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Culture Wars and Enduring American Dilemmas Contemporary Political and Social Issues 0/-*/&4637&: *ODPMMBCPSBUJPOXJUI6OHMVFJU XFIBWFTFUVQBTVSWFZ POMZUFORVFTUJPOT UP MFBSONPSFBCPVUIPXPQFOBDDFTTFCPPLTBSFEJTDPWFSFEBOEVTFE 8FSFBMMZWBMVFZPVSQBSUJDJQBUJPOQMFBTFUBLFQBSU $-*$,)&3& "OFMFDUSPOJDWFSTJPOPGUIJTCPPLJTGSFFMZBWBJMBCMF UIBOLTUP UIFTVQQPSUPGMJCSBSJFTXPSLJOHXJUI,OPXMFEHF6OMBUDIFE ,6JTBDPMMBCPSBUJWFJOJUJBUJWFEFTJHOFEUPNBLFIJHIRVBMJUZ CPPLT0QFO"DDFTTGPSUIFQVCMJDHPPE Culture Wars and Enduring American Dilemmas contemporary political and social issues In 2008, John McCain, always known as something of a centrist or moderate Re- publican, picked the governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, as his running mate. The mo- ment he did so, the culture war returned to American politics. Although the econ- omy was entering a tailspin and dangers were prominent around the world, once again we were discussing whether elites had lost touch with the common people by failing to appreciate religion and dismissing people’s concerns with morality. The Palin selection raised a larger question: Did we ever have a culture war in the ‹rst place? In this book, Irene Taviss Thomson offers an original and important new way of answering that question. Whether or not a culture war indeed existed out there in Middle America, just about everyone who wrote on the topic agreed that elites themselves were sharply divided between liberal and conservative views of the world. And, the argument went, the raging culture war was especially apparent in the media, whatever was happening in small-town America. Rather than simply assuming the truth of this proposition, Thomson looks at the media—speci‹cally, opinion magazines. Her research challenges the idea that our opinion leaders are engaged in an implacable war with each other. Culture has his- torically been de‹ned as the common values that bind together a society. Thomson shows that this idea of culture remains very much alive. America remains a nation where agreement is more striking than disagreement. No matter how bitter and po- larized our politics can seem, this truth should never be lost, and Thomson provides the evidence needed to back it up. Opinion leaders need to think about their own role in the culture war; Thomson has helped them do it. —alan wolfe Putting Faith in Partnerships: Welfare-to-Work in Four Cities Stephen V. Monsma The New Imperial Presidency: Renewing Presidential Power after Watergate Andrew Rudalevige Self-Financed Candidates in Congressional Elections Jennifer A. Steen Trust beyond Borders: Immigration, the Welfare State, and Identity in Modern Societies Markus M. L. Crepaz America Beyond Black and White: How Immigrants and Fusions Are Helping Us Overcome the Racial Divide Ronald Fernandez America at Risk: Threats to Liberal Self-Government in an Age of Uncertainty Robert Faulkner and Susan Shell, Editors Barack Obama’s America: How New Conceptions of Race, Family, and Religion Ended the Reagan Era John Kenneth White Culture Wars and Enduring American Dilemmas Irene Taviss Thomson Culture Wars and Enduring American Dilemmas IRENE TAVISS THOMSON THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN PRESS ANN ARBOR Copyright © by the University of Michigan 2010 All rights reserved Published in the United States of America by The University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United States of America c Printed on acid-free paper 2013 2012 2011 2010 4321 No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher. A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Thomson, Irene Taviss, 1941– Culture wars and enduring American dilemmas / Irene Taviss Thomson. p. cm. — (Contemporary political and social issues) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-472-07088-6 (cloth : alk. paper) — isbn 978-0-472-05088-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) — isbn 978-0-472-02206-9 (e-book) 1. Culture con›ict—United States. 2. United States—Social conditions—21st century. 3. United States—Politics and government—21st century. 4. United States—Moral conditions. I. Title. hn59.2.t525 2010 303.60973—dc22 2009033205 to michael Contents 1. culture wars and warring about culture 1 The Culture Wars 3 Warring over Culture 12 The Culture Warriors 24 American Culture 26 2. respect for religion but uncertainty about its role 31 The Public Sphere and Civil Religion 31 Dilemmas of Church-State Relations 39 Religious Belief and Secularization 47 Conclusions 55 3. moral but not moralistic 58 Through the Lenses of Morality 59 Abortion and Homosexuality 65 Moral Decline and Relativism 75 Moralizing and Legislating Morality 79 Conclusions 82 4. individualism but not to excess 84 Celebrating Individualism and Community 85 American Individualism: Complexities and Controversies 88 Critiquing Multiculturalism 93 Multiculturalism in Relationship to the Individual, the Group, and the Society 100 Conclusions 1o8 5. pluralism within one culture 110 Historical Perspectives 110 Contemporary Images of Pluralism 115 Multicultural Education and the Canon Wars 125 The Dif‹culties of Tolerance 135 Conclusions 143 6. antielitist but respecting achievement 145 Who Are the Elites, and What Is Elite Culture? 145 Elitism and Funding for the Arts 154 Ambivalence toward Elites 157 Elitism in the Feminist and Gay Rights Movements 164 Conclusions 165 7. moderation, plain and simple 167 8. culture, class, and american exceptionalism 175 Cultural Politics 175 American Exceptionalism? 181 The Continuing Signi‹cance of Class, Race, and Gender 187 A Polarized Population? 194 Sarah Palin and a Renascent Culture War? 197 A Multitude of Internal Divisions 206 Conclusions 215 9. concluding comments 217 Methodological Appendix 221 References 223 Index 251 CHAPTER 1 Culture Wars and Warring about Culture American culture appears to be deeply divided: those who believe there are absolute moral truths contend with those who place moral authority in in- dividual judgment. Armed with these competing visions, “orthodox” ver- sus “progressive” culture warriors clash on issues of abortion, homosexual- ity, feminism, school prayer, multiculturalism, popular culture, and university curricula. The population is increasingly polarized as a result. The problem with this image is that it is not supported by survey data. American public opinion is considerably more ambivalent and internally inconsistent than the image of a culture war implies. Most Americans are moderate or centrist in both their political and religious beliefs. Very few are consistently for or against abortion and same-sex marriage, for example. Proponents of the culture wars thesis acknowledge that most Ameri- cans occupy a position between the polar extremes. The issue, they con- tend, is not about what people think or believe, but about the public cul- ture—the meanings and understandings enunciated by elites who seek to frame how we think. The competing moral visions of these elites inex- orably pull all arguments into one or the other of the contending camps, effectively eclipsing the middle ground. The question thus becomes whether American public culture is divided 2 culture wars and enduring american dilemmas into the two opposing camps of the culture war, or whether both sides share the same American cultural ideas in propounding their differing vi- sions. I ‹nd support for the latter view in my analysis of the 436 articles dealing with culture war issues that were published in four popular politi- cal magazines between 1980 and 2000. The culture war debaters in the pages of National Review, Time, The New Republic, and The Nation—maga- zines representing the mainstream American political spectrum, from Na- tional Review on the right to The Nation on the left—adhere to remarkably similar cultural principles. Rather than dividing along the lines of “orthodox” versus “progressive” morality, the arguments of culture war partisans are nuanced and riddled with internal disagreements. There are abortion rights supporters who re- gret the immorality of abortion and antihomosexuality advocates who dis- pute whether or not homosexual behavior is a matter of morality. The sym- bols and rhetoric of the two sides often mirror each other. Consider the following statement: “A culture that is at once moralistic, self-righteous, alienated, and in a minority will constantly be tempted to break the rules of political discourse.” Are these the words of a progressive describing the efforts of Christian Fundamentalists to in›uence American politics? No. This is a description of the Left written by a well-known conservative (Bork 1989, 27). While there are doubtless persons for whom the binary logic of the cul- ture wars is all-important, the elites represented in the pages of these main- stream media—the journalists and intellectuals, feminists and “family val- ues” advocates alike—instead re›ect shared cultural patterns. These discussions take place within the context of enduring American dilem- mas—about the role of religion in politics and society, the tension between morality and pragmatism, how much individualism should be sacri‹ced for larger community goals, the meaning of pluralism in a “nation of im- migrants,” and how to reconcile the will of the people with standards enunciated by elites. Though they disagree about speci‹c issues and policies, the partisans on all sides subscribe to the following ideas: (1) respect for religion but un- certainty about its role; (2) use of moral frameworks but without
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