Cultural civil wars.

• Author: Bresler, Robert J.

Since the upheavals of the 1960s, the social/cultural issues (drugs, abortion, sexual lifestyles) have worked to the advantage of the Republican Party and conservatives in general. The voting-age population and working people in particular saw their traditional values under attack by the advocates of abortion, gay rights, no-fault divorce, and the legalization of marijuana. These were the Reagan Democrats of the 1980s. During the 1992 presidential election campaign, when economic issues were paramount, the Reagan Democrats returned to the Democratic Party, giving Bill Clinton his margin of victory. Dan Quayle's criticism of the Murphy Brown television programs became the butt of late-night television jokes, and Pat Buchanan's attack on the gay rights movement at the Republican National Convention was perceived as an example of intolerance and bigotry. The issue, for the first time since the 1960s, slipped out of the hands of the Republican Party. Did this mean that the cultural issues no longer have the same effect and saliency they did in the 1980s?

In times of economic uncertainty, social issues will diminish in importance. As James Carville, Clinton's campaign guru, kept reminding his candidate, "It's the economy, stupid." Despite Carville's famous admonition, the cultural issues will not go away. In the 1992 campaign, the Republican Party lost its capacity for articulating these matters. The Democrats interpreted the Republican emphasis on family values as an attack on those who did not come from intact two-parent families as they stressed tolerance and compassion.

The 1992 election highlighted the complex way the issue of values weaves itself into our political tapestry. The American approach to the question of personal values and social morality combines tolerance for those who are different (gays and racial minorities) and respect for the privacy of others with a desire to defend and restore the weakened American family. Tolerance has increased as America becomes a more heterogeneous society. Increasingly, the nation is a society of minorities that see an attack on one group as a potential attack on themselves. The existence of a multiplicity of minorities serves to protect all of them.

Another element in the political equation of values is the right to privacy. While not explicitly written into the Constitution, it is part of an implicit American creed and is embedded in our concept of individualism. Police in the bedroom and...