Found via Power Line, Midge Decter (whom I briefly met earlier this year in Washington, DC) has some thoughts on the beginnings of America's culture war:

The first and most important thing of all for any real understanding of the nature of America’s cul­tural war is the fact that it has been going on not merely since the period identified by the name of “Vietnam” but for about a century and a half. That clash of ideas and attitudes that made such a deal of noise in the 1960s and 1970s—and which has con­tinued more quietly and more deeply in recent years—is in fact no more than a particularly gaudy episode in a very old conflict.

I like to say that this conflict began on July 8, 1839. Why that day in that year? Obviously, histor­ical developments can never really be dated quite so neatly, or neatly at all, especially where such developments have to do with culture. Anyway, I am, of course, being somewhat facetious.

Still, a date is sometimes helpful in giving one per­spective, and I have picked the date of July 8, 1839, because that was the day that witnessed the birth of one John Davison Rockefeller, Sr. And some time around that year, too, an already 45-year-old gentle­man named Cornelius Vanderbilt was planning how he would become the owner of a certain public util­ity that would before long prove to be of major importance to the economic development of the United States, namely, the New York Central Rail­road. I could go on and on: a list of John D. Rock­efeller’s and Cornelius Vanderbilt’s contemporaries who were responsible for the explosive creation and expansion of American industry, for business inno­vation, for the newly creative exploitation of natural resources—such a list could keep us here all after­noon, sunk in envy for these men’s visions and the sheer moxie with which they converted their visions into a reality. The government of course helped, but mostly by keeping out of their way.

An Economic Miracle

The result, as we know and experience for our­selves down to this day, was a positive explosion of wealth: the private wealth of Rockefeller, Vander­bilt, and their fellow adventurers, to be sure, but way beyond that, there was the wealth, the belief in self, the venturesomeness, inventiveness, openness to the new that before too long came to be charac­teristic of the country as a whole. Of course, they did not do it all, this band of adventurers, but they led the way and helped to give anyone who was enterprising, on however large or small a scale, the faith to take his future into his own hands.

Moreover, while these men were preparing their economic miracle, the country was going through the bitter bloodletting of the Civil War—the kind of national catastrophe from which, without their kind of faith in a future of wealth and vitality, a society might never quite recover. And in the end, the United States grew to be rich and powerful beyond the dreams of the most murderously avari­cious emperor.

So now we come to the question that bears on my unhappy subject—culture: Were these men in their own time blessed, celebrated, honored for their achievement by America’s thinkers and writ­ers? Need I ask? Look in any history book; and look at the writings of the time: These men were then, and have continued to be, designated the “Robber Barons”—with no admiration, let alone gratitude, intended.

It is true that many of these men tended to revel in, and make a great and not necessarily attractive public show of, their wealth. Although, in addition to living like emperors, some of them were also, as we know, very civic-minded—throughout the land there are cities with libraries, opera houses, settle­ment houses, museums that are owed entirely to their largesse. And some of them (though most def­initely not, I regret to say, Cornelius Vanderbilt) were also, in one way or another, charitable toward their less favored fellow citizens.

But if it is also true that the kind of generous public and patriotic spirit that is so vividly on dis­play in this room today was rare, or even simply absent, among these men, they did set a course that would in the end, whether they willed it or not, prove to be indispensable to the country’s welfare.

So—and now we come to the question of the day—were they honored, appreciated, or let us even say forgiven by the keepers of the country’s social and intellectual authority? Need I ask? The term “Robber Barons” says it all.