Culture 'wars' and real wars

Predictable silliness from Peter Costello. He's got bored again a and gone for a random trawl on the Internet perhaps for another political position to adopt, just after 'social liberal' and concerned Christian poverty crusader. The first banner he carried in the late 1980s was 'neo-conservatism' which is attributed to him in Patrick O'Brien's silly The Liberals, at this time it was interpreted as some kind of authoritarian populist moral conservative appeal, that in some aspects foreshowed Howard's appeal. Wouldn't it be better to extend support to the families and compatriots of the 47 Iraqi Muslims murdered by terrorists yesterday? As Christopher Hitchens notes the terrorists are as committed to muderering Muslins as anyone esle. Costello's comments like Howard's will be popular with the self proclaimed 'culture warriors'. A 'culture war' is a war for intellectuals of a particular type, those who prefer endlessly considered what we should think rather than what we should do, and what we should do is to support those struggling for freedom and democracy against dictatorship and terror.