Did I Say "Silent Majority?"

In my previous post I mentioned a song called "Okie from Muskogee" and how it was considered an anthem by Nixon's so called "silent majority."  Since then it has occurred to me that I have heard a similar term used during the 1980's referring to the Moral Majority.  While the silent majority was merely an abstract political term, the Moral Majority was an actual conservative Chrisitian-oriented lobbying organization.

It seems like the idea of an invisible majority could be considered a cynical attack on democracy itself.  Both the notion of an unofficial silent majority and the existence of the official Moral Majority organization were essentially asserting that there was this large majority of Americans that were somehow disenfranchised from the political process and needed to be heard.  Don't people get heard when they bother to go to the polls?  Of course they do, and our elections reflect the will of the voters who bother to show up and vote.  This doesn't appear to be good enough for some people.

Perhaps the idea of a silent or moral majority is really just a phenomenon of the American tendency to get wrapped up in culture wars.  The cultural warfare of the 60's was an all out brawl encompassing issues ranging from civil rights to ending the war in Vietnam.  Cultural warfare during the Reagan administration seemed to be about a resurgence in American conservatism.  Today there is definitely a culture war going on with people accusing the President of being a socialist, but I'm not sure how this culture war will get defined by the history books.  I haven't figured this one out.