The End of the Culture War

[Sky Dancer]

"A coalition of progressive and evangelical leaders are calling on Congress and President-elect Barack Obama to work toward ending the culture war and finding common ground on issues like gay rights, abortion, immigration and torture. Organized by the think tank Third Way, the coalition announced its road map to ending the culture war, called "Come Let Us Reason Together" (PDF), and has already held meetings with congressional leaders, progressive organizations and evangelical churches.

The central aim of the agenda is to find areas of mutual agreement among evangelicals and progressives. For gay rights, that means a focus on employment nondiscrimination laws for the LGBT community with an exemption for religious institutions. In reproductive health, it means finding ways to reduce the need for abortions by "preventing unintended pregnancies, supporting pregnant women and new families, and increasing support for adoption."

The agenda takes an encompassing approach to immigration: "We agree that we need secure, compassionate, and comprehensive immigration reform. We support policies that create an earned path to citizenship and protect families, while securing our borders and treating American taxpayers fairly."

Torture is one area where both sides seem to have found common ground. The coalition rejects torture as un-American and immoral.

As a committed Southern Baptist, I know all too well the 'culture war' mentality. It is a mentality that often speaks without listening, divides rather than unites and promotes destructive partisanship," he said. "At the same time, I am proud of the unwavering moral stances that conservative Christians, including Southern Baptists, have taken. We remain committed to important issues like the traditional marriage and protecting life conception."

He continued, "Yet conservative Christians must also live out the other tenets of our faith, including compassion, charity, human dignity and the pursuit of peace. Therefore, I support this agenda because I am a Southern Baptist, not in spite of that fact."
Seeking a Third Way: Progressives and evangelicals unite to end the culture war - Eleventh Avenue South

 

[Zoom-boing]

Andrew Sullivan wrote this more than a year ago in The Atlantic:

"At its best, the Obama candidacy is about ending a war — not so much the war in Iraq, which now has a momentum that will propel the occupation into the next decade — but the war within America that has prevailed since Vietnam and that shows dangerous signs of intensifying, a nonviolent civil war that has crippled America at the very time the world needs it most. It is a war about war — and about culture and about religion and about race.

Huh, and here I thought piss poor laws, greedy bankers and politicians and people who've lived beyond their means for years were what caused the crippling of America.

John Lennon wanted to end the culture war. Imagine. Imagine if there weren't any differences, imagine if no one argued, imagine if all got along in peace and harmony. I imagine it would look like Stepford.

And in that war, Obama — and Obama alone — offers the possibility of a truce.

But liberals don't view him as the messiah, right? lol

 

[doeton]

John Lennon wanted to end the culture war. Imagine. Imagine if there weren't any differences, imagine if no one argued, imagine if all got along in peace and harmony. I imagine it would look like Stepford.

lol, as idealist that hurts, but as a punk rocker I gotta agree.



"And in that war, Obama — and Obama alone — offers the possibility of a truce.

But liberals don't view him as the messiah, right? lol"

how bout not ALL liberals..

 

[Zoom-boing]

John Lennon wanted to end the culture war. Imagine. Imagine if there weren't any differences, imagine if no one argued, imagine if all got along in peace and harmony. I imagine it would look like Stepford.

lol, as idealist that hurts, but as a punk rocker I gotta agree.



And in that war, Obama — and Obama alone — offers the possibility of a truce.

But liberals don't view him as the messiah, right? lol

how bout not ALL liberals

You're right, I lumped everyone into one group. My bad. Rephrased: But some liberals don't view him as the messiah, right? lol

 

[Sky Dancer]

At the very least, a cease fire and truce to the culture wars for the four years of Obama's term would be most welcome.

 

[AllieBaba]

Andrew Sullivan wrote this more than a year ago in The Atlantic:

"At its best, the Obama candidacy is about ending a war — not so much the war in Iraq, which now has a momentum that will propel the occupation into the next decade — but the war within America that has prevailed since Vietnam and that shows dangerous signs of intensifying, a nonviolent civil war that has crippled America at the very time the world needs it most. It is a war about war — and about culture and about religion and about race. And in that war, Obama — and Obama alone — offers the possibility of a truce."Goodbye to All That: Why Obama Matters - The Atlantic (December 2007)

Lol.

You have got to be kidding.

 

[Sky Dancer]

This guy's got a point:

"The whole idea of culture war, Rabkin suggests, is somehow un-American. "The German term Kulturkampf derives from Bismarck’s struggle to bring Catholic institutions under Prussian state control in the 1870s. It is a phrase that does reflect actual historical experience-but not very much in this country. Kulturkampf ideology had its echoes in struggles in many other European countries trying like Bismarck to erect modern states over the opposition (or imputed opposition) of faithful Catholics." Nothing like that struggle-or what Rabkin calls its "alternate legacies of fanaticism and fatalism"-finds an echo in the American experience.
What is one to make of all this? It would be a mistake to dismiss it out of hand. The culture war metaphor probably does contribute to the unfortunate tendency of American conservatives to imagine themselves a besieged minority locked in perpetual-and perpetually losing-apocalyptic conflict. Rabkin is also right to suggest that a sense of historical perspective is a useful antidote to that defeatist tendency. (I have made a similar argument in these pages-see "The Myth of Declension," May 1999.) Visions of Armageddon make for grandiose hopes and fears-and for a dangerously overheated politics.

Rabkin is right to warn against conducting all of politics all the time as cultural warfare. He is also right to suggest that conservatives are most likely to be successful, as Ronald Reagan demonstrated, when they present their views in as nonthreatening, indeed as winsome, a manner as possible. But they would condemn themselves to fecklessness and irrelevance if they lost sight of the larger scheme of things in which particular events and policies find their place. For, like it or not, the culture war that Jeremy Rabkin says isn’t, most definitely is. "
FIRST THINGS: A Journal of Religion, Culture, and Public Life

 

[AllieBaba]

The only people who think we have a "culture war" going on are the commies.

In a society which values individuals, encourages entrepreneurship and enterprise, and represents the one society in the world where ANYBODY can achieve success, there will of course be those who do succeed..and those who aren't successful. This is not an indication of a culture war. It's a sign of a healthy society...since many of those on top started out on the bottom, and achieved greatness without killing anyone, selling state secrets or otherwise breaking the law.

The only "war" going on is the one being waged by the far left to turn America into a communist society.

 

[Sky Dancer]

Here's another article that says the culture war truce is on the horizon. I think the point is that the culture wars are a baby boomer phenomena and that younger people are less wrapped up and invested in it.

A group of progressive pollsters and activists today released a new survey about religion and the upcoming election that suggests they may be on the wane.

The poll, commissioned by the group Faith in Public Life and conducted by the firm Public Religion Research, concluded that attitudes about hot-button issues such as abortion, legal recognition of same-sex relationships and the size of government are changing among young people -- possibly shifting or weakening the culture wars.

"What we see is younger Americans, including younger Americans of faith -- they are not the culture war generation," said Robert P. Jones, president of Public Religion Research. "They are bridging the divides that have entrenched the older generation."

A majority of white evangelicals, ages 18-34, favor either same-sex marriage or civil unions, compared with a majority of older evangelicals who favor no legal recognition, the poll found. Six in 10 young Catholics say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, compared with half of older Catholics. Young Catholics are more pro-government than any other faith group.
Survey: Culture War Truce on the Horizon | 44 | washingtonpost.com

 

[AllieBaba]

You'd think that b.s. would have been represented at the polls, wouldn't you?

Get over it. It isn't happening. Nobody's drinking the kool aid.

 

[AllieBaba]

The voting polls, that is.

 

[Sky Dancer]

Some historical context for the culture wars:

"Richard Nixon’s 1972 campaign launched the era of mean-spirited politics. He introduced a generation of electioneering grounded in exploiting “cultural” differences and advanced a successful political strategy based on divide-and-conquer. Nothing, including what ultimately turned out to be illegal, was illegitimate in the battle for political power. This is a lesson well-learned by Reagan and Bush-the-Lesser.

Nixon (with much help from Pat Buchanan) promoted the cultural counter-revolution against the ‘60s. He drew inspiration from Joseph McCarthy who, a generation earlier, assailed “egg-headed, homosexuals, left-leaning financiers”. He perceived the most bitter Americas as Southern white (particularly male) voters and targeted his campaign to them. He promoted devisive issues like regionalism, religion, music, manners, sexuality and, most importantly, race. While Nixon was forced to abdicate in 1974, his strategy, especially the race card, bore fruit in Reagan’s appeal to working-class Democrats who won him the presidency in 1980.

Three intimately linked developments took place during the ‘70s that framed the culture wars. First, the Republicans shifted from a party of the high-born and social worthies, of the northeast, to a more inclusive white, Christian organization of conservative patriots, of the south and southwest. Second, Christian evangelicals and other fundamentalists reemerged as a forceful, and very sophisticated, social movement. And third, there was a significant increase in non-religious conservative organizations (including think tanks, foundations and lobbying groups) and secular intellectuals challenging what they lambasted as the liberal establishment.

The newly constituted Republican party, the first religious party in American history, embraced an unstated belief in the superiority of men, the white race, the Christian god, the dollar and the glory of empire. (And, as evident with McCain, they still do.) The coming together of a repackaged Republican party, a reinvigorated evangelicalism and well-funded conservative influencers changed the face of American politics for the rest of the 20th century. And it leaves us in the fix we are in today, a nation confronting the enormous domestic and global consequences of a corrupt, immoral Christian-Republican Bush era."

David Rosen: The Culture Wars Are Over

 

[Sky Dancer]

The voting polls, that is.

It was reflected in the polls. President Obama was elected. He is not going to be stuck on the culture wars.

 

[AllieBaba]

Lol. I mean the polls where those issues were actually up for grabs.

 

[AllieBaba]

And the only reason Obama made it was the economy dumping. Ride that wave, because it will be hitting the rocks, soon....

 

[Sky Dancer]

Same conversation going on in Australia. What if they gave a culture war and nobody came?

"The pursuit of the culture war is, in my judgement, one of the main reasons that the conservative parties have become increasingly unelectable. The factoid-based, point-scoring, style of argument that goes with the culture wars eventually leads to complete insulation from factual reality. Any proposition, no matter how ridiculous, can be defended in this way, long after the average person has seen through it.
What if they gave a culture war and nobody came? at John Quiggin

 

[AllieBaba]

You wanna see a culture war?

I think Americans are likely to go to war when ciggies go up .62......and they won't be targeting the rich, they'll be targeting the assholes who decided to try to tax tobacco growers and smokers out of existence to pay for their ridiculous pork....

 

[catzmeow]

The only people who think we have a "culture war" going on are the commies.

But wait! What about the war on CHRISTMAS??!!!??? Isn't THAT a culture war?

 

[Sky Dancer]

You wanna see a culture war?

I think Americans are likely to go to war when ciggies go up .62......and they won't be targeting the rich, they'll be targeting the assholes who decided to try to tax tobacco growers and smokers out of existence to pay for their ridiculous pork....

Quit smoking and live longer. Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh are big promoters of the culture wars.

 

[manu1959]

You wanna see a culture war?

I think Americans are likely to go to war when ciggies go up .62......and they won't be targeting the rich, they'll be targeting the assholes who decided to try to tax tobacco growers and smokers out of existence to pay for their ridiculous pork....

Quit smoking and live longer. Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh are big promoters of the culture wars.

think about it....if you work you whole life.....pay into social security then die from a heart attack in say your 50's because you smoked and paid higher taxes to do it....

all that money helps out some non smoking vegetable in a state run nursing hope.....that lived till 90 because they ate green and had a small carbon footprint.....

now you tell me who the greater burden on society is......