ABSTRACT
The Australian Prime Minister John Winston Howard has just finished saying that the American Democrats are aiding terrorism. The domestic implication is that those Australian political parties who have criticised the Iraq War are also, objectively, on the enemy’s side. Ironically, the postmodern conservatives’ culture wars continue a trend towards a wholly politicised or strategic understanding of national culture, which began with the New Left’s idea of ‘hegemony’. Political dominance was seen as something that occurred when any one group in a society managed to convince all the others that its way of seeing the world was universal, that is, really in everybody’s best interests. Liberated from ethical restraints by a relativist position, for which ideas are like weapons to fire at foes, righteous indignation can easily turn into a witch hunt lacking moral perspective.
