The culture war is a conflict of values and viewpoints between lefty liberals and righty reactionaries. The political pummeling part of the proceedings is now popularly presented as Red State vs. Blue State, which, by definition, makes the struggle Statist, thereby leaving libertarians sometimes behind liberal lines and othertimes in the conservative camp but frequently on the sidelines alone. As long as Reds and Blues continually fail to identify big government's ongoing war against freedom as the root of the problem, and therefore fail to realize that they're being played one against the other, and furthermore steadfastly founder at getting BigGov to do the bidding of their side against the other side, the fracas will fume on forever.

And that's why it's sometimes fun for a libertarian to simply sit back and chuckle at the continuing culture clash.

Monumental Grudge Match

When the local ACLU (they actually get it right sometimes) made Montgomery County, Indiana, uproot a Ten Commandments monument from the courthouse lawn the commissioners thought they'd come up with a truly libertarian solution: privatize a small plot of the sod and auction it to some citizens who would then re-erect the monolith without plundering taxpayer's pockets or trespassing on public property.

Oops.

An atheist assemblage caught wind of the plot (and the plot) and promised to out-bid the Christians for the choice patch of real estate. Their own proposed plaque would proclaim "Freedom from Religion" because "we strongly believe in the separation of church and state."

Conscription Conniption

Talk about no child left behind: a federal law passed in 2002 requires all high schools to hand over the names, addresses, and phone numbers of students to military recruiters. In many places of tax paid teaching, such as the three public high schools in Putnam County, Ohio, military head hunters are allowed to set up shop at the schools and sing their recruitment songs uncontested. Nothing like having a captive audience.

Oops.

A peacenik group composed of Quakers and "Veterans for Peace" want equal access to pass out pamphlets offering alternative opinions. These zealots are pitching a radical notion, insisting that kids should "understand all sides of a question before making a decision." Imagine that. Advocating thinking in a government school.

Sick Glorified Transit

Virtually every bus and rail line in our USSA is a publicly owned and federally subsidized monopoly. Which means the DEA gets a monopoly on drug war propaganda. To guarantee its hegemony, a devious law was devised to lop off billions in federal funds to local transit authorities if they dare display advertisements that advocate "the legalization or medical use of marijuana or other drugs."

Oops.

The ACLU (getting it right again) and several drug advocacy groups ginned up an ad showing everyday citizens behind bars with the caption, ''Marijuana Laws Waste Billions of Taxpayer Dollars to Lock Up Non-Violent Americans.'' When the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority begged off running the ads for fear of losing their purloined taxpayer pelf, the activists sued. The result? The law was lobbed out for infringing freedom of speech, Department of Justicecrats declined to appeal, and the DC people-hauling system began displaying the ads in September.

Your Logo Here

Ministrycrats from the 25 European Union countries discussed banning Nazi symbols at one of their never ending ever extending taxpaid gatherings in February. Commissionercrats are proposing "a Europe-wide ban on display of the swastikas and other Nazi symbols as part of a campaign to combat anti-Semitism and intolerance."

Oops.

Politicalcrats from Eastern Europe called for a ban on communist symbols, including the red star and the hammer and sickle, to match the proposed ban on the swastika logo. "We would like to have an equal treatment of the other evil totalitarian regime of the communist system," said a Hungarian honcho of the European Parliament. "It was a fake symbol of unity of workers and farmers," added a former Lithuanian President. But politically correct Eurocrats are hedging because equating the hammer and sickle with the swastika might not be appropriate under the anti-racism rules being negotiated, since the swastika is "a symbol specifically associated with anti-Semitism." Or, to put it in a way that the Associated Press article didn't, Anti-Semitism evil is bad, ideological evil is not so bad. Lefty culture cranks love to depict murderous Nazis as the ultimate horror while portraying equally murderous Communists as merely misguided idealists.

And that's why it's sometimes fun for a libertarian to simply sit back and chuckle at the continuing culture clash.