listed as endangered species, there were from 100 to 200 of them, mostly in Yellowstone and Glacier national parks. Their numbers are now estimated at about 1,800 in the Lower 48 states. The grizzlies were able to make that comeback largely because hunting was ended, trash was carefully managed and there was an effective crackdown on poachers.

Outside Yellowstone and Glacier national parks, grizzly bears roam mainly in wilderness areas of the state, though they are expanding into more populated areas where they are increasingly vulnerable to being hit by cars, shot by hunters, and killed or removed by biologists because of conflicts with humans. And bears and wolves pose a real threat to livestock and to humans. Every year, hikers or hunters are attacked by bears, and in many parts of the state anyone hiking is cautioned to be bear aware and carry a pepper-based spray for protection.

The debate over protecting endangered species, particularly predators, has long roiled Montana, pitting liberal urban areas in the state and across the country against rural ranchers who are increasingly concerned about their livestock being killed or hunters who think game animals are in decline. Until now, a measured approach which includes some hunting of wolves and intervention by the state when grizzlies get into someones beehive or chicken coop along with lots of protection have prevailed. But with wildlife management increasingly part of the culture wars, antagonism toward widening federal control and Republican control of the state, the balance has shifted, conservationists say.

The new bills approach management of bears and wolves in various ways. One of the new bills would pay wolf hunters their expenses in effect, critics say, a bounty to kill the animals. Another bill would allow for snaring animals with a metal aircraft cable fashioned into a noose that would hang over a trail. When the animal gets its head caught in one, it grows tighter as the animal tries to flee, until it is strangled to death. Snares can be used for coyotes in Montana but not wolves.

A major problem with snares is that they also kill species that are not the target, such as moose, elk, deer and even pet dogs. Snares are cheap, Mr. Bangs said. It isnt unusual for a trapper to set out 100. And you catch all kinds of stuff. Snares that were set for coyotes, for example, inadvertently killed 28 mountain lions from 2015 to 2020, Mr. Gevock said.

Another bill would extend the wolf trapping and snaring season. Wildlife experts say the extended season would overlap with the period that grizzly bears and black bears are out of their dens and could be inadvertently trapped. Another would reinstate hunting black bears with dogs and prevent Montana wildlife officials from relocating any grizzly bears captured outside recovery zones. Most recovery zone habitat are occupied, which means many grizzlies would most likely have to be euthanized.

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In Montana, Bears and Wolves Become Part of the Culture Wars - The New York Times

Political alienation and culture wars rage. So, it came to pass that there was social media chatter before and during the basketball game between Arkansas and Oral Roberts.

Some people were saying on Twitter that they hoped Arkansas lost because it was a state that had just enacted discriminatory legislation against the LGBTQ community. Others were responding that Oral Roberts University was no vehicle for hating on Arkansas, considering that the namesake was a raging homophobe and the current student handbook presumes to bar same-sex activity.

In the end, it was an excellent ballgame.

The dialogue was a microcosm of a broader dynamic Gov. Asa Hutchinson seems to count on.

I asked him over the weekend if he was concerned that his six-year emphasis on modernizing the state's economy had been undercut by his being overrun by an uncontrollable right-wing Legislature sending him culture-war bills he'd managed to stop in years past. These bills could prove damaging to the state's image to would-be modern employers who are committed to diversity and inclusion.

Once these bills got to his office, Hutchinson couldn't stop them because his vetoes can be overridden by a simple majority vote, and this Legislature shows little deference to him. But he could have vetoed them on principle anyway, or let them become law without his signature. He didn't have to sign them, except that he seems to seek continued Republican viability. So, he signed them in the two most-recent cases.

One bill banned something that isn't happening, meaning transgender girls outrunning everyone in track meets. It could be handled if happening by Arkansas Activities Association regulation and any litigation ensuing.

The other allows physicians to cite religious or moral reasons to decline to provide medical care. That could mean refusing to provide care for a transgender person. It could mean declining to provide care to a Donald Trump supporter, clearly a moral position, though that would be a good way for a doctor to go broke in Arkansas.

In both bills, the microscopically small-minded point is to waste legislative time and ink on matters addressing no legitimate public-policy need, but merely allowing pseudo-religious "Christian nationalists" to make themselves feel powerful by abusing their offices to pick on people they don't like or approve of or with whom they disagree.

Hutchinson has said the track-meet bill addresses pre-emptively a conceivable and legitimate concern. He has said the no-treat option for doctors has exceptions for emergencies and couldn't be applied on a basis discriminating against groups.

In other words, he is saying he has managed to come up with rationalizations for signing them.

So, back to my question on whether the governor was concerned his long and diligent attention to modern economic consideration was being undercut: Hutchinson replied without addressing my characterization of his being helplessly overrun by an uncontrollably extreme Legislature. He said instead that these bills weren't all that conspicuous, or will prove not to be as we go along.

He said many states have conscientious exceptions for medical services (most are for abortion alone). He said Tennessee had just passed a transgender-girl athletic bill and measures were pending widely elsewhere.

Forgive me for continuing to rephrase the governor's positions, which could well lead him to stop answering my questions in the first place. But I see a contextual imperative.

In that regard, what the governor is saying is that there's a raging red-state, Trump-allegiant section of the country out there, and Arkansas is but a part of it, and we will not be alone in the occasional enactment of these sorts of laws.

Modern progressive businesses would have to boycott a bunch of them, not just us, presumably.

People may want to root against the Razorbacks, but then they'll find out Oral Roberts is no better, or worse. You see.

But the governor, being an honorable and thoughtful man along with one given to political expedience, did acknowledge as follows: "I am concerned about the overall impression of this session and I hope we can focus attention on the economic, education and reform successes that are being accomplished."

I am not sure what those successes are, but I suspect that the governor's communications staff can prepare nice, thick packets for all of us.

In the meantime, the governor's centerpiece hate-crimes bill seems dead, and I continue to be impressed with the evolving sensibilities of Sen. Jim Hendren, who, in case you haven't heard, is Hutchinson's nephew.

The newborn independent and founder of Common Ground Arkansas tweeted after the dramatic end of the Arkansas-Oral Roberts game: "We should have extended March Madness instead of the legislative session."

John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.

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OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Asa and the culture wars - Arkansas Online

Lil Nas X came out publicly in 2019, but his most recent song, which plays on the conservative theme ... [+] that queerness is a sin, has renewed the conversation about his sexuality.

On Friday, singer Lil Nas X, born Montero Lamar Hill, released Montero (Call Me By Your Name), along with a heartfelt note to his 14-year-old self about coming out. The song, which is about no longer wanting to hide a queer relationship, was accompanied by a video featuring Lil Nas X as various biblical characters and a limited edition run of 666 Satan Shoes, which each contain a drop of human blood and cost $1,018 per pair.

The most genius part of the promotion, though, may not be the shoes or video. As one fan pointed out in a Tweet that was retweeted by the Grammy-award-winning singer, Call me by your name slaps 10x harder knowing how mad people are about it.

The culture war that the song, video and sneakers prompted has caused discussion of the track and singer to skyrocket. Since its release, there have been 1,776,444 tweets mentioning Lil Nas X, according to social analytics platform ListenFirst Media, up from just 50,529 tweets during the same period the week prior.

Montero has been streamed nearly 9 million times on Spotify and became the number 1 song on iTunes. The video has been viewed more than 32 million times on YouTube, where it became the number one trending video over the weekend. On TikTok, the app that propelled Lil Nas X to fame, the first clip of the video has 1.5 million likes. His limited edition Satan Shoes sold out in under one minute.

His older songs are also gaining ground, including his first hit, Old Town Road, which reached 3 billion on-demand streams on Monday. Since Montero was released, Lil Nas X has gained 422,934 new fans, followers or subscribers on his social media accounts, including 200,000 new subscribers on YouTube, according to ListenFirst. Hes also getting support from other musicians, including Miley Cyrus and Big Sean, who commented on one of Lil Nas Xs Instagram posts.

The singer first rose to popularity in 2019, when his song Old Town Road became a viral success on TikTok. The country-rap song spent a record-breaking 19 weeks at No. 1 on Billboards Hot 100. Lil Nas X earned $14 million that year and made Forbes 30 Under 30 list.

Lil Nas X publicly came out as gay on Twitter in 2019, but the Montero song and videowhich play on the conservative narrative that LGBTQ+ people will be condemned to hell and that homosexuality is a sinhas sparked fresh commentary about his sexuality and his music.

While fans and music critics are praising the song and video for celebrating queerness, conservative figures like South Dakota Governor Kristi Noam and pundit Candace Owens have taken to Twitter to criticize the song.

We are in a fight for the soul of our nation, Noam tweeted, employing the classic language of culture wars. We need to fight hard. And we need to fight smart. We have to win.

But the heckling from the right has only intensified support from Lil Nas Xs fansparticularly as he responds on social media, discussing the pain that he experienced growing up and suppressing his sexuality, and claps back, riling up the right even more.

ur a whole governor and u on here tweeting about some damn shoes. do ur job! he said, in a Tweet that garnered 183.6 likesseven-times more than Noams Tweet.

you know you did something right when she talks about it, he responded to Candace Owens.

i had 9 months to plan this rollout. yall are not gonna win bro, he tweeted on Monday.

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Lil Nas X's 'Call Me By Your Name' And Satan Shoes Spark A Culture War. It's Paying Off. - Forbes

H.A. Hellyer is a Cambridge University fellow, a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute.

Last week, New Zealand commemorated the Christchurch massacre, with politicians and civil society alike mourning so many who lost their lives when a far-right terrorist killed dozens at mosques in that island nation. But the rhetoric underpinning that terrorist atrocity wasnt as far away from mainstream politics as wed like to think.

Recently, Switzerland narrowly voted in favour of banning face coverings in public, including the burka or niqab worn by Muslim women. The Swiss Peoples Party had campaigned in favour of it with slogans such as Stop Extremism and Stop Islamic Radicalism the latest measure on the European continent that links visible Muslim religious practice to extremism. But it was more than that. As Walter Wobmann, chairman of the referendum committee and a member of parliament for the Swiss Peoples Party, said before the vote: In Switzerland, our tradition is that you show your face. That is a sign of our basic freedoms [facial coverings are] a symbol for this extreme, political Islam which has become increasingly prominent in Europe and which has no place in Switzerland. The measure here is clear Europe is under attack; the main perpetrators of the attack are Muslim; the defence must take them on, by all means necessary.

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Mr. Wobmann wasnt the only European politician to declare as such. I think that Islamo-leftism is eating away at our society as a whole, and universities are not immune and are part of our society, the French Minister for Higher Education Frdrique Vidal declared on Feb. 14. For a Valentines Day message, this was hardly indicative of much warmth or cordiality from the minister rather, it was the latest missive in a pseudo culture war that has been brewing in France for a long time. But this dangerous message was also much more than that and the consequences go far beyond France, and even the West.

The obvious target of the ministers message was parts of the political left in France on the one hand, and portions of the Muslim community on the other. After all, its this specific Islamo-leftism alliance that was particularly named. And thats hardly the first time, whether in France, or elsewhere in the West, where this alliance has been called out. The typical complaint is that substantial parts of the left have not taken seriously enough the issue of extremism that exists among radical both violent and non-violent Islamists, owing to naivety, lack of sophistication, or just pure cultural relativism. That kind of debate and discussion will continue, no doubt, in media, academia and policy.

But thats not what was being targeted in the ministers message. That is a bit of a smokescreen. The French political mainstream has drifted further and further into populism, and that populist fight has led the current president, Emmanuel Macron, and his most threatening political opponent, Marine Le Pen, to just keep doing what theyve been doing out-populist each other. The calculus of Mr. Macron seems to be that he better make it clear he is more serious about national-security threats than Ms. Le Pen is. Which, on the face of it, is hardly a problem, except in the current French context, that translates into focusing on a particular minority religious community. Muslims are that community, which, it would appear, the entire political spectrum sees little penalty in problematizing. And, on the contrary, problematizing the Muslim community would seem to result in increased populist support.

And yes there are historical parallels in Europe, and those parallels are not pretty. The Israeli political scientist at Bar-Ilan University, Amikam Nachmani, notes: The Jew, Europes prototypal other, has now largely been replaced by the Muslim other. Prejudice and discrimination once directed at European Jewry is now aimed at European Muslims. Its not a comfortable comparison to make but it would be foolhardy to ignore, particularly when the calls of never again on the European continent were ignored. Ask the Bosnian Muslims.

The culture wars are real on the continent, and Muslim communities are often simply collateral damage. As Ive argued elsewhere, Muslims arent really all that important in this discussion. They are a useful foil. Mr. Macron isnt really all that worried about Muslims and Islam; he and his government are worried about Ms. Le Pen. The culture wars are less about Muslims per se, and more about our own concerns, as Europeans and Westerners, about who and what we are. In France, that devolves to insecurity around what secularism does or does not mean in the 21st century, but it also leads to wider issues pertaining to the legacy of colonialism, as well as larger culture wars. Thats not even so much simply a left-right issue, as much as it is a search for meaning. And rather than involve Muslim French citizens as integral partners like other communities in that search, they find themselves on the outside of the discussion. No matter what they do.

But this is also not simply about France. On the contrary; there are other examples across the continent and in the wider West. We see it in terrorist attacks, such as the ones that took place in Norway and New Zealand. We see it in the mainstreaming of the radical right, within the Republican Party in the United States, which seems unable to hold back the tide; but also across various centre-right parties, right across the West. There is a spectrum, to be sure but it is a spectrum on a single phenomenon. Its why the New Zealand killer saw Donald Trump as a praiseworthy symbol.

And it goes beyond even the West. A recent attempted attack on a mosque in Singapore was by a supporter of the same far-right discourse; indeed, he explicitly claimed inspiration from the likes of the New Zealand mass murder. Weve gone beyond this being considered a small right-wing fringe it is far more mainstream than that but we have also gone beyond it being limited geographically to the West itself. Its global in a different way altogether.

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There are many parallels between white-supremacist groups and extremist Islamists. But two things arent similar in the slightest. First, we give far more attention to extremist Islamists, despite white supremacy being a more clear and burgeoning threat to the very makeup of our societies. And second, white supremacism is being mainstreamed in ways that extremist Islamism never has been or could be.

It isnt, of course, that the French Higher Education Minister is a white supremacist. But one cant easily disassociate this kind of talk from the Eurarabia discourse a conspiracy theory about a Muslim plot to take over Europe that has been building on the continent for years. As we examine the mainstreaming of the far-right in the years to come, we need to do it with a sense of urgency, because the threat is undeniably on the rise.

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Europes identity crisis: Muslims are collateral damage in the continents culture wars - The Globe and Mail