I've fielded a few questions about how and why people get involved in politics.
Here's one story:
- Click here for the article.
Mike Johnson was an eager young lawyer, four years out of law school, when he stayed up until 5 a.m. one night poring over the details of a controversy roiling his hometown: the opening of a new strip club.
“I have done an exhaustive legal research on this matter, probably more than anyone,” he told municipal lawmakers in April 2002, according to minutes of the meeting. He argued that the arrival of another “sexually oriented business,” or “SOB” as he called it, would spread sexually transmitted diseases and other social ills.
Johnson’s pitch failed, and the club opened early the following year. But the dispute over Deja Vu proved to be a turning point for him. It marked the end of his short-lived career as a general practice lawyer and the beginning of his single-minded focus on the culture wars. The shift put him on the path to elected office, first in the Louisiana legislature and then in Congress, and ultimately last month to the House speakership.
- House Speaker Mike Johnson used faith in campaign against gay rights.
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For more:
What is the culture war?
A culture war is a cultural conflict between different social groups struggle to impose their own virtues, beliefs, and practices over society. The notion of "war" is a metaphor for how to how social groups holding entrenched values and ideologies build adversarial narratives around "hot button" topics on which there is general societal disagreement and polarization over politics, public policy or consumption issues. Culture wars often delve around wedge issues, often based on values, morality, and lifestyle which often lead to political cleavage.
