Right, so a question I'd have is why the culture war is so important to conservatives. I think it's because arguing about culture is more exciting and compelling than arguing about policies and political compromises. And conservative leaders excel at fighting culture wars because they're better liars--because they're more sociopathic and less fully civilized than their liberal technocratic counterparts. The reason they're less civilized is that their core beliefs amount to a throwback to social Darwinism, which is to say that conservatism is only superficially modern.