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To begin with, I am no big fan of the term inner city left-wing elites. Anyone using that term largely deserves the attacks it provokes. Like all lazy clichs, it obscures more than it reveals and feeds into the increasingly polarised public slanging matches between ideological hardliners who bore the rest of us silly. Its as if we are all being forced to watch an endless, low-scoring football match between The Fascists and The Socialists and we must pick a team. Our every word and gesture is pored over constantly to determine which side we support.

What an exhausting way to live our lives.

Rather than seize on that unfortunate phrase and immediately jump to the conclusion that the ABC has joined The Fascists, Id rather focus on the broader message the ABCs current news strategy is trying to send. Its called More Relevant to More Australians and it argues that the ABC needs to be there for all Australians. Ive heard that message before.

The ABC should not be readily conscripted into the culture wars.Credit:Steven Siewert

Back in 2013, then chairman of the ABC, James Spigelman, gave a speech at the National Press Club. As a former adviser to Gough Whitlam, former chief justice of the Supreme Court of NSW and a man with a lifelong commitment to social justice, Indigenous issues and the arts, he was one of the best and fairest champions of public broadcasting ever to hold the ABC chairmanship.

He warned then that journalists, including those at the ABC, were more interested in issues such as gay marriage than electricity prices, and they had an obligation to engage with those sections of the community who are concerned with the latter.

Of course, for most Australians, both issues are hugely important, but the point is to ensure both are covered and covered well.

Four years later when he left the ABC, he made a similar point, telling this newspaper that there isnt as much attention on the issues of the Howard battlers, working families, people in the suburbs as there should be.

Three years after that, Gaven Morris seems to me to be essentially saying the same thing, and with good reason.

In my 23 years at the ABC, I saw lots of audience data. Much of it highlighted a generally understood challenge ABC radio and television rated highly in the inner city (both traditionally progressive AND traditionally wealthy and conservative suburbs) and it rated highly in rural and regional areas, but more poorly in outer suburbs.

I have no reason to believe this is not as true now as it was then.

Former ABC Chairman James Spigelman.Credit:Dominic Lorrimer

Anyone who thinks this isnt an issue that needs to be tackled doesnt understand what public broadcasting is. All Australians pay for the ABC out of their own pockets, and they are entitled to a service that is relevant to them. They are entitled to fair, accurate and impartial news about the issues that are important to them in their lives, as well as to entertainment, drama, comedy, childrens content, music and so much more.

Its not about deciding whether to be left-wing, right-wing, conservative or progressive to feed the prejudices and preferences of the ABCs critics and commentators.

Its not about saying things the government might like in the hope that more funding might be forthcoming. The ABC is funded by the people of Australia. Governments more often than not just get in the way by trying to starve, bully, neglect or pressure the public broadcaster.

And its not about dumbing-down, avoiding difficult or complex issues, or replacing one issue with another. Its about working to build the biggest possible audience for the kind of work the ABC is there to do.

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If you look beyond the headlines, the occasional poor turn of phrase and the attempts that are constantly being made to enlist the ABC in a culture war that most of us dont care about, you will find a consistent aim the ABC sets for itself, even though it falls short from time to time. That aim is to cover all of the issues that matter to Australians with the same level of integrity and independence.

And yes, that means being as relevant to and valued by the people of central Queensland or Tasmania as it is to the people of Melbourne or Sydney.

Alan Sunderland was Editorial Director of the ABC from 2013 to 2019.

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Don't conscript your ABC to the culture wars - Sydney Morning Herald

J.H. Binford Peay III

J.H. Binford Peay III, superintendent of the Virginia Military Institute, has submitted his resignation, stating that Governor Ralph Northam and senior legislations had lost confidence in his leadership. The VMI board accepted his resignation with regret.

Peays departure follows a Washington Post article alleging an atmosphere of relentless racism at the military college. Two days later, Northam and top legislators announced an independent, third-party review of VMI culture, policies, practices and equity.

While racist acts have occurred at VMI in the past several years, most cited by the Washington Post were punished by the administration or involved private expressions of opinion by students or staff. I detailed my response to the Post article here.

Peay had tried to thread the needle between maintaining long-held VMI traditions, which revered Stonewall Jackson and the role of the cadets in the battle of New Market, and being sensitive to the feelings of African-Americans who comprised an increasing percentage of the student body. He enacted several reforms earlier this year but critics charged they did not go far enough.

We are now in the witch hunt phase of the anti-racism hysteria as the definition of what constitutes racism broadens inexorably and anyone who fails to submit to the ever-mutating orthodoxy is crushed.

Remarkably, Northam, whose VMI nickname was Coonman, has not only survived his blackface scandal but has emerged as popular in public opinion polls as ever. He earned indulgences from fellow Democrats and the media by implementing anti-racism Critical Race Theory in Virginia public schools, embracing the doctrine of opposing environmental racism, and implementing other anti-racism measures in state government.

JAB

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The Latest Casualty of the Culture Wars - Bacon's Rebellion

Donald Trump made a lot of promises during the 2016 campaign. Four years later, it has been mostly a relief to see them all broken. Theres the big, beautiful border wall, still largely a figment of the Presidents imagination (as was Mexicos interest in paying for it.) A plan to replace the Affordable Care Act, supposedly just around the corner for years, clearly does not exist. And despite much bloviating to the contrary, multiple Hillary Clinton sightings in the months and years following the election confirm that she is not, in fact, locked up.

But perhaps most importantly, Trump made a lot of noise about extricating America from endless wars instead, hes left us embedded in a brand new one.

The Culture Wars are our new Forever War. They are all-encompassing and constant; there is nothing they do not touch. Books and movies, basketball courts and football fields, late night television and daytime talk shows, art museums and corporate offices. Somewhere in between the rise of woke capitalism, the fall of the girlboss, Melissa McCarthys Sean Spicer impression, and the deep-dive investigative reports on whether Star-Lord might be a secret Republican, the entire cultural landscape has become a battlefield. Unlike our actual military engagements, participation in this war is not optional. Everything is political, including being apolitical; if youre not with us, youre one of them.

Even before pandemic lockdowns, police violence and mass protests ramped tensions up to a fever pitch, the political capture of the national consciousness was already in the works. If Donald Trumps campaign for the presidency ignited a spark of awareness, his election turned it into a wildfire. In place of frivolous trends, we now had haute-couture emblazoned with Not My President; institutions like Saturday Night Live and The Late Show stopped looking for laughs and went all-in on clapter (perhaps understanding that the alternative was four years of nonstop anguished screaming.) Even now, with what appears to be the end of the Trump presidency looming ever closer, the entertainment landscape is pretty much Resistance cheerleading as far as the eye can see.

The question, then, is what happens if (or, inshallah, when) we wake up on November 4 to a victory for Joe Biden? After four years of dialed-up-to-11 political engagement, does all that energy just evaporate?

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Some folks the single-issue voters who just want to make America normal again would answer that question with a resounding Yes, please. Perhaps they imagine 2021 as the year when the nation will collectively unclench its sphincter and breathe a sigh of relief; when athletes will go back to being famous for their ability to play sports; when people neither want nor expect their lipstick, snack foods, and grocery store to swear loyalty oaths to the proper politics; when people neither know nor care who the Incredible Hulk voted for.

But even if we still remember how to be normal, even if we could get back there, would we? Will anyone believe, after this, that its safe to let our guard down? Electing a Democrat to office is no guarantee; after all, we had eight years of President Obama to make us complacent, and look how that turned out. Even if America evicts Trump in November, the traumatic effects of his presidency wont just disappearand maybe more to the point, some of us, the ones whove existed since 2016 in a state of aggrieved symbiosis with the Orange Man, will be loathe to just let it go. Breathing a collective sigh of relief, and getting down to the business of governing, would require relinquishing the drama of the Trump years that has been both an addiction and a livelihood to so many. News organizations will have to find something else to write about; comedians will have to get new material; people who constructed an entire identity around underdog resistance will have to accept the obscurity that follows victory and the hard, unglamorous work of leveraging power productively.

But those people, the dedicated culture warriors, are few and far between especially compared to the majority, who are, above all things, exhausted. Thats the thing about forever wars: the longer they rage on, the more apathy they breed among people who would, at some point, like to stop resisting and start living again. And since the populist right, despite eking out a narrow win in 2016, have never been much for mass organizing (compare the multiple thousands in attendance at the various Womens Marches to the hundred or so screaming tiki-torchers who constitute a right-wing rally), a hopeful vision of the US under a Biden presidency emerges. Not normal, necessarily, but at least less noisy. Its a start.

Continued here:
Culture war forever - The Spectator US

Since his election, it has become an article of conventional wisdom that Donald Trumps presidency was not an aberration or a brief historical detour but heralded the beginning of a political realignment. Some on the right decry the dead consensus of yesteryear and call for a new conservatism, one less scrupulous about its traditional adherence to American constitutionalism, taking no prisoners in new culture wars, and upending the decade-long consensus in U.S. foreign policy in favor of a nationalist outlook. On the left, meanwhile, woke-ism and its young radical voices have mounted a challenge to liberal orthodoxies.

Yet if one sees Trumps presidency with all its idiosyncrasies as a contingent result of fewer than 80,000 votes in just three states, and not as an authentic expression of the will of the peopleremember, he received nearly 3 million fewer votes than Hillary Clintonthen the idea that nothing will ever be the same again finds itself on less firm ground. More importantly, political and ideological shifts are not result of vast, impersonal historical forces. Rather, such shifts are products of human agency, intellectual leadership, and political entrepreneurship. The question of how lasting a footprint Trump and Trumpism will leave is up to the people who make up the Republican party and the conservative movement.

If Trump is soundly defeated on November 3, the GOP will have an opportunity similar to that provided to the U.K.s Labour Party after its crushing defeat in the general election last year. Jeremy Corbyns radicalism did not disappear under Keir Starmers leadershipbut it has been firmly relegated to the partys fringes. Similarly, if Trump is repudiated by the voting public, those who care about the long-term viability of conservatism should seize the months that follow to reject some of the ideas and tendencies that have characterized Trumpism. They should be buried alongside Trumps presidency, alongside his unhinged political style, alongside his penchant for conspiracies and racism. Here are five of them.

While the center-right and the center-left need to adapt, political life in the United States does not need successor ideologies to liberalism and conservatism. If conservatives want to be constructive actors in Americas political life, they have to rediscover their appreciation of the importance of fiscal probity, free markets, thriving families, and American leadership in the worldadjusted, of course, to the realities of the 21st century.

The caveat is important, because critics are correct in pointing out that the partysand the movementsmonomania with marginal tax rates and size of government are increasingly out of sync with a reality in which a dynamic market economy has to be complemented and even sustained by robust social safety nets and government-provided infrastructure. Likewise, in the light of seemingly fruitless interventions in the Middle East and new realities such as Chinas growing assertiveness, Americas centrist foreign policy consensus needs a rethink and a recalibration. Climate change is not a hoax and needs thoughtful policy responses from conservatives, compatible with the worlds and Americas long-term economic prosperity.

Still, the fusionism of free-marketeers, social conservatives, and foreign policy hawks has by and large served the center-right well. Instead of trying to destroy it and replace it with some half-baked nationalist ideology, it is time to update it and clean it of unhinged and nativist undertones brought to the foreground under Trumps presidency.

Not so long ago, the GOP could credibly claim to be the party of policy ideas, good or bad. Its platform in 2020, however, is limited to its enthusiastic support of President Trump. Republicans recent legislative accomplishments are scarce, perhaps with the exception of a run-of-the-mill tax reform. Instead, the partys and the conservative movements energy lies in fighting cultural wars, emoting, and tweeting memes, providing evidence for the writer Bruno Maess thesis that political life in America has become unmoored from reality, moving to the realm of fiction and entertainment.

As an aside, woke-ism, with its emphasis on symbols, words, and imperceptible slights as opposed to policy reform, provides a similar temptation to Americas left. Yet policies still matter, and the current flight of Americas political class from reality, accelerated by the countrys tweeter- and entertainer-in-chief, has real-world consequencesas the country has learned the hard way during the current pandemic. Yet, the looming defeat of Republicans at the hand of the most anodyne, conventional, and uninspiring candidate in decades should be a wake-up call. Perhaps the politics of tribalism and owning the libs is a dead end after all.

No, America is not on the verge of descending into a totalitarian dystopia if the other side winsno matter who is on the other side today or in 2024. After all, the very fact that the United States government has survived four years of Trump largely intact is a testament not simply to its resiliency but also to its highly complex, unwieldy naturewhich does not make it susceptible to the sudden, autocratic centralization of power observed in countries such as Hungary or the Philippines. It is true that the United States is heavily polarized and that its present environment is unlikely to provide respite from the all-encompassing cultural conflicts. Still, contrary to the hopes of those who want to see the public square re-ordered to the common good and ultimately the Highest Good, seeking to use national politics as the venue to settle such conflicts is a disastrous idea, risking tearing America apart. But what if the current woke-ism on the political left gets out of control, you ask? Especially in those circumstances it is the job of adults on the center-right to bring down the temperature by reaching out to concerned left-of-center liberalsinstead of thoughtlessly upping the ante.

One can argue that Trumps admittedly crude version of foreign policy realism provided a helpful corrective both to neoconservative overreach and to the blind faith in historical progress. In that sense, there is a legitimate place for a dose of foreign policy realism in both parties, balanced by a clear moral compass and long-term vision of Americas place in the world.

Some Trump admirers see his gut instincts and his disruptive behavior as a foundation for a distinctly realist approach that could guide U.S. foreign policy in the coming years and perhaps become the defining feature of the GOPs foreign policy outlook. Jeremy Stern, Ambassador Richard Grenells ex-chief of staff, argues in realist terms that future administrations ought to break free of the West, namely our traditional European and other allies, and presumably forge partnerships with undemocratic and nationalist regimesas long as doing so gives the United States leverage over its adversaries.

But while working with unsavory regimes and being aware of our and of other nations interests is necessary, unchecked foreign policy realism can be as reckless as its intellectual alternatives, if not more. For one, Americas principles and its moral standing in the world are not burdens but our most valuable foreign policy assets. And for all the deals that can (and occasionally should) be struck with the worlds autocrats, the United States will never have better and more reliable friends than the democracies of the North Atlantic space, with which we are bound by much more than a fleeting alignment of interests.

As a general rule, openness to trade and immigration has not come at the cost of Americas workers. Technological change accounts for a much greater proportion of destroyed jobs than international trade and immigration. Efforts to impose tariffs during the Trump era have been overwhelmingly counterproductive for job creation and economic dynamism. Likewise, halting working-age immigration is bound to reduce growth prospects, especially given the demographic headwinds the U.S. economy is going to face in the coming decades. To be sure, openness to trade and immigration leads to dislocationhence the need for robust domestic policies fostering social and geographic mobility, and providing a degree of economic security to those who need it. But if the post-Trump GOP becomes the party of pulling up drawbridges, ham-fisted immigration policies, tariffs on imports from our closest allies, or attacks on the World Trade Organization, it will deserve to lose much more than the November election.

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Five Trump-Era Ideas That Should End with His Presidency - The Bulwark

A Binghamton University historian argues in a new book that Americans are not divided when it comes to the teaching of evolution: The real disagreements relate to creationism.

I dont want to make anyone an atheist, says Adam Laats, a professor in the Department of Teaching, Learning, and Educational Leadership at Binghamton. No public school should have that as its goal, just like no public school should be trying to teach kids any religious idea, which would include creationism.

Laats new book, Creationism USA: Bridging the Impasse on Teaching Evolution, was published in October by Oxford University Press.

Creationism is a private issue, and most Americans are some kind of creationists, Laats says. Most Americans have some sort of belief that, you know, all this didnt just happen.

A Gallup poll last year found that 40% of American adults believe God created humankind within the past 10,000 years. Another third of those polled said humans evolved over millions of years with Gods guidance. Just 22% said they thought humans evolved without any divine intervention.

Most people who are creationists want their kids to learn evolution in schools, Laats says. Its not a problem.

The problem arises when people insist that their particular religious beliefs form part of the curriculum. Laats sees two key characteristics of what he terms radical creationism.

The first is that it disputes the legitimacy of mainstream science. Radical creationists say mainstream science is entirely wrong, he says. Evolutionary science cant be right.

The other part is that radical creationists try to impose their beliefs into the public square. That includes public schools, but also questions such as: Should there be a prayer before a public meeting? Should people say Merry Christmas instead of Happy Holidays?

A former middle school and high school teacher, Laats says researching this book helped him understand certain anti-science attitudes present in the country today.

The 2020 political moment, this crisis-fueled moment, has parallels in the history of creationism, he says. Understanding that history helps people understand how it is possible that some large number of Americans have confidence in these statements that seem, to me, patently false.

Laats says theres a pattern going back to the 1960s of aggressively dissident, competing science that today is expressed when someone labels facts as fake news. Its not that someone like Scott Atlas, a physician and advisor to the White House coronavirus taskforce, hasnt heard what epidemiologists are saying about the pandemic. Its that they dispute the legitimacy of the people with whom they disagree, Laats says. And were experiencing an acute outbreak at the very top. Its very easy for people to dismiss what seem like they might be obvious in-your-face truths if you dismiss the source of those ideas.

Although debates surrounding creationism have certain elements in common with controversies about climate science, Laats says its not a fair comparison.

They get lumped together because theyre the two most prominent science denialism issues out there, he says, but they actually have both different histories and different trajectories. Climate change denialism is a lot more like tobacco science.

Large, well-funded tobacco companies paid to have scientists go over peer-reviewed reports in the 1950s and 60s and issue statements highlighting the limitations of findings about the dangers of smoking. Some people who cast doubt on climate science have similar financial motivations, Laats says.

Its a deliberate, well-funded, intentional, cynical attempt to spread ignorance, or at least doubt about established science, he says.

The creationism debate isnt rooted in money, for the most part.

For science educators, this has been an issue for 50 years. And for many of them, it feels outlandish, Laats says. How can there be a debate? Its not a debate. Theres science. And then theres this other thing.

Hes optimistic that American schools will continue to teach mainstream scientific principles related to evolution. Even the most ardent anti-evolution groups, like Answers in Genesis, want their kids to learn evolution, Laats says. They just dont trust people like me to teach it to their kids. They dont want their kids to learn from people that they dont trust, including secular, politically liberal, union-member types. So its not evolutionary theory anymore that they actually have a beef with their children learning, even though they think its incorrect.

From a public policy perspective, that needs to be the end of the discussion, he says, even if some people view that as accommodating science deniers. Lets stop fighting, he says. Lets agree to stop talking right there because the rest of it isnt our business. The rest of it is culture war talk. The way that I think of it is that Americans dont disagree about evolution. We just dont like each other. Or maybe a more polite way to say it is we dont trust each other.

Laats is the author of three other books about the history of American education: Fundamentalist U: Keeping the Faith in American Higher Education; The Other School Reformers: Conservative Activism in American Education and Fundamentalism; and Education in the Scopes Era: God, Darwin, and the Roots of Americas Culture Wars. He earned a doctorate in U.S. history at the University of WisconsinMadison in 2007. His next project focuses on the first systematic attempt at urban school reform in the United States.

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Book traces disputes over teaching evolution - Binghamton University Research News - Insights and Innovations