Culture War In The Hoosier State

Apparently while he was Governor of Indiana, Mitch Daniels worked hard to try and suppress what he termed liberal "propaganda" at public universities in the Hoosier State. According to the Huffington Post:

Emails obtained by The Associated Press through a Freedom of Information Act request show Daniels requested that historian and anti-war activist Howard Zinn's writings be banned from classrooms and asked for a "cleanup" of college courses. In another exchange, the Republican talks about cutting funding for a program run by a local university professor who was one of his sharpest critics.

To be sure I think that Howard Zinn was a good writer and his famous "A Peoples History of the United States" is a classic unconventional look at American history through the lense of class struggle. While I don't agree with its main thesis that class struggle is the defining characteristic of American history, I think Zinn's point that class struggle did exist is important, especially considering how traditionally trends like class struggle along with things like racism or mass violence have been glossed over in most history curricula.

The remarkable thing here is how a major figure in the Republican Party, indeed a candidate for the presidency, seems to think reading this book would surely destroy the vulnerable minds of America's college students. Should we also ban the writings of Lenin, Hitler and Mao? Certainly some people read those in college too. Daniels seems to think that reading stuff he doesn't agree with is itself a dangerous act. As he put it "We must not falsely teach American history in our schools." The term "false history" is an is the key here. After all, while Zinn's career is controversial, I've never heard of any factual criticisms of what his books contain. And even if Daniels doesn't know about the Ludlow Massacre or the Wilmington Insurrection of 1898 (the only coup d'etat in American history) that doesn't mean they didn't happened. "False history" is when we pretend that these things didn't happen, which is how American history has traditionally been taught.

Personally I think this type of historical censorship is only really understandable through the context of an ever expanding culture war. That is the mindset of the traditional culture war issues of Molly Ivins' "three G's of Texas politics: God, Gays and Guns" is expanding to cover new issues, in this case college curriculum.

The Ever Expanding Culture War

One thing I've noticed of late about conservative politics is how many issues seem to being drawn in a culture war model of political discussion. By culture war I mean a description of an issue or policy as not just wrong on the merits but someone morally offensive and a dire threat to American civilization. Paul Krugman recently found a great example of this in an article denouncing New York City's new bike sharing program Citi Bike in Front Page magazine:

Bicycles are one of the obsessions of Mayor Bloomberg and his transportation secretary Janette Sadik-Khan. Khan is the granddaughter of Imam Alimjan Idris, a Nazi collaborator and principle teacher at an SS school for Imams under Hitler’s Mufti, Haj Amin al-Husseini. The bio of his son, Wall Street executive Orhan Sadik-Khan, frequently mentions the bombing of the family home in Dresden and surviving trying times after World War II. It neglects to mention that the times were only trying because their side was losing…

In partial revenge, Khan has made many New York streets nearly as impassable as those of her grandfather’s wartime Dresden.

Remember this is the response of a conservative political magazine to the popular idea of allowing people to rent bikes to ride around America's densest city.

These types of bizarre denunciations aren't just limited to more obscure magazines however.  None other than the Wall Street Journal recently ran a video editorial that denounced the Nazi bike plot with such choice gems as, "Do not ask me to enter the minds of the totalitarians running this city." and, "The bike lobby is an all-powerful enterprise."  While it's true that the Journal has had a conservative editorial board since time immemorial, what is fascinating is how the supply side economics and tax cuts conservatism of yesterday is being replaced with Fox News style rabble rousing and culture war.

It's not just bike sharing that is getting drawn into a culture war model of politics either.  Recently Virgina's Republican Governor Bob McDonnell tried to impose a $100 annual fee on owners of hybrid and electric cars.  While North Carolina's state legislature has been trying to stop Tesla from selling their popular electric cars anywhere in the entire state.  One would think that conservative Republicans would like the idea of a new car company coming to town to do business, free enterprise and all that right?  Well if it's associated with liberals in must be bad, and must be stopped.  The entire fate American civilization hangs in the balance.  Or on the pedal, as it were.