China Won the Culture War
For those watching at home, China won the culture war.
Two things happened in the early 1980s, unrelated except for chronology and impact: the beginning of the culture wars in the U.S., and the transformation of the Chinese economy.
In 1978, Chinese Premier Deng Xiaoping allowed Chinese citizens to own private property, which included the creation and ownership of for-profit companies. By the early 1980s there were factories in Shenzhen making a variety of inexpensive consumer products for export. Thus began the birth of the modern Chinese Economy.
In the United States, conservative Republicans, emboldened by the election of Ronald Reagan, began the “Culture Wars.” Conservatives were shocked by the state of the nation. Crime was out of control, drug use was rampant, sex had been trivialized by the media and commercialized by pornography. This erosion was the seemingly inevitable consequence of a political and judicial system that had gone off the rails. In 1963 the Supreme Court banished God from public schools. Court rulings struck down censorship laws and opened the door to pornography. The birth control pill uncoupled sex from procreation and resulted in a wave of promiscuity and the erosion of the family. And then, in 1973, the Supreme Court struck down restrictions on abortion, thus giving a woman the Constitutional right to abort her baby.
American society was sick, and conservatives knew they had to do something to heal it. They knew they had to draw the line to prevent further erosion and restore righteousness in the nation. To do that they had to take control of politics and then government, and appoint conservative justices to roll back those noxious court rulings.
Thus began a vicious 30 year fight over values, beliefs, and culture. Conservatives began a long slow climb from minority statues in politics. They slowly won control in state government, mostly in the South and Inter-Mountain West. And then in 1994, after nearly sixty years in the minority (except for two brief spells in the 1950s) they took control of the House of Representatives. The names of the men and women who brought Conservatism back to relevance are now legend: Reagan, Bush, Gingrich, Scalia, McConnell. Now President Donald J. Trump.
Conservative politicians now control the Government — Governor and State Legislatures — in a majority of state houses around the country. Conservative judges hold the majority of seats on the nation’s Federal Courts, and conservative judicial philosophy — constitutionalism, strict construction, and originalism — control our jurisprudence. Conservative economic policy — free markets and limited government regulations — control not just the nation’s economy but the world economy.
Meanwhile in China, the Chinese government spend billions on infrastructure — building high speed rail, airports, modern shipping facilities — and trillions on education — transforming their sputtering colleges into major universities. The Chinese government assisted the transformation of the Chinese economy: it is now the second largest, and the fasted growing major economy in the world. It will soon overtake the United States. China, meaning Chinese universities, companies, and individuals, now receive more patents worldwide than any other nation. The United States was the world leader in patents from the 1970s to 2018.
Thirty years of culture war in the United States has resulted in seething partisan rage. Each side of our widening political divide now views the other with contempt, loathing, and fear. The end result is a badly broken political system and governmental gridlock. Oh, and abortion is still legal. Not only that, in 2015 the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage across the country. So, while conservatives won every battle — political, economic, and judicial — they clearly lost the Culture Wars.
The real winner of the culture war was China. While we were fighting over abortion, guns, and gay rights, the Chinese got down to business. Of course there’s no doubt they didn’t exactly play fair, stealing American intellectual property and using slave labor in their factories. But the end result is that the Chinese economy is growing at a near record pace and will soon overtake the American economy as the largest in the world.
So fight, fight, fight, American conservatives. There are still plenty of trivial and nonsensical issues still to battle over. And maybe someday your kids or grand-kids can get a job working for a Chinese company.
