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A Tea Party demonstration in Washington: These kinds of cultural arguments are regularly taking the place of what used to be the bread-and-butter fare of UK political dispute. Photograph: Michael Reynolds/EPA

Emily Thornberry may be the first politician to quit over a single tweeted photograph that was not physically intimate, but she is not the first to get into trouble over flags and vans. In 2003 the US presidential hopeful Howard Dean said, I still want to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks adding that Democrats like him could not hope to win the White House if they did not appeal to poorer, southern voters as well as those in affluent, liberal cities and suburbs. His Democratic rivals turned on him, furious that he had embraced the most racially divisive symbol in America. The row passed, Dean lost, and he is now best remembered for the bizarre roar he let out on the night of a key defeat: the Dean scream.

Of course, the two episodes are very different. The English flag may carry a residual association with the far-right, but it bears nothing like the stain of slavery attached to the badge of the Confederacy. More importantly, Dean was trying to woo those blue-collar voters his party had lost. Even Thornberrys defenders do not pretend she was trying to recruit white van drivers who fly the English flag from their homes. At best, she appeared to express the fascination of a visiting anthropologist for the natives of Rochester and Strood with their curious cultural customs. At worst, she was dissing them, her tweet tacitly asking: Can you believe these people? Chalk that up as another first for Thornberry, felled for posting an offensively implicit photograph.

In the US moments like this happen every day of the week. They are often what politics there is all about. They come under the heading of culture wars and usually relate to matters of identity, race or sexual equality, with politicians or institutions faulted for words or conduct that have, one way or another, given offence. Here such moments used to strike rarely. But no longer. Britain is now waging a culture war of its own.

To see how far weve come, consider the year 1992. As it happens, that was the year I covered both my first UK general election and first US presidential contest. The contrast was striking. In Britain the battle was all about tax and public services, with accusations of a Labour tax bombshell and an NHS unsafe in Tory hands. In the US Bill Clintons aides may have insisted Its the economy, stupid, but day-to-day combat frequently focused elsewhere: on Hillary Clintons apparent swipe at stay-at-home mums who bake cookies, on Bills evasion of military service in Vietnam, on the maverick candidate Ross Perots addressing a black audience as you people.

And that difference held good for many years. While one British election after another was dominated by tax rates and the like, US elections routinely raised questions that went to the heart of the nations identity. Witness Barack Obamas unguarded remark in 2008, suggesting that poorer voters cling to their guns or religion when times are hard.

Obama was slammed at the time for showing precisely the sort of snobbish disdain towards his partys core voters attributed to Thornberry. Which illustrates the extent to which what was once a feature of US political life has made it here (minus the guns and religion). But this goes far beyond an apparent jibe at the habits of the English working class. For these kinds of cultural arguments are regularly taking the place of what used to be the bread-and-butter fare of UK political dispute: namely, clashing economic interests and competing visions of the size of the state. Todays Britain is less fixated on How to spend it? than on Who do we think we are?.

Just look at the two surging movements in UK politics, the Scottish National and UK Independence parties, the latter now buoyed by winning its second MP in Rochester. The SNP insists that it represents a kinder, gentler, more civic nationalism than Ukip. But both mine national solidarity and the rising sense that a hated and distant capital Westminster in one case, Brussels in the other is thwarting the peoples true destiny. The context of each is different, to be sure, but the nagging question is the same. As the Washington Posts Fareed Zakaria wrote recently, observing this same trend around the world, including Americas own Tea Party, the question posed is Who are we? and, more ominously, Who are we not?

What explains this shift, pushing the British public argument away from the old disputes over pounds, shillings and pence into the more searching terrain of identity? A glib answer would point the finger at social media, citing Twitters role as Thornberrys executioner. It certainly acts as an accelerant, turning what would once have been a stumble into a collapse.

But the answers lie deeper. Tonight Labours Douglas Alexander is due to argue in a speech in Stirling that, The character of 21st century politics isalready defined by contests about both identity and insecurity, rather than simply economic interests. In a previous generation, people formed their identities in part out of those economic interests, through a trade union or on the factory floor. Now those organised class allegiances have faded. In much of the country, church membership has plummeted too.

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The Emily Thornberry affair proves it: US-style culture wars have come to Britain

Digital norms are making the culture wars worse.

Hooligan Abby/Flickr

Sometimes, when an Internet debate is degenerating into anger and madness, I imagine two people striving to be calm and charitable as they air their differences. This happened during the controversy over Matt Taylor, the fantastically talented scientist who helped the team that landed a spacecraft on a comet. After he appeared on television in a gaudy shirt depicting scantily-clad women, the web degenerated into a debate about whether he, the people criticizing his shirt, or the people criticizing those people are history's greatest monsters. Profane insults were hurled. Death threats were issued. At least one man cried.

To safeguard my mental health, I repaired to a location without Internet access, opened a text editor, and tried to imagine a civil exchange of opposing viewpoints. What follows is wholly a figment of my imagination and isn't meant to reflect the beliefs of any of the individuals who've actually argued about this story online. In fact, I began writing with only the haziest idea of who was involved.

A: Wow! Congrats to Matt Taylor! He's clearly a brilliant scientist. And probably a good guy too. I do wish he'd worn a different shirt. That one reinforces the perception a lot of women have about being unwelcome in science. A friend or colleague should've told him to change before going on television.

B: I agree that scientific fields ought to be as welcoming to young women as to young men. But I wish you wouldn't have chosen this of all moments to highlight the issue. Landing on this comet is a stunning accomplishment unique in history. We're witnessing the crowning achievement of this man's life. We've lost perspective if, at this of all times, we're focused on a dumb shirt he was wearing.

A: Yes, his scientific achievements ought to be the world's focus. Sure enough, television stations and newspapers are dedicating significant coverage to the comet landing. I hardly think that my noting the inappropriate shirt as a footnote to the story on Twitter at all obscures his accomplishment.

B: But the subject was raised precisely to shift at least some attention from this man's accomplishment to his shirt. It would be as if a woman won the Nobel Peace Prize, wore diamond earrings during her acceptance speech, and was heckled for being complicit in the conflict-jewelry industry. It isn't that I object to talking about making science friendlier to women, but there is a time and a place. Must we evaluate every event based on its implications for gender equity? Can't we grant that's an important issue, but also that it isn't appropriate to raise in every possible circumstance, or at least this one?

A: There are, in fact, lots of times I see affronts to gender equity and let them pass unremarked upon. All women do. Here, the very impressiveness of Matt Taylor's achievement meant that he was speaking to an audience much larger than scientists normally reach. He was unusually prominent in shaping the impressions young people have of the scientific community. If one is concerned with women facing obstacles in scienceif an obstacle is that they feel unwelcome in the male-dominated culture of scienceof course one would find an unusually high-profile illustration of that culture's pathologies an apt moment to speak up! Doing so hardly implies a belief that the guy's shirt should overshadow his achievement. I made one critical observation!

B: Fair enough. But was it really aimed at a significant illustration of the scientific community's pathologies? Would any young woman actually decide against becoming a scientist because some old spacecraft dude wore a naked-lady shirt instead of a white lab coat? I highly doubt that the dress of scientists is responsible for the dearth of women in the field. And I wonder if by focusing on what's basically a sui generis offense against good taste you aren't obscuring the real factors that keep women underrepresented. I don't know what they are. But consider other fields, like entertainment, where women are objectified far more frequently and prominently, often with images more graphic and demeaning than anything on that tame shirt. Yet women continue flocking into all parts of the entertainment industry, even women critical of how other women are treated in it. You're making women in science seem like they're unusually delicatelambasting a scientist for his clueless fashion sense even as America's girls are being raised on, e.g., virulently anti-woman raps you've never condemned.

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Why a Shirt With Scantily-Clad Women Caused an Internet Fight

UMW

Emile Lester

The Texas Board of Education, a group whose decisions can set the tone for school districts throughout the United States, heard testimony on Tuesday on a new set of school history and social studies textbooks that critics say advance Christian ideology.

The Republican-controlled 15-member body will be voting this week on whether to approve more than 100 books for use by students from elementary to high schools in the second-most populous US state. Once textbooks are approved by Texas, they often are marketed nationally.

"Texas is in a leadership position and at the moment, they are abusing that position," said Emile Lester, an associate professor of political science at the University of Mary Washington in Virginia, who wrote a critical review of some of the US history textbooks that may be approved.

Lester and others said the textbooks over-emphasised the role the biblical figure Moses and Judeo-Christian traditions played in the formation of the nations' founding documents such as the Constitution, while paying little attention to constitutional provisions on the separation of church and state.

Critics also said world geography textbooks downplay the role that armed conquest played in the spread of Christianity and made mistakes about fundamental points of other major religions.

The board, comprised of 10 Republicans and five Democrats, has asked publishers to make changes critics have demanded, including having language saying man-made activity is seen by scientists as a reason for climate change.

One conservative group called Truth in Texas Textbooks has asked for more language to be included in textbooks about the use of force in spreading Islam globally.

David Bradley, a conservative member of the State Board of Education, said there is grass roots support for many of the positions in the text books being faulted by liberal critics.

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School textbooks are culture wars battleground in Texas

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat and a professional geologist, sat down with energy giant Halliburton two years ago and famously guzzled down a glass of fracking fluid to demonstrate the oil and gas industry is safely creating energy and jobs in his state.

Leaving aside his friendliness to fracking, Hickenlooper is a conventional liberal Democrat on other matters, yet survived a tough reelection during the red Republican wave that washed over the nation earlier this month. Mark Udall, Colorados Democratic U.S. Senator, faced the same voters yet wasnt so fortunate. Like Michigan, Colorado is a purple state, fiercely competitive between Democrats and Republicans, and the outcomes of these two statewide races provide important lessons for both parties regarding the electoral damage culture wars can cause.

Gov. Hickenlooper had been considered among the nations most endangered incumbent Democratic governors, in large measure because last year he signed a highly controversial gun control bill banning certain types of ammunition magazines. The law was so hostile to Colorado gun owners that two Democratic state senators were successfully recalled and replaced by Republicans after voting for it, and a third resigned so as to avoid facing a removal vote.

Hickenlooper carved out a three percentage point reelection victory this month over Republican challenger Bob Beauprez. One lesson for Democrats: Had Hickenlooper not created a rational, pro-growth reputation regarding energy production, its likely Colorados jobs-focused independent voters would have fired him. Another: Had he not waged a culture war on Colorados firearms owners, its likely he would have been re-elected in a landslide.

Colorado Republicans learned a similar lesson in the 2010 U.S. Senate race and applied it in 2014. Republican Ken Buck was supposed to win Colorados other U.S. Senate seat as part of the big GOP victories across the nation in 2010. But despite leading in the polls, Buck ended up losing by less than one percent on Election Day.

A former prosecutor, Buck built his reputation on leading raids against undocumented workers. In a state where one of ten voters is Hispanic, and where nearly two-thirds of them report personally knowing an undocumented immigrant, Bucks prosecutorial excess cost him dearly. Just 19 percent of Colorados Latino voters supported Buck, a critical failing in a close race.

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Cory Gardner went a different way this year, even going so far as to say he supports creating a path to legal residency for currently illegal immigrants. As a result, exit polling shows the Republican won about half of Colorados Hispanic vote, on his way to soundly defeating Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Udall.

When he first won the seat back in 2008, Udall took 63 percent of the Latino vote.

But where Colorado Republicans had learned to cool down the culture war rhetoric regarding immigration, Democrats decided to turn up the temperature when talking about the War on Women. Thinking it the path to racking up big margins in the womens vote, Udall adopted such an obsessive focus on reproductive issues that a Denver newspaper columnist called him Mark Uterus.

It failed. Udall snagged a meager 52 percent majority of the female vote, at the cost of ceding 61 percent of the men to Gardner. Thats a certain formula for a landslide.

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Ken Braun: Colorado's failed culture wars provide Election Day lessons for both parties

Nobody is expecting Culture Wars 2.0.

But that doesnt mean arts leaders arent a bit worried. Since last weeks elections gave Republicans control of both houses of Congress, there have been whispers in arts circles about a repeat of the 1994 midterm elections that carried conservatives to power and almost abolished the National Endowment for the Arts.

I was there for that. I always worry about that, says Robert Lynch, president and CEO of Americans for the Arts. The good news was we saved the support. The bad news was it was a 40percent cut.

But Lynch and other arts leaders arent anticipating a sequel. The NEA itself is less controversial, they say, because most of its grants go to state and regional partners and arts organizations, with few dollars going directly to artists.

In addition, the conversation for arts funding now focuses more on economic impact, tax receipts and community development.

Its not what we first think of what the arts are for. The arts play a role in nurturing the soul and spirit, Lynch says. But the arts are an important tool to help other issues.

The Newt Gingrich assault on arts funding in the 1990s tapped into a simmering controversy over public funding of art. There was the Corcorans mishandling of an NEA-funded Robert Mapplethorpe exhibit in 1989, followed a year later by the NEA chairmans decision to veto grants to four performance artists based on their edgy subject matter and not on artistic quality, which had been verified through the agencys peer review.

(Those grants were reinstated after a protracted court fight.) By 1996, the NEAs budget was cut from 1992s peak of $175.9 million to $99.4 million. As is clear from this years $146 million appropriation, the arts community still hasnt fully recovered.

Its a year-in, year-out grind, says Heather Noonan, vice president for advocacy at the League of American Orchestras. In the (fiscal year 2016) budget process, well continue to make sure that the NEA isnt disproportionately affected by attempts to cut domestic spending.

Many arts leaders are cautiously optimistic, thanks to the bipartisan support theyve nurtured since the early 1990s. One such advocate is Rep. Leonard Lance (N.J.), the Republican co-chairman of the Congressional Arts Caucus, who was elected to Congress in 2008.

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Will Republican leadership in Congress harm small but significant NEA budget?