It’s War!
The other, long-term, one.

Mr. Kurtz is also a fellow at the Hudson Institute
March 26, 2002 8:55 a.m.

ext Sunday's New York Times best-seller list has been announced, and perched on it proudly are two leftist screeds. Michael Moore's Stupid White Men, which continues to hold down number one, is joined at number eleven by David Brock's Blinded By the Right. Brock's book is so vile that even liberal reviewers seem embarrassed by it. But there it is on the list. Not that the conservative presence has dwindled. Overall, the list is still filled with overtly conservative books, and patriotic books about 9/11. Bias is at number two, followed closely at three by the new and climbing conservative entry, Shakedown: Exposing the Real Jesse Jackson. Shakedown confirms the success of Regnery, the publisher responsible for so many of the conservative books flooding the list of late. At number four, Love, Greg & Lauren is an interesting new entry. It's a book about the struggle of a couple, the wife of which received burns over most of her body in the attack on the World Trade Center. And Steve Emerson's American Jihad, an exposé of Islamic terrorist organizations in America by an author deemed politically incorrect until 9/11, is at fourteen on the list. Finally, the new entry at fifteen, the bottom of the list, is Frank Bruni's book on George Bush.

So the list has not lost its conservative cast, but the Left is back — and it's mad. It's evident that the war has not killed the culture war. The Left, I think, is stunned by what's happened to it, and is looking to soothe its feelings by chowing down on some political comfort food — some fun "hate the Right" books focusing on domestic issues. On both sides, the strategy of choice is attack. It's also notable that the list has so many political books in the first place. The war itself seems to be politicizing the country.

Just after 9/11, there was some talk that the real war would put an end to the culture war. It isn't turning out that way. The best-seller list shows that, at least on the domestic side, the culture war is alive and well. And we've seen the same thing in Congress — take the Pickering nomination, for example.

Although the country is, for the most part, united on the need to fight the war, the meaning of the war itself is still up for grabs. The domestic culture war, instead of being shoved aside by the necessity of defeating terrorism, is actually being fought out through our efforts to shape and support that global battle. Everyone knows about the disagreements between emboldened conservatives and the increasingly divided and defensive antiwar Left. But the more interesting cultural controversy may be the fight amongst the war's supporters to spin the war itself. Liberals would like to turn the war into a crusade against social conservatism abroad — and at home. Conservatives draw from the war a reaffirmation of traditional American values, and a lesson in the dangers of multiculturalism. In time, I expect, we'll see a best-seller list filled with books that try to make sense of the war from competing cultural perspectives.

So while the nation is united behind the war, and conservatives are in many ways surging, don't look for the culture war to be ending any time soon. Just wait till the first Supreme Court vacancy hits the fan.