Yes, The Culture War is Real, And Democrats Started It

Written by Robert Knight

Did you know that debating issues in Congress is part of the culture war and is bad for democracy?

That’s what The Washington Post (motto: “Democracy Dies in Darkness”) implied in its front-page story after the Republican-led House approved the National Defense Authorization Act in a 219-210 party-line vote.

The bill authorizes an $886 billion defense budget and rolls back some of the Democrats’ schemes aimed at turning America into a Marxist version of Sodom and Gomorrah. These include tax-subsidized travel for abortions, transgender drugs and surgeries, and programmers who browbeat the troops with transgender ideology and diversity, equity and inclusion propaganda.

The bill’s passage, the Post said, came after “an acrimonious battle … that reduced the chamber of America’s democracy into a battleground in its increasingly polarized culture wars.”

Remember, under their rules, the “chamber of America’s democracy” is supposed to march in lockstep, not engage in debate.

The left’s idea of democracy is a centralized, one-party state where everyone must salute the pride flag, embrace socialist economics and trash “White supremacists” whose ranks include Hispanics, Asians, Blacks and Native Americans who hold conservative values.

The term “culture war” isn’t aired when Democrats brazenly assault the natural order, only when there’s resistance. Any ground the left gains is automatically considered settled and beyond debate.

“Why would Republicans want the military to prepare for real wars when fighting culture wars is so much more fun?” asks Post columnist Catherine Rampell. She’s especially torqued that the defense bill would ban pride flags and require military-run schools to remove “radical gender ideology” books.

If I read her correctly, the way to prepare to fight “real wars” is to saturate children on military bases with LGBTQ and climate change propaganda, bring in drag queens and indoctrinate service members in the latest “woke” ideology.

Anyone trying to undo this mess and allow the armed forces to focus instead on defending the country is somehow weakening the military. The Post’s story warns that Republicans are not only “restricting military personnel’s access to reproductive care and diversity protections” but are “imperiling lawmakers’ mandate to set major national security priorities.”

Really? Run for your lives!

U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy dismissed Democrats’ outrage, quipping, “We don’t want Disneyland to train our military.”

Indeed not. Disney went “woke” long ago and shows no signs of slowing down despite a string of box-office bombs, a drop in attendance at its theme parks and an estimated $1.5 billion loss in its streaming service.

The company, whose stock price plummeted 44% in 2022, is slashing $5.5 billion in costs and laying off 7,000 employees worldwide.

By the way, Disney acquired “Sound of Freedom” in 2018, only to shelve it before Angel Studios was able to secure the rights and get it into theaters this past July Fourth weekend. Starring Jim Caviezel and Mira Sorvino, the thriller about former Homeland Security agent Tim Ballard’s daring rescues of trafficked children has racked up more than $100 million in ticket sales in only three weeks’ release.

The Democrats are right about one thing: There is a culture war raging in America. They touched it off, expecting little resistance. Now there’s serious pushback, and they don’t like it.

When they’re not trying to bully parents or prevent the military from shucking “woke” madness, leftists are assailing the U.S. Supreme Court. Over the last two years, the court has issued multiple rulings that have set Democrats’ hair on fire.

The justices ruled in favor of Harold Shurtleff, who was prevented from flying a Christian flag at Boston City Hall where dozens of others had flown without incident, including the pride flag.

In another First Amendment decision, the court said Washington State high school football coach Joe Kennedy could pray quietly after games at the 50-yard line and not lose his job.

The court also ruled 9-0 that Gerald Groff, a Christian postal employee, could not be forced to work on the Sabbath (Sunday) just because the cash-strapped U.S. Postal Service began delivering for Amazon.

The justices ruled that in Colorado, Christian designer Lorie Smith could not be forced to create a website for a same-sex wedding. This expanded their earlier ruling in the Masterpiece Cakeshop case.

The court also rejected the Biden administration’s totalitarian COVID-19 shot mandate and President Biden’s $400 billion student loan payoff scheme.

And the court slapped the Environmental Protection Agency for exceeding its mandate and employing sweeping new powers without congressional approval.

Finally, there was the big one — the Dobbs ruling, which struck down Roe v. Wade. By this time, Democrats had launched all sorts of trumped-up allegations against the court and Justice Clarence Thomas in particular.

The U.S. Supreme Court, the Democrats say, needs lots of oversight and new rules to curb conflicts of interest.

Nonsense. Democrats had no problem when Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan refused to recuse themselves from the 2015 Obergefell case creating a new right to same-sex marriage even though they had themselves officiated at same-sex ceremonies.

Yes, there’s a culture war raging, because the side of sanity is fighting back. We had better hope and pray that it continues until the ship of state is righted and liberty prevails across the fruited plain.

Robert Knight is a former Los Angeles Times news editor and writer and was a Media Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. This column was originally published by The Washington Times.

He has been published by the Wall Street Journal, National Review, the Christian Post, AmericanThinker.com, DailyCaller.com, Townhall.com, OneNewsNow.com and many others.  He has co-authored three books and written 10, including “Liberty on the Brink: How the Left Plans to Steal Your Vote” (D. James Kennedy Ministries, 2020) and “The Coming Communist Wave: What Happens If the Left Captures All Three Branches of Government” (D. James Kennedy Ministries, 2020) . 

You can follow him on Twitter at @RobertKnight17, and his website is roberthknight.com.