Imagining 2024: The Next Culture Wars
If, for example, major value shifts surrounding things like same-sex marriage and recreational marijuana use might be mostly behind us in 2024, what will be ...
By: The Aspen Institute
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A culture war (or culture wars) is a struggle between two or more sets of conflicting cultural values.
The phrase "culture war" represents a loan translation (calque) from the German Kulturkampf. The German word Kulturkampf (culture struggle), refers to the clash between cultural and religious groups in the campaign from 1871 to 1878 under Chancellor Otto von Bismarck of the German Empire against the influence of the Roman Catholic Church.[1]
In American usage the term culture war is used to claim that there is a conflict between those values considered traditionalist or conservative and those considered progressive or liberal. It originated in the 1920s when urban and rural American values came into clear conflict. This followed several decades of immigration to the cities by people considered alien to earlier immigrants. It was also a result of the cultural shifts and modernizing trends of the Roaring 20s, culminating in the presidential campaign of Al Smith.[2][3] However, the "culture war" in United States of America was redefined by James Davison Hunter's 1991 book Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America. In this work, it is traced to the 1960s.[4] The perceived focus of the American culture war and its definition have taken various forms since then.
The expression was introduced again by the 1991 publication of Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America by James Davison Hunter, a sociologist at the University of Virginia. Hunter described what he saw as a dramatic realignment and polarization that had transformed American politics and culture.
He argued that on an increasing number of "hot-button" defining issues abortion, gun politics, separation of church and state, privacy, recreational drug use, homosexuality, censorship there existed two definable polarities. Furthermore, not only were there a number of divisive issues, but society had divided along essentially the same lines on these issues, so as to constitute two warring groups, defined primarily not by nominal religion, ethnicity, social class, or even political affiliation, but rather by ideological world views.
Hunter characterized this polarity as stemming from opposite impulses, toward what he referred to as Progressivism and Orthodoxy. Others have adopted the dichotomy with varying labels. For example, Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly emphasizes differences between "Secular-Progressives" and "Traditionalists."
In 1990 commentator Pat Buchanan mounted a campaign for the Republican nomination for President of the United States against incumbent George H. W. Bush in 1992. He received a prime time speech slot at the 1992 Republican National Convention, which is sometimes dubbed the "'culture war' speech."[5] During his speech, he claimed: "There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we will one day be as was the Cold War itself." [1] In addition to criticizing "environmental extremists" and "radical feminism," he said public morality was a defining issue:
The agenda [Bill] Clinton and [Hillary] Clinton would impose on America abortion on demand, a litmus test for the Supreme Court, homosexual rights, discrimination against religious schools, women in combat that's change, all right. But it is not the kind of change America wants. It is not the kind of change America needs. And it is not the kind of change we can tolerate in a nation that we still call God's country.[6]
A month later, Buchanan said that the conflict was about power over society's definition of right and wrong. He named abortion, sexual orientation and popular culture as major fronts and mentioned other controversies, including clashes over the Confederate Flag, Christmas and taxpayer-funded art. He also said that the negative attention his "culture war" speech received was itself evidence of America's polarization.[7]
When Buchanan ran for President in 1996, he promised to fight for the conservative side of the culture war:
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