風蕭蕭_Frank
以文會友
“文化戰爭”如何破壞民主
作者：紮克·斯坦頓 05/20/2021
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/05/20/culture-war-politics-2021-democracy-analysis-489900?
三十年前，社會學家詹姆斯·戴維森·亨特普及了文化戰爭的概念。 如今，他看到一場文化戰爭變得更加嚴重，這給美國實驗的未來帶來了麻煩。
抗議者舉著跨性別權利、病毒規則抗議和反墮胎標語的插圖
紮克·斯坦頓 (Zack Stanton) 是《POLITICO Playbook》的副主編。
1991 年，美國陷入了日益自由的世俗社會（推動變革）與保守的反對派（將其世界觀植根於神聖經文）之間的鬥爭，詹姆斯·戴維森·亨特 (James Davison Hunter) 寫了一本書，並用一個短語來描述他所看到的情況。 美國圍繞墮胎、同性戀權利、公立學校宗教等問題的鬥爭：“文化戰爭”。
亨特是一名 30 多歲的弗吉尼亞大學社會學家，他並沒有發明這個詞，但他的書讓這個詞進入了公眾的討論，幾年之內，它就被用作具有政治影響的文化熱點的速記。 他希望通過引起人們對這一動態的關注，幫助美國“接受正在展開的衝突”，或許還能化解他所看到的一些正在醞釀的緊張局勢。
相反，30年後，亨特認為美國在“戰爭”方麵加倍努力——文化戰爭從宗教和家庭文化問題擴展到幾乎完全接管政治，造成一種贏家通吃衝突的危險感覺 關乎國家的未來。
“在我看來，民主是一種協議，即我們不會因為分歧而互相殘殺，而是通過對話解決這些分歧。 令人不安的部分原因在於，我開始看到暴力正當性的跡象，”亨特說道，他指出了 1 月 6 日的叛亂，當時唐納德·特朗普的一群極端主義支持者衝進了美國國會大廈，試圖推翻美國政府。 2020 年選舉結果。 “文化戰爭總是先於激烈的戰爭。 它們不一定會導致一場槍戰，但如果沒有文化戰爭，就永遠不會發生槍戰，因為文化為暴力提供了理由。”
發生了什麽變化？ 現任弗吉尼亞大學文化高級研究所所長的亨特表示，20 世紀下半葉的文化戰爭在某種程度上是一場“主要發生在白人中產階級內部的文化衝突”。 但是，今天，隨著衝突的加劇，“現在不僅僅是文化戰爭，而是一種階級文化衝突”，這種衝突已經超越了宗教信仰的簡單界限。
“早期的文化戰爭實際上是關於世俗化，立場與神學聯係在一起，並在神學的基礎上證明其合理性，”亨特說。 “現在情況不再是這樣了。 你很少看到右翼人士將自己的立場植根於聖經神學或教會傳統。 [現在]這種立場主要源於對滅絕的恐懼。”
1991 年，政治似乎仍然是我們解決有分歧的文化問題的工具； 現在，政治主要是由這些問題上的分歧推動的，領導人通過煽動對戴口罩、跨性別學生參加體育比賽、或援引“取消文化”的不滿情緒，或是否可以教授許多建國之初的知識來獲得權力。 父親們有種族主義信仰。 而文化戰爭已經殖民美國政治這一現實令人不安，正是因為亨特在 1991 年對政治問題和文化戰爭之間的差異進行了觀察：“在政治問題上，人們可以妥協；在政治問題上，人們可以妥協；在政治問題上，人們可以妥協。” 在終極道德真理的問題上，人們不能。”
那我們會怎樣呢？ 這對未來幾十年預示著什麽？ 有沒有辦法彌合這些文化僵局？ 在這一切之中，還有樂觀的理由嗎？
為了理清這一切，《政治》雜誌上周晚些時候與亨特通了電話。 下麵是該對話的簡明記錄，為長度和清晰度進行了編輯。
問：讓我們從一個基本問題開始：無論我們現在談論的是 2021 年，還是 1991 年，當你的書《文化戰爭》出版時，我們所說的“文化戰爭”一詞是什麽意思？
詹姆斯·戴維森·亨特：嗯，在一個一切都政治化的世界裏，人們有一種感覺，政治既是我們麵臨的問題的根源，也是最終的解決方案。 但我提出的更大的論點是，政治是文化的產物。 這是一種反思：文化支撐著我們的政治。
當談到“文化戰爭”時，有兩種思考方式。
“政治是文化的產物。 這是一種反思：文化支撐著我們的政治。”
一種——可能是最普遍的方式——是將其視為針對某些文化問題的政治鬥爭，例如墮胎、性、家庭價值觀、政教問題等。 因此，“文化戰爭”實際上是圍繞文化問題上的某些立場動員政治資源——人民、選票和政黨。 從這個意義上說，“文化戰爭”實際上是關於政治的。
但更大的故事是關於支撐我們政治的文化，以及我們的政治如何成為更深層次文化傾向（而不僅僅是態度和價值觀）的反映，而這些文化傾向超出了我們推理的能力。
當我們談論“文化戰爭”時，實際上是指兩件事。
簡而言之，我會區分天氣和氣候。 幾乎所有記者和大多數學者都關注天氣變化：“今天，天氣很冷。 明天，天氣會很暖和。 第二天，會下雨。” 我發現正在發生的氣候變化更有趣。 正是這些真正激發了我們的政治和兩極分化，激發了民主內部的活力。
你在《文化戰爭》中看到的變化大部分發生在 30 年前——基本上是從 20 世紀 60 年代初開始，伴隨著民權運動、性革命、同性戀權利運動、婦女解放運動以及隨之而來的強烈抵製。 那本書出版至今已有 30 年了。 那時的文化戰爭發生了怎樣的變化？
[近幾十年來]發生了重要的人口和體製結構轉變。 現代高等教育一直是啟蒙運動的載體，從這個意義上來說，也是世俗化的載體。 二戰後時期發生的是高等教育和知識經濟的大規模擴張。 隨之而來的是更大的文化轉變：曾經是知識分子的領域現在變成了任何有機會接受高等教育的人的領域，高等教育成為進入中產階級或中上層階級生活的大門之一 被製作了。
隨之而來的是深刻的文化變革。 六十年代的革命以及當時的政治、文化和性抗議基本上已經製度化，它挑戰了正確、體麵、善良、公平等基本概念。 在某種程度上，從 20 世紀 70 年代末到 80 年代和 90 年代，我們所麵臨的就是對結構性變革所帶來的挑戰的反應。 保守派——尤其是保守的基督徒，無論是天主教徒還是新教徒——發現自己對家庭結構、“家庭價值觀”、性取向等進步觀念持防禦態度； 墮胎是一個——或者也許是——關鍵問題。
來自芝加哥的教會曆史學家馬丁·E·馬蒂曾經說過，在《沃爾斯特德法案》和《斯科普斯審判》之後，福音派新教徒成為認知少數派——知識領域的少數派——但仍然是社會和行為上的多數派——他們基本上擁有美國中部。 此後我們看到的是這些結構性變化的延續。 啟蒙運動和後啟蒙運動文化由大學和其他重要文化機構承載，而這些文化機構由絕大多數進步人士主導。
“保守派認為這是一種生存威脅。 這是一個重要的短語：他們認為這是對他們的生活方式和他們視為神聖的事物的生存威脅。”
保守派認為這是一種生存威脅。 這是一個重要的短語：他們認為這是對他們的生活方式和他們認為神聖的事物的生存威脅。 因此，雖然早期的文化戰爭實際上是關於世俗化，而且立場與神學聯係在一起，並在神學的基礎上證明其合理性，但現在情況已不再如此。 你很少看到右翼人士將自己的立場植根於聖經神學或教會傳統。 [現在]這種立場主要源於對滅絕的恐懼。
現在“文化戰爭”的分界線與 30 年前相比是否有所不同？
我認為，墮胎對於 70 年代、80 年代和 90 年代甚至更久遠的[文化戰爭]來說意味著什麽，當時它確實是一個關鍵問題，但我認為現在它已經被種族所取代。 早期的文化戰爭是主要發生在白人中產階級內部的文化衝突。 這並不是說少數群體在這些問題上沒有立場或者沒有分裂，但種族從來都不是這場衝突的一個非常突出的部分。 我認為它重新出現的部分原因是，正如文化戰爭的早期表現最終是一場定義美國意義的鬥爭一樣，這也是如此。 這些鬥爭中潛藏著關於美國意義的衝突。
“我認為，墮胎對於 70 年代、80 年代和 90 年代甚至更久遠的[文化戰爭]來說意味著什麽，當時它確實是一個關鍵問題，但我認為現在它已經被種族所取代。”
2008 年是非常重要的一年，因為大衰退凸顯了白人中產階級的一個重要區別。 它在中下層或工人階級與訓練有素、受過專業教育的經理、技術官僚和知識分子之間造成了隔閡——基本上是在頂層 20% 和底層 80% 之間。 這意味著現在存在著一些文化差異之上的階級差異。 在我們在弗吉尼亞大學高級文化研究所進行的調查中，我們對此進行了跟蹤。 2016年，決定特朗普投票的最重要因素是沒有大學學位。
所以現在，不僅僅是文化戰爭，還存在一種階級文化衝突。 由於我們感覺自己在全球經濟及其動態中處於失敗的一方，我認為這種怨恨情緒正在加深。 在特朗普執政的四年裏，這一點變得越來越明顯，特朗普自己的部分天才在於理解作為全球資本主義失敗一方的怨恨。
我認為這也反映在進步人士談論受壓迫者的方式上：大多數時候，它是在種族和民族、移民等方麵； 這本身與窮人無關。 我認為這是左派自我理解的一個相當重大的轉變。
您認為這種轉變背後的原因是什麽？
好吧，如果你成為工人階級的擁護者，你就會成為很多特朗普選民的擁護者。 再說一遍，我認為存在階級文化鴻溝：階級元素覆蓋了文化鴻溝。 他們[未受過大學教育的白人選民]集體投票支持特朗普。 我認為這是其中的一個要素。 他們也是[一些左派]所認為的種族主義、厭惡女性主義、性別歧視的理解和生活方式的攜帶者。 這是我的猜測。
直截了當的唯物主義社會科學會說，人們一直在為自己的經濟利益投票。 但他們沒有。 人們投票反對自己的經濟利益這一看似矛盾的現象隻凸顯了這一點：在許多方麵，我們作為個人、社區和國家的自我理解勝過所有這些事情。
沿著這些思路，可能會出現一種傾向，特別是在政治左派中，將“文化戰爭”問題視為“幹擾”，提出這些問題是為了分裂人們，否則這些人可能會在共同的經濟利益上找到共同目標 。 您如何看待這種觀點？
我們是由我們講述的關於自己的故事構成的。 生命意義和目的的本質是由我們個人和集體的自我理解構成的。 我無法理解這是如何“分散注意力”的。
你知道，人們會為了一個想法、為了一個理想而戰鬥到底。 我在 90 年代初因使用“戰爭”一詞（“文化戰爭”一詞）而受到批評。 但我接受過現象學方麵的培訓，其中教導你要注意人們自己使用的詞語。 在我對那些處於“文化戰爭”鬥爭前線的人進行的采訪中，人們會說，“你知道，這感覺就像一場戰爭”——即使是左翼人士。
“我們是由我們講述的關於自己的故事構成的。 ……我不明白這怎麽會是一種‘幹擾’。”
我談論的是這種為自己的生存、生活方式而奮鬥的感覺。 這正是左派也使用的語言，但以一種更具治療性的方式。 例如，當你聽到人們說保守派在大學校園中的存在“對我作為跨性別者或同性戀者的存在構成威脅”時，對他們來說，賭注似乎是終極的。
問題是：是什麽激發了我們的熱情？ 我不知道人們怎麽能把個人和集體的身份——以及那些讓生活變得有意義和有目的的東西——想象成某種外圍的或“幹擾”。
您 30 年前寫過的一段話似乎與這一點相關：“我們巧妙地陷入了將爭論本質上視為政治而非文化的爭論。 在政治上，可以妥協；在政治上，可以妥協；在政治上，可以妥協。 在終極道德真理的問題上，人們不能。 這就是為什麽今天的一係列問題似乎沒完沒了。”
我有點喜歡這句話。 [笑]我會這樣說：文化就其本質而言，是霸權的。 它尋求殖民； 它試圖包容其整體。 “文化”一詞的詞根是拉丁語：“cultus”。 這是關於我們神聖的事情。 對我們來說神聖的東西往往是普遍化的。 神聖的本質就在於它的特殊性。 這是無法提出的。
“我認為，墮胎對於 70 年代、80 年代和 90 年代甚至更久遠的[文化戰爭]來說意味著什麽，當時它確實是一個關鍵問題，但我認為現在它已經被種族所取代。”
2008 年是非常重要的一年，因為大衰退凸顯了白人中產階級的一個重要區別。 它在中下層或工人階級與訓練有素、受過專業教育的經理、技術官僚和知識分子之間造成了隔閡——基本上是在頂層 20% 和底層 80% 之間。 這意味著現在存在著一些文化差異之上的階級差異。 在我們在弗吉尼亞大學高級文化研究所進行的調查中，我們對此進行了跟蹤。 2016年，決定特朗普投票的最重要因素是沒有大學學位。
所以現在，不僅僅是文化戰爭，還存在一種階級文化衝突。 由於我們感覺自己在全球經濟及其動態中處於失敗的一方，我認為這種怨恨情緒正在加深。 在特朗普執政的四年裏，這一點變得越來越明顯，特朗普自己的部分天才在於理解作為全球資本主義失敗一方的怨恨。
我認為這也反映在進步人士談論受壓迫者的方式上：大多數時候，它是在種族和民族、移民等方麵； 這本身與窮人無關。 我認為這是左派自我理解的一個相當重大的轉變。
您認為這種轉變背後的原因是什麽？
好吧，如果你成為工人階級的擁護者，你就會成為很多特朗普選民的擁護者。 再說一遍，我認為存在階級文化鴻溝：階級元素覆蓋了文化鴻溝。 他們[未受過大學教育的白人選民]集體投票支持特朗普。 我認為這是其中的一個要素。 他們也是[一些左派]所認為的種族主義、厭惡女性主義、性別歧視的理解和生活方式的攜帶者。 這是我的猜測。
直截了當的唯物主義社會科學會說，人們一直在為自己的經濟利益投票。 但他們沒有。 人們投票反對自己的經濟利益這一看似矛盾的現象隻凸顯了這一點：在許多方麵，我們作為個人、社區和國家的自我理解勝過所有這些事情。
沿著這些思路，可能會出現一種傾向，特別是在政治左派中，將“文化戰爭”問題視為“幹擾”，提出這些問題是為了分裂人們，否則這些人可能會在共同的經濟利益上找到共同目標 。 您如何看待這種觀點？
我們是由我們講述的關於自己的故事構成的。 生命意義和目的的本質是由我們個人和集體的自我理解構成的。 我無法理解這是如何“分散注意力”的。
你知道，人們會為了一個想法、為了一個理想而戰鬥到底。 我在 90 年代初因使用“戰爭”一詞（“文化戰爭”一詞）而受到批評。 但我接受過現象學方麵的培訓，其中教導你要注意人們自己使用的詞語。 在我對那些處於“文化戰爭”鬥爭前線的人進行的采訪中，人們會說，“你知道，這感覺就像一場戰爭”——即使是左翼人士。
“我們是由我們講述的關於自己的故事構成的。 ……我不明白這怎麽會是一種‘幹擾’。”
我談論的是這種為自己的生存、生活方式而奮鬥的感覺。 這正是左派也使用的語言，但以一種更具治療性的方式。 例如，當你聽到人們說保守派在大學校園中的存在“對我作為跨性別者或同性戀者的存在構成威脅”時，對他們來說，賭注似乎是終極的。
問題是：是什麽激發了我們的熱情？ 我不知道人們怎麽能把個人和集體的身份——以及那些讓生活變得有意義和有目的的東西——想象成某種外圍的或“幹擾”。
您 30 年前寫過的一段話似乎與這一點相關：“我們巧妙地陷入了將爭論本質上視為政治而非文化的爭論。 在政治上，可以妥協；在政治上，可以妥協；在政治上，可以妥協。 在終極道德真理的問題上，人們不能。 這就是為什麽今天的一係列問題似乎沒完沒了。”
我有點喜歡這句話。 [笑]我會這樣說：文化就其本質而言，是霸權的。 它尋求殖民； 它試圖包容其整體。 “文化”一詞的詞根是拉丁語：“cultus”。 這是關於我們神聖的事情。 對我們來說神聖的東西往往是普遍化的。 神聖的本質就在於它的特殊性。 這是無法提出的。
換句話說，種族正義因成功而失敗。 國際奴隸貿易於 1808 年結束。它產生了一種自滿感：“哦，我們已經解決了這個問題。” 然而，在接下來的 50 年裏，奴隸貿易和奴隸數量呈天文數字增長。 然後內戰爆發並獲勝：“哦，我們已經解決了這個問題。 現在我們可以繼續前進了。” 它造成了自滿情緒。 我認為這就是民權運動和[馬丁·路德牧師]·金殉難之後發生的事情：這在某種程度上取得了巨大的成功，但造成了自滿，尤其是在白人中——“我們已經解決了這個問題。 我們不需要再處理這個問題了”——事實上，持續的歧視仍在發生。 它再次代表了通過政治手段產生某種文化共識的嚐試。 但這似乎不起作用。
從文化角度來說，真正考慮這個問題會是什麽樣子？
好吧，我在這裏聽起來真的很老套，但我認為這項工作需要很長時間而且很困難。 我認為你談論了衝突。 不要忽視他們； 不要假裝它們不存在。 無論你做什麽，都不要簡單地將你的觀點強加給別人。 你必須和他們談談。 這是一項長期而艱苦的教育工作。
從社會學的層麵來看，公民社會的全部意義在於提供介於個人與國家、或個人與經濟之間的中介機構。 當他們這樣做時，他們處於最佳狀態：他們在調解，他們在教育。 我知道這種爭論是“舊的”自由主義共識觀點、“舊的”公共話語規則的一部分。 但替代方案是暴力。 我認為我們已經達到了這一點。
“文化戰爭總是先於激烈的戰爭。 它們不一定會導致一場槍戰，但如果沒有文化戰爭，就永遠不會發生槍戰，因為文化為暴力提供了理由。”
我繼《文化戰爭》之後讀的書名叫《開槍之前：在美國文化戰爭中尋找民主》。 我提出的論點是，文化戰爭總是先於激烈的戰爭。 它們不一定會導致一場槍戰，但如果沒有文化戰爭，就永遠不會發生槍戰，因為文化為暴力提供了理由。 我認為這就是我們現在的處境。 氣候跡象非常令人擔憂。
鑒於此，在這個“文化戰爭”不斷、很大程度上由互聯網推動的時代，您對美國的前景感到樂觀嗎？
看：在我看來，不抱希望——屈服於絕望——從來都不是一個選擇。 我認為這是一個人必須采取的道德立場。 但我也不認為你告訴病人他們得了重感冒，而實際上他們患有危及生命的疾病。
在這種非常強大的機構和非常強大的文化邏輯之間的糾纏中，存在著根深蒂固的嚴重問題。 西歐和北美偉大的民主革命植根於啟蒙運動的思想和文化革命； 啟蒙運動為這些政治變革提供了保障。 如果美國的混合啟蒙運動支撐了美國自由民主的誕生，那麽現在是什麽支撐了它呢？
“21世紀的自由民主將由什麽支撐？ 對我來說，這並不明顯。”
21世紀的自由民主將由什麽支撐？ 對我來說，這並不明顯。 這就是我現在正在解決的大難題。 但這與文化戰爭問題有關，因為如果我們沒有任何共同點——如果我們沒有共享的混合啟蒙——那麽我們可以利用什麽資源來走到一起並找到任何形式的團結？
就好像沒有統一的民族神話一樣。 那些曾經在美國生活中占有一席之地的人現在卻受到爭論和文化戰爭的影響。
完全正確。 似乎確實存在的神話主要是技術官僚和反烏托邦的。 所以……我認為我們有麻煩了。 但我不確定你是否應該以此結束。
好吧，那麽我就這樣結束吧：美國是否有什麽獨特之處使其特別容易發生文化戰爭，或者這是理所當然的嗎？
導致這一問題在美國尤為嚴重的部分原因是非營利性特殊利益集團的激增。 在歐洲你看不到這一點； 你在英國或德國找不到它。 這些政權更加集權，對非營利領域擁有更大的控製權。 [而在美國] 選邊站隊的特殊利益集團不斷增多。 我們的很多慈善資金——與其他國家相比是一個巨大的數額——是通過這些奉行不留任何俘虜政策的慈善組織來輸送的； 定義了敵人，定義了魔鬼，定義了某些方麵的過犯。
他們都在戰鬥。 這又是您之前描述的一部分：它隻是更廣泛。 文化戰爭的範圍似乎是無所不包的。
我有一個老式的觀點，即我們應該做的是在采取行動之前先了解情況，而智慧取決於了解。 這基本上使我今天成為一個保守派，但按照保守派的標準，這也使我成為一個進步派。
How the 'Culture War' Could Break Democracy
By ZACK STANTON
Thirty years ago, sociologist James Davison Hunter popularized the concept of culture war. Today, he sees a culture war that’s gotten worse—and that spells trouble for the future of the American experiment.
Zack Stanton is deputy editor of POLITICO Playbook.
In 1991, with America gripped by a struggle between an increasingly liberal secular society that pushed for change and a conservative opposition that rooted its worldview in divine scripture, James Davison Hunter wrote a book and titled it with a phrase for what he saw playing out in America’s fights over abortion, gay rights, religion in public schools and the like: “Culture Wars.”
Hunter, a 30-something sociologist at the University of Virginia, didn’t invent the term, but his book vaulted it into the public conversation, and within a few years it was being used as shorthand for cultural flashpoints with political ramifications. He hoped that by calling attention to the dynamic, he’d help America “come to terms with the unfolding conflict” and, perhaps, defuse some of the tensions he saw bubbling.
Instead, 30 years later, Hunter sees America as having doubled down on the “war” part—with the culture wars expanding from issues of religion and family culture to take over politics almost totally, creating a dangerous sense of winner-take-all conflict over the future of the country.
“Democracy, in my view, is an agreement that we will not kill each other over our differences, but instead we’ll talk through those differences. And part of what’s troubling is that I’m beginning to see signs of the justification for violence,” says Hunter, noting the insurrection on January 6, when a mob of extremist supporters of Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to overthrow the results of the 2020 election. “Culture wars always precede shooting wars. They don’t necessarily lead to a shooting war, but you never have a shooting war without a culture war prior to it, because culture provides the justifications for violence.”
What changed? In the latter half of the 20th century, the culture war was, on some level, a “cultural conflict that took place primarily within the white middle class,” says Hunter, who now leads the University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. But, today, as that conflict has grown, “instead of just culture wars, there’s now a kind of class-culture conflict” that has moved beyond the simple boundaries of religiosity.
“The earlier culture war really was about secularization, and positions were tied to theologies and justified on the basis of theologies,” says Hunter. “That’s no longer the case. You rarely see people on the right rooting their positions within a biblical theology or ecclesiastical tradition. [Nowadays,] it is a position that is mainly rooted in fear of extinction.”
In 1991, politics still seemed like a vehicle through which we might resolve divisive cultural issues; now, politics is primarily fueled by division on those issues, with leaders gaining power by inflaming resentments on mask-wearing, or transgender students competing in athletics, or invocations of “cancel culture,” or whether it’s OK to teach that many of the Founding Fathers had racist beliefs. And this reality—that the culture war has colonized American politics—is troubling precisely because of an observation Hunter made in 1991 about the difference he saw between political issues and culture war fights: “On political matters, one can compromise; on matters of ultimate moral truth, one cannot.”
Where does that leave us? What does it portend for the decades to come? Is there a way to bridge these cultural impasses? And, amid all of this, is there a source for optimism?
To sort through it all, POLITICO Magazine spoke with Hunter on the phone late last week. A condensed transcript of that conversation is below, edited for length and clarity.
Q: Let’s start with a basic question: Whether we’re talking about 2021 or back in 1991, when your book, “Culture Wars,” came out, what is it that we mean by the term “culture war”?
James Davison Hunter: Well, in a world that has politicized everything, there’s a sense that politics is both the root cause of the problems we face and, ultimately, the solution. But the larger argument that I make is that politics is an artifact of culture. It’s a reflection: Culture underwrites our politics.
When it comes to “culture war,” there are two ways of thinking about it.
One — probably the most prevalent way—is to think of it as a political battle over certain kinds of cultural issues, like abortion, sexuality, family values, church-state issues, and so on. And therefore, the “culture war” is really about the mobilization of political resources —of people and votes and parties—around certain positions on cultural issues. In that sense, a “culture war” is really about politics.
But the bigger story is about the cultures that underwrite our politics, and the ways in which our politics become reflections of deeper cultural dispositions—not just attitudes and values—that go beyond our ability to reason about them.
When we talk about “culture war,” it’s really about both things.
In simpler terms, I would make the distinction between the weather and the climate. Almost all journalists and most academics focus on what’s happening in the weather: “Today, it’s cold. Tomorrow, it’s going to be warm. The next day, it’s going to rain.” I find the climatological changes that are taking place to be much more interesting. And it’s those that are really animating our politics and polarization, animating dynamics within democracy right now.
The changes you looked at in “Culture Wars” had largely happened over the 30 years prior—basically since the early 1960s, with the civil rights movement, sexual revolution, the gay rights movement, women’s lib and the backlashes that followed. It’s now 30 years since that book came out. How has the culture war changed in that time?
An important demographic and institutional structural shift took place [in recent decades]. Modern higher education has always been a carrier of the Enlightenment, and, in that sense, a carrier of secularization. What happened in the post-World War II period was a massive expansion of higher education and the knowledge-based economy. And with that came a larger cultural shift: What used to be the province of intellectuals now became the province of anyone who had access to higher education, and higher education became one of the gates through which the move to middle class or upper middle class life was made.
With that came profound cultural change. The ’60s revolution and the political, cultural and sexual protests at the time essentially became institutionalized, and it challenged fundamental notions of what was right, decent, good, fair and so on. And in a way, what you had in the late 1970s into the ’80s and ’90s was a reaction against the challenge represented by that structural change. Conservatives—especially conservative Christians, whether Catholic or Protestant—found themselves on the defensive against progressive notions of family structure, “family values,” sexuality; abortion was a—or maybe the—critical issue.
Martin E. Marty, the church historian from Chicago, once said that after the Volstead Act and the Scopes trial, evangelical Protestants became a cognitive minority—a minority within intellectual realms—but remained a social and behavioral majority—they basically owned middle America. What we have seen since is a continuation of those structural changes. The Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment culture got carried by universities [and] other important cultural institutions, and these cultural institutions are dominated by supermajorities of progressives.
Are the dividing lines of the “culture war” different now than they were, say, 30 years ago?
I would argue that what abortion was to [culture wars in] the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s and maybe even beyond, when it was really the critical issue, I think that’s now being replaced by race. The earlier culture wars were a cultural conflict that took place primarily within the white middle class. It’s not that minorities didn’t have positions [on those issues] or weren’t divided themselves, but race was never a very prominent part of that conflict. And I think it has reemerged in part because just as the earlier manifestations of the culture war were ultimately a struggle to define the meaning of America, this is also. Latent within these struggles is a conflict over the meaning of America.
So now, instead of just culture wars, there’s now a kind of class-culture conflict. With a sense of being on the losing side of our global economy and its dynamics, I think that the resentments have just deepened. That became obvious, more and more, over the four years of Trump, and part of Trump’s own genius was understanding the resentments of coming out on the losing side of global capitalism.
And I think this is reflected, too, in the ways in which progressives speak about the downtrodden: Most of the time, it is in terms of race and ethnicity, immigration and the like; it is not about the poor, per se. I think that’s a pretty significant shift in the left’s self-understanding.
What do you think is behind that shift?
Well, if you became an advocate for the working class, you’d be an advocate for a lot of Trump voters. Again, I think there’s a class-culture divide: a class element that overlays the cultural divide. And they [white non-college-educated voters] voted en masse for Trump. And I think that’s an element of it. They’re also the carriers of what [some on the left] perceive to be racist and misogynist, sexist understandings and ways of life. That’s my guess.
Straightforward, materialist social science would say that people are voting their economic interests all the time. But they don’t. The seeming contradiction of people voting against their economic interests only highlights that point: That, in many respects, our self-understanding as individuals, as communities and as a nation trumps all of those things.
Along those lines, there can be a tendency, especially on the political left, to talk about “culture war” issues as being “distractions” that are raised in order to divide people who might otherwise find common cause around, say, shared economic interests. What do you make of that view?
We are constituted as human beings by the stories we tell about ourselves. The very nature of meaning and purpose in life are constituted by our individual and collective self-understandings. How that is a “distraction” is beyond me.
You know, people will fight to the death for an idea, for an ideal. I was criticized in the early ’90s for using the word “war” [in the term “culture war”]. But I was trained in phenomenology, in which you are taught to pay attention to the words that people themselves use. And in interviews I did [with those on the front lines of “culture war” fights], people would say, “you know, it feels like a war”—even on the left.
I talk about this sense of a struggle for one’s very existence, for a way of life; this is exactly the language that is also used on the left, but in a much more therapeutic way. When you hear people say that, for instance, conservatives’ very existence on this college campus is “a threat to my existence” as a trans person or gay person, the stakes — for them — seem ultimate.
The question is: What is it that animates our passions? I don’t know how one can imagine individual and collective identity—and the things that make life meaningful and purposeful—as somehow peripheral or as “distractions.”
There’s a passage you wrote 30 years ago that seems relevant to this point: “We subtly slip into thinking of the controversies debated as political rather than cultural in nature. On political matters, one can compromise; on matters of ultimate moral truth, one cannot. This is why the full range of issues today seems interminable.”
I kind of like that sentence. [Laughs] I would put it this way: Culture, by its very nature, is hegemonic. It seeks to colonize; it seeks to envelop in its totality. The root of the word “culture” is Latin: “cultus.” It’s about what is sacred to us. And what is sacred to us tends to be universalizing. The very nature of the sacred is that it is special; it can’t be broached.
Culture, in one respect, is about that which is pure and that which is polluted; it is about the boundaries that are often transgressed, and what we do about that. And part of the culture war—one way to see the culture war—is that each has an idea of what is transgressive, of what is a violation of the sacred, and the fears and resentments that go along with that.
Every culture has its view of sin. It’s an old-fashioned word, but it [refers to that which] is, ultimately, profane and cannot be permitted, must not be allowed. Understanding those things that underwrite politics helps us understand why this persists the way it does, why it inflames the passions that we see.
It feels like the universe of things that might be considered part of the “culture war” has grown considerably over the past 30 years, such that it seems to now envelop most of politics. In that situation, how does democracy work? Because when the stakes are existential, it would seem like compromise is impossible. Can you have a stable democracy without compromise?
No, I don’t think you can. Part of our problem is that we have politicized everything. And yet politics becomes a proxy for cultural positions that simply won’t brook any kind of dissent or argument.
You hear this all the time. The very idea of treating your opponents with civility is a betrayal. How can you be civil to people who threaten your very existence? It highlights the point that culture is hegemonic: You can compromise with politics and policy, but if politics and policy are a proxy for culture, there’s just no way.
In the original book, I had a short chapter about the technologies of communication and discourse, and the ways they’ve accentuated polarization. I argued that because of these technologies, our public culture is more polarized than we, as a people, are. And the technology I was talking about is just going to sound really funny nowadays: It was direct mail. This was [1991], before social media.
So, take the role of some of the extraordinary advances in social media and the ways in which these multiply the anonymity, the extremism of rhetoric, the absence of any kind of accountability in our public speech. They take what is already a shallow discourse—you know, the trading of slogans, and the like—and make it even more difficult to find any kind of depth.
How do you compromise when that becomes the dominant form of discourse? I think that there are ways in which serious and substantive democratic discourse is made difficult, if not impossible, by the democratization and proliferation of free speech. That seems like a strange thing to say, but ...
On that front, I think one of the difficulties is that there is sometimes a very clear calculation made on the part of people involved in politics that conflict leads to attention, and media attention leads to political power. That feels like a cycle difficult to break out of.
Democracy, in my view, is an agreement that we will not kill each other over our differences, but instead we’ll talk through those differences. And part of what’s troubling is that I’m beginning to see signs of the justification for violence on both sides. Obviously, on January 6, we not only saw an act of violence—I mean, talk about a transgression—but one that the people who were involved were capable of justifying. That’s an extraordinary thing.
If I could draw a parallel, it’s not unlike the Civil War. There was a culture war for 30 years prior to the Civil War. The Civil War was—without question—about slavery and the status of Black men and women, and, yes, the good guys won [the Civil War]—at the cost of 4 out of 10 Southern males dying and 1 out of 10 Northern males dying. But think about what happened: Dred Scott was an attempt to impose a consensus by law; it took the Civil War and the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to overturn Dred Scott. And yet that was also an imposition of solidarity by law and by force. The failures of Reconstruction and the emergence of Jim Crow and “Black Codes” and all of that was proof that politics couldn’t solve culture; it couldn’t solve the cultural tensions, and so what you end up with is a struggle for civil rights.
My view is that the reason why we’re continuing to see this press toward racial reckoning is because it’s never been addressed culturally.
In other words, racial justice failed by succeeding. The international slave trade ended in 1808. And it created this sense of complacency: “Oh, we’ve dealt with that.” Yet the slave trade and number of slaves grew astronomically over the next 50 years. Then the Civil War was fought and won: “Oh, we’ve dealt with that. Now we can move on.” It created complacency. I think that’s what happened after the civil rights movement and [the Rev. Martin Luther] King’s martyrdom: It was a tremendous success at one level, but created complacency, especially among whites—“We’ve dealt with that. We don’t need to deal with this anymore”—when, in fact, ongoing discrimination is still happening. It represents, again, the attempt to generate a kind of cultural consensus through political means. And that doesn’t seem to work.
What would it look like to actually reckon with that issue, culturally?
Well, I’m going to sound really old-fashioned here, but I think that this work takes a long time and it’s hard. I think you talk through the conflicts. Don’t ignore them; don’t pretend that they don’t exist. And whatever you do, don’t just simply impose your view on anyone else. You have to talk them through. It’s the long, hard work of education.
The whole point of civil society, at a sociological level, is to provide mediating institutions to stand between the individual and the state, or the individual and the economy. They’re at their best when they are doing just that: They are mediating, they are educating. I know that argument is part of the “old” liberal consensus view, the “old” rules of public discourse. But the alternatives are violence. And I think we are getting to that point.
The book that I followed “Culture Wars” with was called “Before the Shooting Begins: Searching for Democracy in America’s Culture War.” And the argument I made was that culture wars always precede shooting wars. They don’t necessarily lead to a shooting war, but you never have a shooting war without a culture war prior to it, because culture provides the justifications for violence. And I think that’s where we are. The climatological indications are pretty worrisome.
Given that, do you feel optimistic about the outlook for things in the United States in this era of constant “culture war,” with so much of it being fed by the Internet?
Look: Not to hope—to give in to despair—is never an option, in my opinion. That’s an ethical position I think one has to take. But I also don’t think that you tell a patient that they have a bad cold when, in fact, they have a life-threatening disease.
In this tangle between very powerful institutions and very powerful cultural logics, there are serious problems that are deeply rooted. The great democratic revolutions of Western Europe and North America were rooted in the intellectual and cultural revolution of Enlightenment; the Enlightenment underwrote those political transformations. If America’s hybrid Enlightenment underwrote the birth of liberal democracy in the United States, what underwrites it now?
What is going to underwrite liberal democracy in the 21st century? To me, it’s not obvious. That’s the big puzzle I’m working through right now. But it bears on this issue of culture wars, because if there’s nothing that we share in common—if there is no hybrid enlightenment that we share—then what are the sources we can draw upon to come together and find any kind of solidarity?
It’s as though there are no unifying national myths. And those that once occupied that place in American life are now subject to debate and the culture war.
That’s exactly right. And the myths that do seem to exist are mainly technocratic and dystopian. So … I think we’re in trouble. But I’m not sure you should end with that.
Well, I’ll end with this, then: Is there something unique about America that makes it especially prone to culture war, or is this kind of par for the course?
Part of what has made it especially acute in the United States is the proliferation of nonprofit special-interest groups. You don’t find that in Europe; you don’t find it in England or Germany. Those are more statist regimes, and have much greater control over the nonprofit space. [Whereas, in the U.S.] you have the proliferation of special-interest groups that take sides. And a lot of our charitable money—which is a massive amount compared to other countries—gets channeled through these charitable organizations that exist with a take-no-prisoners policy; that define the enemy, that define a devil, that define transgressions in certain ways.
They’re all in battle. And it’s, again, part of what you described earlier: It’s just more expansive. The range of the culture war seems to be all-encompassing.
I have this old-fashioned view that what we’re supposed to do is to understand before we take action, and that wisdom depends upon understanding. That basically makes me a conservative today—but it also makes me a progressive by conservative standards.
