After the midterms, the left made its predictable attack on the culture war: The blue wave was just one more proof that issues like abortion are passé. It’s time to move on to more important social justice issues—as if procured abortion has nothing to do with social justice
Such dribble can be expected from the left. It always seeks to discourage the culture war while relentlessly imposing its own cultural agenda.
However, one recent attack came from the center-right. The Wall Street Journal carried an op-ed (Nov. 5) by Joseph C. Sternberg titled “Culture Wars Won’t Save the GOP.”
Somebody Always Wins
“The problem with culture wars is that someone eventually wins,” Mr. Sternberg opined. Once this happens, the issues gradually fade away with some kind of accommodation. “The system is oriented toward reaching a rough consensus that can put the issue to bed.” Culture war issues do not have the staying power of economic issues that deal with hard realities of production and consumption.
He affirms that the midterm elections marked the beginning of the end of these issues, which are slowly being settled. Even the transgender sports ban issue that won big in four states, including liberal Washington and Colorado, will eventually wind down. There is no use carrying on.
Indeed, the Republican establishment stayed away from abortion, which “was conspicuous by its absence in most campaigns.” It lost badly. However, staying away from abortion and losing badly does not prove the issue was toxic. If anything, it can prove the opposite.
Mr. Sternberg, however, counsels conservatives to let these messy issues fade away. They should concentrate on the economic issues in 2028 if they want a chance to regain ground.
The Mantra-Makers
“Moral issues are dead” mantras are all too familiar to those in the pro-life movement. For years they have been told that defending innocent human life is a lost cause. Their faithful reply was to ignore the doomsayers and redouble their efforts.
And year after year, decade after decade, they have defied all odds and made the issue part of the national debate. This year’s defeat will not break the movement’s spirit. In fact, the mantras only serve to reveal the sympathies of those who promote them.
The Left Must Win Eventually
What the mantra-makers really want to say when affirming “someone eventually wins” is that the left must eventually win. For liberals, history proves that this “someone” is always moving things left—unless the right breaks the rules and resists.
This false leftward rule of history is part of liberalism’s flawed ideology, which states that society must constantly drift toward policies of ever greater license. This includes the restrictions on moral issues like procured abortion and homosexuality. History, they claim, can never go back. The future must slowly trend forward… and leftward.
Thus, for the liberal, the eventual victory of procured abortion is the only acceptable solution. It is preferable that these divisive topics gradually fade into oblivion. However, sometimes a blowout election like the midterms is an extra shove to get conservatives to accept the inevitable and submit.
Is Economics Different?
Mr. Sternberg notes, “culture issues come and go, but the economy is forever.” Economics deals with concrete reality, not abstract moral values. He assumes that no one ever wins on culture issues and calls the matter settled.
But wait a minute! The present free-market system seemed to win an overwhelming victory at the end of the eighties and early nineties with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the implosion of the Soviet Union. The free market overwhelmed and destroyed the communist world and its Marxist ideology. Never was such a resounding rejection so well expressed and so widespread.
“Someone won,” to be sure, and for a while the Marxist ideal faded into the past. The matter seemed settled.
About the same midterm elections in which Mr. Sternberg declared that “the economy is forever,” the Democratic Socialists of America, with their truly communist agenda for society, made major gains. Liberals favored this lost cause in every possible way.
No one told the socialists that their cause was irreparably lost and that they should settle for a “rough consensus.” They continued on their horrible path to destroy the system. The liberals’ path to history seems to go one way in the economic sphere as well—leftward.
A Flawed Vision
Such liberal perspectives are part of a flawed vision of history that sees all things as a clash of interests. Thus, there is no right or wrong in history, only winners and losers, as each pursues profit, gratification and fulfillment.
To simplify matters, Mr. Sternberg divides history into two parts. First, real history is economic. Second, moral and religious causes are messy sideshows since most people follow the drama of markets.
However, he could have saved himself much trouble if he could see the two parts of history as part of a whole.
Economic and Moral History Are Linked
There is a link between economic and moral history. They cannot be separated. Indeed, economics is a social science, not a hard science, since it deals with unpredictable and fickle human acts.
When these acts conform to human nature, they will result in prosperity and human flourishing. They take people closer to the God-given purpose of their lives. All society benefits.
When the acts do not conform to human nature, they can result in frenetic economic activity. But it also gives rise to the worst vices and appetites, which can destroy economic prosperity and cause financial crashes and panics.
Thus, all those things that favor the moral order—family, morality, property and sound customs—must be cultivated and encouraged. All those things that disrupt the moral order—dishonesty, immorality and vice need to be opposed so that order might prevail.
The Socialists Understand
At least the socialists recognize this link, albeit in the opposite way, while many free marketers do not. Socialists seek the eventual elimination of property, confiscation of goods, loose morals and the destruction of inequality. This agenda never favors a prosperous market economy but the full expression of the unbridled passions and a programmed society of equal misery.
At the same time, socialists see all morals, traditions and family connections as instruments of oppression. Thus, they must be suppressed. Abortion, divorce, sexual promiscuity and the LGBTQ agenda are all naturally part of the socialist program.
The liberal leftists, with the Democratic Socialists of America in the vanguard, have made these issues a vibrant and permanent part of their program. They have no problem affirming them. They will not accept a “rough consensus” despite their past losses. They have vowed to destroy, annihilate and eradicate all the restrictions that the pro-life movement legislated over decades on all levels of government.
Alas, the left never abandons the culture wars…
The Real Lesson of 2026
Free marketers need to recognize that only a moral society provides the ideal conditions for a sound and prosperous economy with honest workers, stable families and bountiful children to combat the population decline.
Indeed, the messy moral issues are much more important than the economic ones. These issues touch the soul more directly and confer meaning and purpose to life. They keep society in order and purpose-driven. They direct souls toward God, Who desires humanity’s greater good. Take away these higher issues and society languishes and perishes.
This is the real lesson of the 2026 midterm elections: a great moral crisis afflicts America, making life unbearable, unaffordable and unharmonious. The culture wars alone will not save the GOP or America—but God can.
