Recent headlines trumpet stories of protest, conflict, and even violence: abortion clinics are firebombed in Florida, Georgia, and Oklahoma; Planned Parenthood workers are murdered in Kansas and Massachusetts; a Cincinnati art gallery owner is arrested for exhibiting Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs; a rap group is arrested on obscenity charges; the civil rights—or “special privileges”—of gays and lesbians become electoral issues in Colorado and Oregon; and issues of multiculturalism, freedom of expression, and “political correctness” divide many of the nation’s college campuses. To many Americans this does not seem like “politics as usual.” These stories and others like them seem to indicate that a new and different type of political conflict has swept the nation
