JAMES LILEKS’ WEDNESDAY REVIEW OF MODERN THOUGHT:

Who’s responsible for the culture wars? The right, of course. Everything was proceeding as it should, climbing the staircase of enlightenment, everything getting better and better on our way to the best of all possible worlds. Then the ogres appeared, their brows thick and knotted, their mien dull and perturbed, and they set about to fight with the angels on the staircase. They knew not why, only that they were not angels, and felt ashamed at their own rude forms and incoherent grunts.

NPR interviewed a fellow who wrote a book on this, and I was interested in his take. These excerpts also draw from this. He said:

I think there was a specific set of circumstances in the early 1970s, where the culture wars sprung up, because finally the evangelical right felt galvanized into doing something.

And what was that? What did they do? What was that specific set?

Did anything happen in “the early 1970s” that might have produced a cultural flashpoint to which religious might might be drawn?

Read the whole thing.