The Thousand-Years War

In his weekly column, conservative pundit Rod Dreher argues that the culture wars aren’t over—that they’ll never be over, as a matter of fact. Despite what some people seem to think, Barack Obama isn’t blessed with a magical power to heal our divisions and bring us together to hold hands and sing. Writes Dreher:

Will Barack Obama end the culture wars? He couldn't if he wanted. In America, the culture war will never die, only wax and wane across multiple battlefields. When you live in a large, diverse, pluralistic democracy, it comes with the territory.

It’s become fashionable to bemoan the culture wars as the worst thing to happen to America since smallpox. Everybody hates the culture war. Liberals hate it, because they think it distracts from more important issues, things like health care and education. Conservatives hate it, because it signals a challenge to American traditions. Moderates hate it most of all, because they’re sick of being whipsawed between two equally zealous bunches of sign-waving, slogan-chanting crazies.

I admit the culture wars aren’t pleasant. They’re bitter, nasty, and divisive. There’s no easier way to lose a friend then to talk about cultural politics. They can also get awfully repetitive. How many gallons of ink—both real and electronic—have been spilled out on the abortion issue alone? Yet we’re not any closer to solving that whole mess than we were in 1973.

But I think Dreher’s right. The culture wars are as American as apple pie, if slightly less tasty. If we’ve learned one thing in class, it’s that America is a diverse nation. The statistic that “80% of Americans are Christian, and 90% believe in God” conceals an incredible richness of opinion. Two people can be exactly the same—same race, same religion, same age, same education—and still hold completely different opinions. Multiply that by a million, and you’ve got America.

That means there are always going to be debates over culture, and they’re always going to be nasty. If people aren’t arguing about abortion, they’ll argue about gay marriage. If not gay marriage, then they’ll talk about evolution. That’s just the way opinions are. If someone holds a belief very deeply, they’re naturally going to be passionate about it.

This is especially true where religion’s concerned. Conservative Christians aren’t against abortion because they hate women. They’re against it because they think it’s barbaric. Liberal Christians aren’t in favor of gay marriage because they hate the family. They just think all couples should be treated equally.

Those who say, “Stop! Enough already! Let’s have a truce!” ought to be careful what they wish for. We can end the culture wars. It’d be easy, really. All you need to do is get rid of opinions that make other people uncomfortable. If nobody talked about abortion, or gay marriage, or school prayer, then we wouldn’t have a culture war anymore. There’d be no need to get upset, because there would be nothing to get upset about.

You would kill the culture wars stone dead. You’d also be killing America. The culture wars express the diversity of American belief. Neuter that—declaw it—defang it—and you have nothing left but a gray, mushy middle. I’ll take a culture war over that any day.