It is mischievous to conduct a vague seminar on virtue as if the culture battle did not exist. As if it had never been fought before. The morals gang ought to get damn clear on how they differ from the neo-nativists. Because in popular American culture, the great drumbeat about bad morals mixes with anxiety and produces a politics of resentment and a search for scapegoats. But wait a minute.
Moral crusaders enter American politics to both expand and contract basic rights.
Those are the two sides of morality politics that I described in my article, the two great traditions in American reform movements. Moral panics erode liberalism itself. Contempt, racial animosity, and xenophobia have been smuggled into images of welfare and the underclass. Alas, the stereotype has proved a political blockbuster. Images of black welfare mothers and their criminal sons get the neo-nativist juices flowing with a vengeance.