It’s my contention that the creationism issue is not orthogonal to the race issues that the rednecks, neo-confederates, and other throwbacks keep vomiting up.

The two go hand in hand, along with certain other issues.

It is an identity confrontation; these are defining characteristics for defining the in-group for the atavists. There are a set of issues which define the “them”, the “liberals”, and that set includes various aspects of what I call modernism: a worldview based on empiricism (“science”), a society not organized around patriarchy (or matriarchy), a government not based on theocracy or monarchy but democracy, etc.

“Culture War” is inadequate to describe this, since “culture” as it means in anthropology is not how most Americans take this term. “Culture” to many people simply means arts, or quality.

A better term is I think “Identity War”, or “Worldview War”.