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Spotlights like this one provide original commentary and analysis on pressing criminal justice issues of the day. You can read them each day in our newsletter,The Daily Appeal.

Last month, longtime public defender Chesa Boudin was elected San Franciscos next district attorney. His victory was not merely an upset over an interim incumbent with establishment support and an unlikely win for a public defender whose parents served time for felonies; it also came despite the fact that the San Francisco Police Officers Association, the citys police union, outspent Boudin in an effort to defeat him. The union pulled in cash from police unions in Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle, and New York. The San Francisco Deputy Sheriffs Association aided the effort, too,sharinga John Birch Society video calling Boudin a communist radical and a son of terrorists.

In New York State, wherelandmark criminal justicereforms are set to go into effect on Jan. 1, a familiar chorus of concern has piped up,according to the New York Times editorial board. Police Commissioner James ONeillwrotein an op-ed in May that the law would have a significant negative impact on public safety. His successor, incoming Police Commissioner Dermot Shea,expressed similar views in November. Police unions and prosecutors across the state have issued ominous warnings. The Oneida City Police Benevolent Associationwrotein a Facebook post, Think this is wrong & insane? Then tell your politicians that this needs to be repealed ASAP! Over the summer, the New York Prosecutors Training Institutereleased audioof a Nassau County assistant district attorney training prosecutors on various ways to work with the police to subvert the new law.

For decades, law enforcement could rely on fearmongering to swing elections, preventing progressives from becoming district attorneys, and keeping reform bills off the books. But now,across the country, amovement away from incarcerationhas been a rare point of consensus among Americans who can agree on little else.

These calls for criminal justice reform have led police to panic, making these sorts of campaigns against reforms more common. Just as conservatives, going back to the Nixon era, have used debates over the lawfulness of abortion, homosexuality, and pornography to portray themselves as besieged by a liberal elite, police unions, too, now claim they are on the losing side in an ideological struggle,writes Melissa Gira Grantfor the New Republic. It represents a return to the culture wars origins, she explains, which lie with policing. Provoking anxiety over law and order helped usher Nixon into the White House in 1968. Where today police unions cast Black Lives Matter activists as their persecutors, conservatives under Nixon pointed to black power activists and the anti-war left. James Davison Hunters 1991 book, Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America, brought the term culture war into the broader lexicon. Hunter says he wasinspiredafter reading a news story about the arrests of clergy at an abortion protest. He frames the struggle emerging from 1960s social change as a matter less of specific issues than of progressivism versus orthodoxy more broadly.

But throughout the 1990s, many who were at odds with one another when it came to other issues, such as abortion or gay rights, were largely in agreement on defending the power of policewhether that meant uniting against Ice Ts Cop Killer song or more sweeping policy proposals,writes Grant. But the Obama years saw the start of a profound shift. In demanding accountability from police who kill, the Black Lives Matter movement highlighted the ways in which the system of policing makes such accountability nearly impossible. Leaders of the movement argued that police unionsshieldpolice from discipline for brutality. And when the officers who killed Michael Brown and Eric Garner were not indicted, activists pointed to the power held bydistrict attorneyswho rely on police to help them win convictionsin convening and persuading grand juries.

By the 2016 election, Democrats had backed off from the Clinton-era tough-on-crime consensus. Contenders in 2016 madeabolishing the death penaltypart of their platforms, Grant writes. By then, it was more common to hear that criminal justice reform was a bipartisan issuealbeit in a limited sense, with centrist overlap on a few modest reforms like creating alternatives to pre-trial detention. Many of the Democratic candidates of 2020 havepledgedunprecedentedlyprogressive criminal justice plans. And stalwart defenders of harsh law enforcement tactics such as Michael Bloomberg have been forced to walk back those decisions in order to gain any traction with the Democratic base.

Some on the right seem dedicated to stoking the flames of the culture wars. U.S. Attorney General William Barrsaidlast week that if some communities dont begin showing more respect to law enforcement, they may lose police protection. Whilegiving a speechat the Attorney Generals Award for Distinguished Service in Policing, Barr said, I think today, American people have to focus on the sacrifice and the service that is given by our law enforcement officers. And they have to start showing, more than they do, the respect and support that law enforcement deservesand if communities dont give that support and respect, they might find themselves without the police protection they need.

But even some purported leftists have played into police unions victimhood narrative in similar ways. Last week, a thin blue line flag was spotted on NYPD property. The flags, featuring a horizontal blue line surrounded by black, are closely linked toBlue Lives Matter, countermovement formed in response to Black Lives Matter,writes Jake Offenhartzfor Gothamist. Police reform groups claim that the flag denotes racism and a culture of misconduct. In recent years, the flag has appeared frequently at neo-Nazi and white supremacist rallies, including thedeadly Unite the Right rallyin Charlottesville. During a press conference, Mayor Bill de Blasio brushed off questions about whether it is appropriate for the NYPD to fly the thin blue line flag on government property. Later in the day, during the swearing in of new NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea, de Blasio left little room for police criticism. To the doubting Thomases, to the naysayers, if you doubt, then you dont truly respect the NYPD. Jeffrey Fagan, a law professor at Columbia University who specializes in police accountability and criminal law, said he was not surprised by de Blasios remarks. The mayor is still the lapdog of the police unions, Fagan said.

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Police Play The Victim When Voters Choose Reform - The Appeal

Twitter brings us glimpses of the world we might otherwise not know about. We're especially fond of the medievalists who share bizarre marginalia from illuminated manuscripts, like weird (non-white) mermaids or violent rabbits. Along similar but far less pleasant lines, yesterday a tweet brought to our attention a bizarre opinion piece at the American Conservative site, in which a dude gripes about how "postmodernism" destroyed his church. That horror was exemplified, among other things, by the time a guest sermon by a mean identity-politics black person said it was "sinful" to point out the simple fact that the slave trade brought millions of Africans to Christ.

See? Every bit as odd as medieval mermaids.

The piece was an anonymous letter to editor and columnist Rod Dreher, the conservative thought leaderer who has previously explained that liberal women are too busy masturbating to love their children, and who mourned the death of George Michael by wishing the singer had been straight. No way Dreher will one day meet him in heaven now! Dreher prefaces the lengthy letter by noting the writer gave permission to run it anonymously, and offers this semi-disclaimer:

So don't you go around saying Rod Dreher believes slavery was a real shame but at least it brought souls to Jebus. He merely ran a guest opinion insisting slavery was a real shame but it brought souls to Jebus.

We'll spare you the bulk of the letter's jeremiad against the pernicious effects of "postmodernism," mostly because the writer takes his definition of "postmodernism" from a Jordan Peterson video about "Cultural Marxism," which he quotes at length. You silly degenerates may think PoMo is a literary theory about the subjectivity of interpretation and the interplay of texts, but that's merely because you've been hypnotized by international jouissance.

Peterson explains that postmodernism is really about RAW LEFTIST POWER to destroy traditional values by calling anyone who opposes them a "racist." It's the same damp, warmed over culture wars garbage you'd expect, and now some tedious Peterson fan will show up in the comments and tell us we've got it all wrong because we've oversimplified Peterson's simplistic reductionism, and we need to go watch 57 hours of videos to really get the point.

Really, the writer just doesn't like all the liberalism seeping into his church and ruining it for normal people.

He explains that he and his wife had to abandon their former church because it got "woke." In the Before Times, while the church "had some management issues," it at least had sound doctrine:

Ah, but then the pernicious influence of postmodernism (evil woke commies) arrived!

It's not like the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. was a preacher or anything. But he's fine with the Civil Rights Movement, as long as those people aren't having civil rights out in public where children can see. He could have lived with a single sermon on history, he guesses, if only the guest speaker hadn't been so identity-political about it.

Fact check: Why yes, the Southern Baptists did split from the abolitionist northern Baptists over slavery. That is an actual history fact, and not in dispute, even if you put scare quotes around "racist."

But the dude's real conniption is over the notion that it's "racist" to be joyful that all those enslaved people were brought to Jebus. Don't get him wrong, he knows that doesn't justify slavery, he's not saying that. But "facts" are "facts":

He may not wince at racism, slavery, or genocide, but he damn well winces at having a cherished belief called problematic or racist. God's plan clearly included slavery, because God's a mysterious fucker that way, and how dare these Marxists deny that The Blacks got saved, unfortunate though all the forced labor, torture, murder, rape, and dehumanization may have been. He goes on to be Very Concerned some more:

There's a lot more, some about race (Jesus may have been swarthy but he wasn't "black," for instance -- no mention of White Santa Claus at least), and some about women, and some about esoteric theological matters, but it all comes down to a long whine about how sad it is that the Left took over his church. Somebody should remind him that only liberals care about "feelings."

We'd recommend the poor distressed fellow hole up with some nice Christian history textbooks for kids, so he can be reassured that the best thing about slavery was that it promised freedom in heaven, and also gave us some beautiful spirituals, and yes, hooray, as one book for 8th-grade homeschooled kids says, he's absolutely right about how slavery spread the word of God:

That same textbook, we should note, also argued that while the Trail of Tears was certainly a bummer for all those Native Americans sent on death marches across the continent, it had a terrific upside:

Still, sad wingnut dude does have a point, of sorts. People who think like he does no longer have a monopoly on cultural power. We bet God is just all broke up about that.

[American Conservative via "Christian Vanderbrouk" on Twitter]

Yr Wonkette is supported entirely by reader donations. Please send us money so we can give wingnuts a good kick right in the Derrida.

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Sad Wingnut Explains Slavery Saved Souls - Wonkette

WASHINGTON When President Trump nominated William P. Barr as attorney general a year ago, establishment Republicans who had chafed at Mr. Trumps takeover of their party were relieved. Between Mr. Barrs work in the Reagan White House and his fast-track career under George Bush, he could be a bridge to the Republican Party they knew and preferred.

How wrong they were.

Mr. Barr has eagerly embraced the most divisive and disputed aspects of the Trump agenda, much to the delight of the partys hard-line conservatives who see him as an indispensable ally in their fight to push the country further to the right on issues like religious liberty, immigration and policing.

Other conservative attorneys general shared Mr. Barrs relish for political battle. But as he attacks the Democratic Party, assails liberal culture and defends the president against accusations of abusing his office, Mr. Barr has wielded a maximalist view of executive power and adopted a blithely antagonistic, no-apologies style that set him apart from his predecessors.

That makes him a natural fit in a Republican Party that Mr. Trump has remade in his mold. But it worries critics in both parties who fear that Mr. Barr is eroding the Justice Departments traditional independence in law enforcement. They point to his handling of the Mueller report, which he summarized in a letter widely seen as more favorable to Mr. Trump, and his appointment of a prosecutor to re-examine the opening of the Russia investigation, which Mr. Trump has long impugned.

To the conservatives who make up the most solid foundation of the presidents base a wing of the Republican Party that is generally more uncompromising on social issues and enthusiastic about political combat with the left Mr. Barr is the template of the public servant they envisioned when Mr. Trump promised to give them greater influence in his administration.

He is a devoted Catholic who has said he believes the nation needs a moral renaissance to restore Judeo-Christian values in American life. He has been unafraid to use his platform as the nations top law enforcement officer to fight the cultural changes they believe are making the country more inhospitable and unrecognizable, like rising immigration and secularism or new legal protections for L.G.B.T. people.

Attorney General Barr represents an important conservative point of view that is really the heart of the Trump presidency, said Frank Cannon, the president of the American Principles Project, a social conservative organization.

A series of assertive public appearances in recent weeks, laced with biting sarcasm aimed at adversaries on the left, have brought a sharper focus on Mr. Barrs style and worldview, both of which share aspects with the presidents.

He has painted a picture of a country divided into camps of secularists those who, he said recently, seem to take a delight in compelling people to violate their conscience and people of faith. The depiction echoes Mr. Trumps worldview, with the us versus them divisions that the president often stokes when he tells crowds at his rallies that Democrats dont like you.

His politicization of the office is unorthodox and a departure from previous attorneys general in a way that feels uncomfortably close to authoritarianism, critics said.

Barr has believed for a long time that the country would benefit from more authoritarianism. It would inject a stronger moral note into government, said Stuart M. Gerson, who worked in the Bush Justice Department under Mr. Barr and is a member of Checks & Balances, a legal group that is among the attorney generals leading conservative detractors. I disagree with his analysis of power. We would be less free in the end.

Mr. Barr swats away those critics. Generally, no one really cares what they think, he said of Checks & Balances in a recent interview with New York magazine. An accompanying picture showed him grinning ear to ear with his feet propped up on his desk.

That defiance is one reason he has attained an almost heroic status among some on the right, particularly the religious conservatives.

Hes offering a fairly unabashed, crisp and candid assessment of the nature of our culture right now, said Leonard A. Leo, the executive vice president of the Federalist Society and a prominent advocate for socially conservative causes. Theres certainly a movement in our country to dial back the role that religion plays in civil society and public life. Its been going on for some time, Mr. Leo added. Thats not an observation that public officials make very often, so it is refreshing.

Mr. Barr helped make the case for conservatives to shift to war footing against the left during a speech at Notre Dame Law School in October that was strikingly partisan. He accused the forces of secularism of orchestrating the organized destruction of religion. He mocked progressives, asking sardonically, But where is the progress?

And while other members of the Catholic Church and Pope Francis have acknowledged that the sexual abuse crisis has devastated the moral authority of the church in the United States and is in part to blame for decreasing attendance, Mr. Barr outlined what he saw as a larger plot by the left and others. He said they have marshaled all the force of mass communications, popular culture, the entertainment industry and academia in an unremitting assault on religion and traditional values.

At one point, he compared the denial of religious liberty protections for people of faith to Roman emperors who forced their Christian subjects to engage in pagan sacrifices. We cannot sit back and just hope the pendulum is going to swing back toward sanity, Mr. Barr warned.

Delivered on a Friday before a holiday weekend to a small, invitation-only crowd, the speech initially drew little attention in mainstream circles. But among politically active Christians, Mr. Barrs remarks lit a brush fire.

At a dinner with anti-abortion activists shortly after the speech, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told guests how striking and clarifying he found Mr. Barrs comments, according to two people who spoke with him.

It was one of the best speeches any attorney general has ever given, said Edwin Meese III, the attorney general under Ronald Reagan, who said that he not only liked Mr. Barrs style but also agreed with his diagnosis of the problems facing the country. Todays culture, Mr. Meese said, is more hostile than it was for conservative values when he was attorney general in the 1980s. And Mr. Barr is giving voice to those on the right who believe they cannot cede any more ground in the culture wars.

If you look back in history, there have been various points of renewal, Mr. Meese added. And I think his concern, which I would share, is were facing a time when the pendulum is not going to swing back.

Mr. Barr, who personally covers tuition for underprivileged New York City students who wish to attend Catholic school, has prioritized Justice Department cases involving religious institutions. In October, the department filed a brief in support of parents suing over a Maine law that bans religious schools from the states school tuition program. It has also argued recently that the Maryland State Education Department discriminated against a Christian academy that said same-sex marriage was wrong.

For the better part of three decades, Mr. Barr has been known in conservative legal circles as a sharp, tight-lipped lawyer who embodied the Reagan and Bush eras. A fair number of people who were more or less conservative said publicly that it was good that he was coming in because he was a real lawyer who would bring respectability to this administration, said Donald Ayer, who served in the Justice Department under Reagan and Mr. Bush.

But his longstanding relationships with Trump allies like Pat A. Cipollone, the White House counsel who is a founder of the National Prayer Breakfast and takes part in the anti-abortion March for Life, and Laura Ingraham, the Fox News host whom Mr. Cipollone introduced to Catholicism, suggest that he was always at ease in the world of social conservatives who have lined up behind Mr. Trump to take on liberals.

In a speech on executive power delivered at a Federalist Society conference last month, Mr. Barr argued that the lefts opposition to the president was a dangerous attempt to overturn the results of the 2016 election and weaken the power of the presidency.

Delivering such a speech amid impeachment proceedings was unusual. During the Clinton impeachment, Janet Reno, then the attorney general, did not castigate Republicans and defend the presidents behavior as Mr. Barr has with Mr. Trump.

Barrs language against the left and against progressives was not something wed normally hear in a speech by the attorney general, said Carrie F. Cordero, a national security expert and a co-founder of Checks & Balances who served as a top legal adviser to the director of national intelligence and in the Justice Department.

Its embedded in department culture to set those partisan views aside when doing your work and applying the law, Ms. Cordero said.

Defenders say Mr. Barr feels emboldened to criticize Democrats because he believes they crossed a line during his confirmation hearings when they accused him of being blindly deferential to Mr. Trump. The same general sentiment is one shared by the president, who also believes he is the victim of unfair attacks from the left.

Their critics went too far too fast, said Kellyanne Conway, the White House counselor who first met Mr. Barr years ago through Ms. Ingraham. And you reap what you sow.

Mr. Barr and Mr. Trump have both staked out far-right positions on issues like aggressive policing, with the attorney general serving as the polished ego to the presidents unbridled id.

Last week, for instance, Mr. Barr said that communities who criticized policing needed to show more respect or they may find themselves without the police protection they need.

Both conservative supporters and critics of Mr. Barr insist that he is not doing the presidents bidding, as many on the left suggest. Rather, they say, he is empowered by Mr. Trump, who has not interfered with an attorney general who provides him the legal justification for his instinct-driven approach to the presidency. That leaves room for Mr. Barr to carry out Mr. Trumps agenda through the prism of his own sweeping views of executive power.

Barr has an opportunity to test legal theories that no other president would give Barr the opportunity to test, Mr. Ayer said.

Continued here:
Barr Dives Into the Culture Wars, and Social Conservatives Rejoice - The New York Times

Liberals frequently wonder how evangelicals and other conservative Christians can possibly justify supporting President Donald Trump, given his flagrant personal immorality and dangerously unfit temperament. Why cant they get over their culture war, the argument goes, and vote for a Democrat to save the republic?

In a provocative piece in National Review published Wednesday, Michael Brendan Dougherty turns the question on its head asking people on the left why they wont give up on their culture war, moderating on issues like abortion and religious freedom exemptions to anti-discrimination law in the name of stopping Trump.

Democrats are no more willing than social-conservative Trump supporters to lay down their culture-war objectives and enmities in order to save the constitution from the president, he writes.

Dougherty believes that both groups are, when you get down to it, pretty much the same on these issues: Both care much more about issues relating to social justice and religion in public life than they do Trump.

Progressives believe they are just vindicating human rights when they pursue their culture-war goals relentlessly, he writes. Like Evangelicals, they dont think Donald Trumps depredations however appalling are a reason to lay down their arms.

But heres the thing: Doughertys analysis only makes sense if you think evangelicals are holding their nose and voting for Trump despite disliking him. But thats not what polling suggests. Evangelicals like this president they dont think hes a threat to the republic at all. 77 percent of white evangelicals approved of Trumps job performance in an October PRRI survey; they were the only religious group in the survey with a majority believing Trump has not damaged the dignity of the presidency.

Theres no solid reason to think evangelicals and other Christian conservatives are Trump waverers, wringing their hands and hoping for a moderate Democratic turn like, say, the nomination of Joe Biden for president who could give them a pretext to abandon the president. It would be political malpractice for a Democratic campaign to betray their base in order to tilt after evangelical windmills.

This speaks to a deeper problem with Doughertys analysis. His argument is premised on the idea that religious conservatives are primarily concerned about LGBTQ issues and insurance coverage of birth control. But the polling data suggests that simply is not true: They have conservative views on a whole swath of issues, including ones about race and identity that are so central to Trumps appeal. You cannot disentangle their support for Trumps policies on religious freedom from their support for his border wall and racial demagoguery.

The American public is not divided exclusively by their views of religion: They are divided by their view of what America should look like as a whole. Our various culture wars have become a giant culture war, and its hard to disentangle one component from the rest of it.

Earlier this year, Trinity Evangelical Divinity Schools Craig Ott and Juan Carlos Tllez published a survey of the academic and statistical literature on evangelical opinions on immigration. They found that white evangelicals have the most negative views regarding immigration as compared to compared to all other religious groups.

Interestingly, these grassroots opinions seem to arise in spite of more moderate statements from evangelical leaders and organizations. In Ott and Tllezs view, their attitudes and the manner in which they form their opinions appear inconsistent with evangelical convictions. Sheer religious conviction isnt driving these voters behavior, at least according to these scholars read of the available research.

Their analysis is borne out by recent polling on policy. Sixty-one percent of white evangelicals support Trumps travel ban, per one 2019 survey. A Pew report found that 68 percent did not believe the US had an obligation to take in refugees more than any other religious group surveyed. About 75 percent of white evangelicals support Trumps proposal for a US-Mexico border wall.

These restrictive attitudes reflect deeper negative attitudes toward diversity. In one study, white evangelicals were the only religious group surveyed where a plurality (44 percent) had a negative view of Muslims. A data analysis by Denison Universitys Paul Djupe found that white evangelicals have considerably more racial resentment toward African-Americans than the general white population. A 2018 PRRI survey found that a majority of white evangelicals believed that a majority-minority America would have a mostly negative effect on the country again, alone among religious groups in the sample.

Perhaps this seems obvious. Doesnt all this data merely show that a conservative demographic group is, in fact, conservative?

But thats precisely my point. Today, partisan identity forms what political scientist Liliana Mason calls a mega-identity a category that encompasses various different ways we think about ourselves into one giant bundle. Voting Republican isnt just a way for white religious conservatives to protect themselves from secular attacks on their institutions; its also an expression of their deep anxiety created by demographic change and the upending of historic racial hierarchies. Their fear is not just one of religious persecution or racial progress, but of both combining into a unified whole of a country that is no longer there.

Under these circumstances, the outcome of an election then feels so much more consequential for our own broader sense of who we are, as Mason put it in an interview. We cant just say: Well one part of me lost, but the rest of me is still doing great (or vice versa). Instead, we feel devastated when we lose and really really great when we win.

That sense of so much being on the line, of an entire way of life being under threat, means that partisan identification becomes an irresistibly powerful lure for voters. No amount of Democratic policy moderation on narrow issues of religious liberty is going to overcome this amount of deep partisan polarization. Dougherty is preoccupied by the case of the Little Sisters of the Poor, a small Catholic charity that sought exemption from Obamacares birth control mandate. But Ill guarantee you that case is a lot less important to Trumps evangelical voter base than the Wall.

You can see the profound shaping effect in another religious group: Catholics. American Catholics are split into two roughly equally sized partisan camps and have sharply polarized attitudes as a result. Pew asked Catholics in January whether they supported substantially expanding the border wall with Mexico; 91 percent of Catholic Democrats opposed it, while 81 percent of Catholic Republicans supported it. You can see similar partisan splits on other issues Pew polled, even ones of doctrinal relevance like abortion and climate change. It doesnt make sense to speak of a Catholic vote; it makes sense to speak of two Catholic votes, a Democratic and a Republican one.

In a world where extreme polarization and social anxieties play a central role in politics, simple policy moderation is not enough to change the way that polarized groups vote.

The truth is were locked in not several culture wars, but one giant one: a battle over the countrys future about which partisan camps have very, very different ideas.

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There is no culture war peace treaty - Vox.com

On Tuesdays episode of The Ben Shapiro Show, the Daily Wire editor-in-chief talks about a New York Times article that raises the issue of self-coupling. Video and partial transcript below:

This is why the culture wars matter so much I present to you, as Exhibit A in the pitch that the Left is making, this article from yesterday in The New York Times by an associate professor of religious studies at Skidmore College, Bradley Onishi, [who asks], Could I be my own soulmate?

Are you your own soulmate? The article describes Emma Watson, the actress, and Lizzo, the rapper and flautist, who are both saying that they are their own One that they are self-coupling. This religion, Professor Onishi, he says:

For most people, the idea of self-coupling may be jarring, but a closer look might reveal it to be more of an end point of a trend. Marriage rates have been declining steadily since the 1970s. Many of us are dating more, but somehow going on fewer dates. Sex is safer and less burdened with shame than in the past, and seemingly more available, but were having less of it than we were a generation ago. And despite all these mixed signals, most of us are still looking for The One

According to Stephanie Coontz, the author of the 2005 book Marriage: A History, finding The One used to be about completion. In the 19th century, the rise of the market economy divided the sexes men into the world of bread-winning work and women into that of unpaid domestic labor. When these two spheres were brought together in marriage, Ms. Coontz wrote, they produced a perfect well-rounded hole.

Thats ignoring the several thousand years before that, where marriage was actually a pretty congenial relationship.

This approach to partnership, wherein two members of opposite sex complete each other, was essentially religious in origin complementarianism, for the theologians out there a well-known example being the biblical adage that two shall become one. It also recalls Platos Symposium one of the earliest purveyors of the soul mate myth where the comic poet Aristophanes explains that humans were once united in pairs, but were then split into unhappy halves by Zeus

The ideal of completion hearkens to a time when women were economically and socially dependent on men and marriage was reserved for heterosexual couples. Today, instead of a life-defining relationship, many of us now see partnership as one part of a puzzle that includes a career (which often demands geographic mobility), family, a social life, personal wellness, volunteer work and creative or recreational outlets. A relationship is not the foundation of selfhood, but only a piece.

The redefinition of marriage into one choice among many, just something that you do if you feel like it the problem is that that may work for a very, I would say very, very limited coterie of people who read The New York Times. It does not work broadly across the United States. But our cultural institutions are all nationalized: Hollywood is nationalized, Netflix is nationalized, The New York Times is nationalized, Facebook is nationalized, and that means that the social bleed over effect, the social trickle-down effect of leftist social policy, which, by the way, is not even engaged in by people at the upper echelons in places like New York and California.

One of the peculiar things youll find about Hollywood is the same people who are routinely preaching the virtues of bleeding-edge social leftism get rid of marriage, have any relationship you want, open marriages, polyamory those same people tend to get married at higher rates than a lot of people who are actually not living in those areas. They tend not to have kids out of wedlock, particularly a lot, and if they do have kids out of wedlock, they can afford it because theyre very wealthy. Those social messages do not apply equally to everyone.

In other words, just as with every other policy in human life, not all policies affect everybody equally. The fact that folks on the Left seem to think that policies undertaken by liberal elites over at The New York Times or in Hollywood, that those policies affect people in downtrodden economic areas the same way that they do in upper/elite establishments that discarded religion as a social fabric decades ago, just demonstrates a tremendous level of ignorance. Trying to re-shift these definitions of fundamental institutions that is indeed creating a phenomenon in which the United States is dividing. These [three] phenomena income inequality rising, the changes in the economy, and the bleed over of social liberalism this is leading to a toxic brew.

Now, there are people on the Right and the Left who think that the way to fix this is to fix the economic side. The way were gonna do this with redistributionism! Youve got Andrew Yang proposing universal basic income on the Democratic side, or you have people like as Ive said Tucker Carlson talking about regulating out of existence self-driving cars, stopping economic progress, limiting trade, bringing back all these jobs to manufacturing areas, as though thats ever really going to happen. I have serious doubts about that, considering the technology has basically put a lot of these jobs out of commission.

Then, there is the stuff that is actually in the control of the people who are living today, and that is making the next right decision. The fact is that there are certain factors in your life that are fundamentally going to guarantee [that you] have a better shot at life finishing high school, not having kids out of wedlock, getting married. These things actually change your life in ways for the better, and the fact that our culture is so focused in on a sort of Marxist materialism, in which if we solve your economic circumstance, that this will solve all of your other problems this is not right.

Solving the problem of making right and moral decisions that better your life that is how your life gets better. That means taking seriously the fundamental social institutions that [have] been broken by the Left since the 1960s, focusing on restoring those because those are things you can do. Not things that you have to wait for some government savior to do and, by the way, those government saviors aint showing up.

Income inequality is breaking out in major blue cities, where theyve gotten rid of the social institutions and where the ladder to success doesnt exist even for the underclass in those cities themselves. Forget about red areas versus blue areas in the cities themselves. You need a restoration of personal responsibility in order to lead to a restoration of the ladder to success that does exist for people who make the best possible decision.

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SHAPIRO: 'Self-Coupling': The Newest Frontier On The Culture War - The Daily Wire