… Conventional wisdom has it that in politics there are values issues and economic issues, with “values” conservatives and “fiscal” conservatives to match. Yet this distinction obscures as much as it reveals. When we cast culture-war issues solely in terms of religious or moral values, we miss their deep entanglement with government power.
How people conceive of these issues — reproductive rights, say, or rape, or sexual harassment — says a great deal about how they view the social contract. [cont.]
Robert O. Self, Brown U. (NYT)