Culture war  

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The term culture war or culture conflict has different meanings depending on the time and place where it is used, as it relates to conflicts relevant to a specific area and era. Originally, it refers to the conflict between traditionalist, classical liberal, or conservative values and social democratic, progressive or social liberal values in the Western world, as well as other countries. Culture wars have influenced the debate over history, science and other curricula in all societies around the world.

It has come to signify different matters in modern United States, Canada, Australia, Europe, and generally, all over the world.

Origins

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.

United States

The expression "culture war" entered the vocabulary of United States politics with the publication of Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America by James Davison Hunter in 1991. Hunter perceived a dramatic realignment and polarization that had transformed United States politics and culture, including the issues of abortion, federal and state gun laws, global warming, immigration, separation of church and state, privacy, recreational drug use, LGBT rights, and censorship.

In American usage the term "culture war" may imply 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 States by people who earlier European immigrants considered "alien". It was also a result of the cultural shifts and modernizing trends of the Roaring 20s, culminating in the presidential campaign of Al Smith in 1928. However, James Davison Hunter's 1991 book Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America redefined the "culture war" in the United States of America. Hunter traces the concept to the 1960s. The perceived focus of the American culture war and its definition have taken various forms since then.

1990s

James Davison Hunter, a sociologist at the University of Virginia, introduced the expression again in his 1991 publication, Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America. 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 as 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 against incumbent George H. W. Bush in 1992. He received a prime-time speech-slot at the 1992 Republican National Convention, to give his speech on the culture war. He argued: "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." In addition to criticizing environmentalists and feminism, he portrayed public morality as 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 units—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.

A month later, Buchanan characterized the conflict as 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.

The culture war had significant impact on national politics in the 1990s. The rhetoric of the Christian Coalition of America may have weakened president George H. W. Bush's chances for reelection in 1992 and helped his successor, Bill Clinton, win reelection in 1996. On the other hand, the rhetoric of conservative cultural warriors helped Republicans gain control of Congress in 1994.

The culture wars influenced the debate over state-school history curricula in the United States in the 1990s. In particular, debates over the development of national educational standards in 1994 revolved around whether the study of American history should be a "celebratory" or "critical" undertaking and involved such prominent public figures as Lynne Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, and historian Gary Nash.

2000s

A worldview called neo-conservatism shifted the terms of the debate in the early 2000s. Neo-conservatives differed from their opponents in that they interpreted problems facing the nation as moral issues rather than economic or political issues. For example, the decline of the traditional family structure was seen as a spiritual crisis by neo-conservatives that required a spiritual response. Critics accused neo-conservatives of confusing cause and effect.

Canada

In Canada, "culture war" refers to differing values between Western versus Eastern Canada, urban versus rural Canada, as well as conservatism versus liberalism. A divide between French and English is also a consistent part of Canadian society.

The phrase "culture war" (or "culture wars") in Canada describes the polarization between the different values of Canadians. This can be West versus East, rural versus urban, or traditional values versus progressive values. "Culture war" is a relatively new phrase in Canadian political commentary. It can still be used to describe historical events in Canada, such as the Rebellions of 1837, Western Alienation, the Quebec sovereignty movement, and any Aboriginal conflicts in Canada, but is more relevant to current events such as the Grand River land dispute and the increasing hostility between conservative and liberal Canadians. Controversy erupted in 2010 when pollster Frank Graves suggested that the Liberal Party launch a "culture war" against the Conservative Party. "I told them that they should invoke a culture war. Cosmopolitanism versus parochialism, secularism versus moralism, Obama versus Palin, tolerance versus racism and homophobia, democracy versus autocracy. If the cranky old men in Alberta don't like it, too bad. Go south and vote for Palin." The phrase "culture wars" has also been used to describe the Harper government's attitude towards the arts community. Andrew Coyne termed this negative policy towards the arts community 'class warfare'.

Australia

Interpretations of Aboriginal history became part of the wider political debate sometimes called the "culture wars" during the tenure of the Coalition government from 1996–2007, with the Prime Minister of Australia John Howard publicly championing the views of some of those associated with Quadrant. This debate extended into a controversy over the way history was presented in the National Museum of Australia and in high school history curricula. It also migrated into the general Australian media, with regular opinion pieces being published in major broadsheets such as The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. Marcia Langton has referred to much of this wider debate as 'war porn'

Two Australian Prime Ministers, Paul Keating and John Howard, were major participants in the "wars". According to the analysis for the Australian Parliamentary Library of Mark McKenna, Paul Keating (1991–1996) was believed by John Howard (1996–2007) to portray Australia pre-Whitlam in an unduly negative light; while Keating sought to distance the modern Labor movement from its historical support for the monarchy and the White Australia policy by arguing that it was the conservative Australian parties who had been barriers to national progress and excessively loyal to the British Empire. He accused Britain of having abandoned Australia during World War II. Keating was a staunch advocate of a symbolic apology to indigenous people for the misdeeds of past governments, and outlined his view of the origins and potential solutions to contemporary Aboriginal disadvantage in his Redfern Park Speech (drafted with the assistance of historian Don Watson). In 1999, following the release of the 1998 Bringing Them Home Report, Howard passed a Parliamentary Motion of Reconciliation describing treatment of Aborigines as the "most blemished chapter" in Australian history, but he did not make a Parliamentary apology. Howard argued that an apology was inappropriate as it would imply "intergeneration guilt" and said that "practical" measures were a better response to contemporary Aboriginal disadvantage. Keating has argued for the eradication of remaining symbols linked to British origins: including deference for ANZAC Day, the Australian flag and the monarchy in Australia, while Howard was a supporter of these institutions. Unlike fellow Labor leaders and contemporaries, Bob Hawke and Kim Beazley, Keating never traveled to Gallipoli for ANZAC Day ceremonies. In 2008 he described those who gathered there as "misguided".

In 2006, John Howard said in a speech to mark the 50th anniversary of Quadrant that "Political Correctness" was dead in Australia but: "we should not underestimate the degree to which the soft-left still holds sway, even dominance, especially in Australia's universities"; and in 2006, Sydney Morning Herald political editor Peter Hartcher reported that Opposition foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd was entering the philosophical debate by arguing in response that "John Howard, is guilty of perpetrating 'a fraud' in his so-called culture wars... designed not to make real change but to mask the damage inflicted by the Government's economic policies".

The defeat of the Howard government in the Australian Federal election of 2007, and its replacement by the Rudd Labor government, altered the dynamic of the debate. Rudd made an official apology to the Stolen Generation with bi-partisan support. Like Keating, Rudd supported an Australian republic, but in contrast to Keating, Rudd declared support for the Australian flag and supported the commemoration of ANZAC Day and expressed admiration for Liberal Party founder Robert Menzies.

Since the change of government, and the passage, with support from all parties, of a Parliamentary apology to indigenous Australians, Professor of Australian Studies Richard Nile has argued: "the culture and history wars are over and with them should also go the adversarial nature of intellectual debate", a view contested by others, including conservative commentator Janet Albrechtsen. An intention to reengage in the history wars has been indicated by the Federal Opposition's Christopher Pyne.

See also

• Clash of Civilizations

Life issues

• Capital punishment
• Universal healthcare
• Reproductive rights, including birth control (and its coverage by insurance) and abortion
• Right to die movement and euthanasia
• Stem-cell research

Gender and sexuality

• Feminism
• Homosexuality, LGBT rights, and Same-sex marriage
• Age of consent
• Pornography
• Sex work
• Sexual revolution
• Polyamory

Education and parenting

• Creation-evolution controversy
• Family values
• Homeschooling and Educational choice
• Corporal punishment and Child discipline, most notably spanking
• Sexual education and abstinence only education

Drugs

• Legal drinking age
• Recreational drug use and Drug decriminalization
• Harm reduction
• War on Drugs

Environment and Energy

• Global warming and climate change mitigation

Society and culture

• Animal Rights
• Christmas controversy
• Counterculture
• Cultural conflict
• History wars
• Race, affirmative action
• Media bias in the U.S.
• Moral absolutism vs. Moral relativism
• Multiculturalism
• Permissive society
• Political correctness
• Secularism and Secularization

Law and Government

• Crypto wars
• Gun rights
• Immigration reform
• Law and order
• Red state vs. blue state divide
• Separation of church and state