The Real Cultural Divide

Victor Davis Hanson on the cultural divide in America these days:

Yet the true nature of our loud divisiveness is rarely remarked upon. In the last three decades, there has been a steady evolution from liberal to moderately conservative politics among a majority of the voters, whether gauged by the recent spate of Republican presidents or Bill Clinton's calculated shift to the center. Now the House, Senate, presidency and the majority of state governorships and legislatures are in Republican hands. A Bush win will ensure a conservative Supreme Court for a generation.

In contrast, the universities, the arts, the major influential media and Hollywood are predominately liberal — and furious. They bring an enormous amount of capital, talent, education and cultural influence into the political fray — but continue to lose real political power. The talented elite plays the same role to the rest of America as the Europeans do to the United States — venting and seething because the supposedly less sophisticated, but far more powerful, average Joes don't embrace their visions of utopia.