I’ve rarely seen the culture wars explained better than by Jeff Sparrow in this piece at The Drum. Sparrow looks at the contradictions between the market agenda of neo-liberalism and the moralistic agenda of neo-conservatism, and concludes:

Neoconservatism is, in that respect, a tidy racket for those on the inside, in which they play their readers for chumps, again and again and again – urging them on into culture war skirmishes, while the free market parties for whom they gormlessly vote denude everything they hold dear. Does, for instance, anyone think that, once in power, an Abbott government will do anything whatsoever to prevent market forces from continuing their slow destruction of the country towns from which the Convoy of No Confidence emanates?

But those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad, as Powell famously said.

And there’s nothing objectively madder than the activists engaged in a constant and frenzied struggle against a culture – indeed, a world – created by the neoliberal politicians they support.