Rules of Engagement

Imagine a red army and a blue army fighting for control of a city. (You might populate this hypothetical city with gray civilians, or you might not. I don’t think it tortures the thought experiment much one way or another.) The fighting in this city is mixed up. There are no battle lines to speak of, just sporadic flare ups of combat as both sides attempt to stake out various territories within the metropolis. Now imagine that the two armies operate with vastly different rules of engagement. The blue rules of engagement are pretty streamlined: “Shoot reds on sight. Shoot to kill.” But the red rules are a little more… we’ll say “involved.” The reds try to observe the Universal Rules of Fair Play in Warfare. This means they generally avoid initiating battles. They don’t fire from ambush. They don’t aggressively push advantages or pursue retreating forces. And they’ll even punish their own troops for violating their notions of above-the-board combat. A red soldier executing a surprise raid on sleeping blues is as culpable as a blue doing so to reds. Reds aren’t savages, after all.

In this thought experiment, which side would you say is likely to win the city? If you had to bet.

The cleverer readers at home have no doubt already surmised that what I’m actually asking you to contemplate, in the most general terms, are the differences between conservative and liberal strategies in the Great American Culture War, a conflict that is now some fifty or…

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