Damn, but this piece by David Warren is good:

The division between what is loosely called Left and Right, or “liberal” and “conservative”, which emerged in the 18th century, is no longer a shallow one. ("Left/Right" was the Continental divide, "liberal/conservative" the equivalent in the Anglosphere, for the two factions of the Enlightenment party.) It used to be shallow, and the trench between sides could be hopped back and forth, as recently as the Edwardian era.

It began widening and deepening after the first triumphs of Bolshevism, but there were old-fashioned-liberal "liberals" (and anti-communist social democrats) well into the latter half of the 20th century. It was as Bolshevism went into eclipse that the divide became something like a rift valley.

I think there is a reason for this. The liberals lost the constriction of having to distinguish themselves from communists. So that, paradoxically enough, we might attribute their declining sanity to the decline of communism.

Whereas their “socialism” remains alive and well, under various deceitful covers. The idea that the state should take and redistribute nearly half of our income is now received as unchallengeable. The issues we debate today are more civilizational than economic.

Being a socialist today means never having to admit you're a socialist, while at the same time being able to call anyone who disagrees with socialism a fascist or worse.

Arguments over penises and sexual morality become quasi legalistic arguments over rights based on membership in identity groups. Ironically, the state is far more involved with matters of personal sexuality and privacy than ever before.

Because people get caught up (hung up, really) in these personal debates (what we call the "culture war"), the real debate -- which should be over confiscation of wealth and loss of freedom -- is avoided.

In schools, students are taught how to put condoms on bananas. As I have argued before, I don't think the goal is to "protect" them from AIDS, but as a diversion to inflame the sentiments of conservative parents -- who will then expend vast amounts of time and energy getting condoms out of the classrooms -- while the more horrendous reality that schools can't or won't teach (and prefer to indoctrinate instead) is ignored.

(In a real war, this would be called "flypaper strategy" of course.)

I think that some distractions are meant to be demoralizing, regardless of the result. A win-win. Think "Boy Scouts" and think homos -- regardless of which "side" you're on. Think "family" and think of impossible partisan harangues. Etc.

Whoever gets to frame the issues is in charge of the frame-up.

(Somebody like George Lakoff probably said that already, but I don't really care whether I'm being original or not. Whoever said it first can just tell me I plagiarized them, and I'll apologize. Originality has become redundant. And copyrighted.)

MORE: Also via Pajamas Media, an excellent related essay at Gates of Vienna:

The simple fact is that we never won the Cold War as decisively as we should have. Yes, the Berlin Wall fell, and the Soviet Union collapsed. This removed the military threat to the West, and the most hardcore, economic Marxism suffered a blow as a credible alternative. However, one of the really big mistakes we made after the Cold War ended was to declare that Socialism was now dead, and thus no longer anything to worry about. Here we are, nearly a generation later, discovering that Marxist rhetoric and thinking have penetrated every single stratum of our society, from the Universities to the media. Islamic terrorism is explained as caused by “poverty, oppression and marginalization,” a classic, Marxist interpretation.

What happened is that while the “hard” Marxism of the Soviet Union may have collapsed, at least for now, the “soft” Marxism of the Western Left has actually grown stronger, in part because we deemed it to be less threatening.

However, as I explained in earlier posts, I have a problem with using the misuse of the term "Cultural Marxism" as a catchall for everything that might be found offensive.

(But when personal issues are politicized, errors in logic are compounded. Instead of focusing on what is important, people are drawn into personal ad hominem, hall of mirrors debates.)

MORE: How can I make this more obvious? The Culture War is not a war, but a tactic, and to a large extent a diversionary one. Time wasted battling over what people do with their penises is precisely what the tacticians hope to accomplish. If demoralization results as a byproduct, fine. But the beauty of cultural, personal strategies is that they are malleable, and change according to the styles of the times. If a cultural attribute that shocked one generation (say, long hair) fails in another, well, then politicize head-shaving in another, and so on.

When tactics are cultural, fighting over them is as much a waste of time as it would be to police the sale of gasoline because people might use it to make Molotov cocktails. The phony Culture War thus insidiously subverts the real war (to protect freedom) into innumerable and constantly changing petty squabbles over personal behavior.

By its nature, the "culture war" is a tactic -- a viral, mutable one, but a tactic nonetheless.

(Plenty of unpleasant busywork for a blog like this...)

UPDATE: In a comment below, Grandstand pointed out a serious error, which I have corrected. I said "put bananas on condoms," but I meant to say "put condoms on bananas." What on earth was I thinking?

Sigh.

(I guess I just don't have the necessary skills to become a schoolteacher.)