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The culture war (or culture wars) in American usage is a metaphor used to claim that political conflict is based on sets of conflicting cultural values. The term frequently implies a conflict between those values considered traditional or conservative and those considered progressive or liberal. The "culture war" is sometimes traced to the 1960s and has taken various forms since then.

Contents 1 Origins 2 1990s 3 2000s 4 In Australia 5 References 6 Further reading 7 See also 7.1 Battleground issues in the "culture wars" 7.2 Australia 8 External links 8.1 United States 8.2 Australia

[edit] Origins

The phrase "culture war" may have been influenced by the German Kulturkampf ("cultural struggle" or "struggle between cultures"; literally, "battle of cultures"), the campaign from 1871 to 1878 under Chancellor Otto von Bismarck of the German Empire against the influence of the Roman Catholic Church.

In any case, Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci presented in the 1920s a theory of cultural hegemony to explain the slower advance, compared to many Marxists' expectations, of proletarian revolution in Europe. This stated that a culturally diverse society can be dominated by one class that has a monopoly over the mass media and popular culture, and Gramsci argued for a "culture war" in which anti-capitalist elements seek to gain a dominant voice in mass media, education, and other mass institutions.

As an American phenomenon, its origin was in the 1920s when urban and rural American values came into clear conflict. This followed several decades of immigration to the cities by elements considered alien by the earlier immigrants and was a result of the cultural shifts and modernizing trends of the Roaring 20s, culminating in the presidential campaign of Al Smith.^[1][2]

[edit] 1990s

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. In it, 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 issues — there had come to be two definable polarities. Furthermore, it was not just that there were a number of divisive issues, but that society had divided along essentially the same lines on each of 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 characterised this polarity as stemming from opposite impulses, toward what he refers to as Progressivism and Orthodoxy. The dichotomy has been adopted with varying labels, including, for example, by FOX News commentator Bill O'Reilly who emphasizes differences between "Secular-Progressives" and "Traditionalists".

In 1990 paleoconservative 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".^[3]

During his speech, he said: "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.^[4]

A month later, Buchanan elaborated that this 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 talk of a culture war received was itself evidence of America’s polarization.^[5]

When Buchanan ran for President in 1996, he promised to fight for the conservative side of the culture war:

I will use the bully pulpit of the Presidency of the United States, to the full extent of my power and ability, to defend American traditions and the values of faith, family, and country, from any and all directions. And, together, we will chase the purveyors of sex and violence back beneath the rocks whence they came.^[6]

[edit] 2000s

In a 2004 column, Pat Buchanan said the culture war had reignited and that Americans no longer inhabited the same moral universe. He gave such examples as gay civil unions, the "crudity of the MTV crowd," and the controversy surrounding Mel Gibson's film, The Passion of the Christ. He wrote,

Who is in your face here? Who started this? Who is on the offensive? Who is pushing the envelope? The answer is obvious. A radical Left aided by a cultural elite that detests Christianity and finds Christian moral tenets reactionary and repressive is hell-bent on pushing its amoral values and imposing its ideology on our nation. The unwisdom of what the Hollywood and the Left are about should be transparent to all.^[7]

[edit] In Australia

The concept of a "culture war" is also current in Australia, particularly in the area of Australian historiography. The so-called history wars concern how to interpret the country's history, especially regarding Indigenous Australians.^[8]

[edit] References

[edit] Further reading

• Buchanan, Patrick J., State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America (August 22, 2006) ISBN 0-312-36003-7
• Buchanan, Patrick J., The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilization, New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2002 ISBN 0-312-30259-2
• Fiorina, Morris P., with Samuel J. Abrams and Jeremy C. Pope, Culture War?: The Myth of a Polarized America, London: Longman, 2004 ISBN 0-321-27640-X
• Gerald Graff. Beyond the Culture Wars: How Teaching the Conflicts Can Revitalize American Education (1992)
• Hunter, James Davison, Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America, New York: Basic Books, 1992 ISBN 0-465-01534-4
• Jay, Gregory S., American Literature and the Culture Wars, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997 ISBN 0-8014-3393-2 ISBN-13: 978-0801433931
• Jensen, Richard. "The Culture Wars, 1965-1995: A Historian's Map" Journal of Social History 29 (Oct 1995) 17-37. online version
• Jones, E. Michael, Degenerate Moderns: Modernity As Rationalized Sexual Misbehavior, Ft. Collins, CO: Ignatius Press, 1993 ISBN 0-89870-447-2
• Strauss, William & Howe, Neil , The Fourth Turning, An American Prophecy: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous With Destiny, 1998, Broadway Books, New York
• Webb, Adam K., Beyond the Global Culture War, Routledge, Jan 2006 ISBN 0-415-95313-8
• Zimmerman, Jonathan, Whose America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools, Harvard University Press, 2002 ISBN 0-674-01860-5

[edit] See also

• Paleoconservatism
• Bill O'Reilly
• Red state vs. blue state divide
• 1981 Springbok Tour

[edit] Battleground issues in the "culture wars"

Abortion / Reproductive rights Creation-evolution controversy Legal drinking age Family values Corporal punishment Child discipline, most notably spanking Feminism Gun politics Homosexuality, Gay rights, and Gay marriage Identity politics

Opposition to immigration Law and order Media bias in the U.S. Moral absolutism vs. Moral relativism Multiculturalism Permissive society Political correctness Race, Racism, and Xenophobia

Right to die movement and euthanasia Secularism and Secularization Separation of church and state Sexual revolution Sexual education and abstinence only Stem-cell research Transhumanism

[edit] Australia

• History wars
  • Black armband view of history

[edit] External links

[edit] United States

• Pat Buchanan, 1992 Republican National Convention keynote, speech dated August 17, 1992.
• Pat Buchanan, The Cultural War for the Soul of America, speech dated September 14, 1992.
• Pat Buchanan, The Aggressors in the Culture Wars, column dated March 8, 2004.
• CultureWire Daily news.
• Culture War
• A Look at the Sexual Revolution in the United States

[edit] Australia

• The Hon John Howard MP, Prime Minister of Australia, Speech: A sense of balance: The Australian Achievement in 2006, Address to the National Press Club, 25 January 2006