'Bgates' On the Culture War

I find that some of the most interesting analyses of the daily scene  are by regular internet commenters. Take bgates who frequently posts at Tom Maguire’s Just One Minute Weblog, though I’ve seen his work elsewhere.

Here he is today on cultural values:

I’m in favor of the culture that says America and its armed forces are tremendous forces for good in the world, immigrants should be as grateful to be here as the natives are, there’s nothing wrong with firing an unproductive worker even if he shares some racial affiliation with the President of the United States, “tolerance” is a synonym for neither “celebration” nor “subsidy”, Shakespeare was better than Toni Morrison, Frank Capra was better than Michael Moore, and America is better than anywhere else, not because of anything in our blood but because of a virtuous cycle between a system of government that allowed more liberty than anywhere else, the kind of people who were attracted to live under such a government, and the kind of society built by such people.

Every bit of that sentence is part of the culture war. And I’m not doubling down – I’m all in.

In response to another poster who attacked a candidate who espoused traditional views on the ground they might try to impose them on others he says only Democrats do that:

The only people I see using the federal government to force their religious views on others are Democrats — sacrificing my light bulbs to Gaia, for instance, or raising taxes because “Jesus Christ spoke to me in terms of the kind of life that I would want to lead — being my brothers’ and sisters’ keeper”, notwithstanding that Christ never said that, when a similar phrase does occur in the Bible it’s spoken by the world’s first murderer to evade questioning, and the speaker here is a multimillionaire who has a literal brother who lives in a shack in a slum in Africa.

It seems to me you’re less concerned with using the government to impose religious views than you are with the specter of politicians who are able to quote Scripture accurately rather than hypocritically.