but ultimately it’s a diversion, a way of putting across a policy program while avoiding any sincere discussion of the policies in question. The virtue-quest is an exciting moral crusade that seems to be extremely important but at the conclusion of which you discover you’ve got little to show for it besides NAFTA, bank deregulation, and a prison spree. This book is about Democrats, but of course Republicans do it too. Over the years, the culture wars unfolded in precisely the same way as the liberal virtue-quest: as an exciting ersatz politics that seemed to be really important but at the
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