Abortion, school prayer, gay rights, gun politics and many more are all a part of the list of controversies that divide our country. A culture war is a conflict between groups with different ideals, beliefs, and issues. James Davison Hunter’s book, Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America, shows that these issues “are not isolated from one another but are part of a fabric of conflict which constitutes nothing short of a struggle over the meaning of America. Unlike the religious and cultural conflict that historically divided the nation, the contemporary culture war is fought along new and, in many ways, unfamiliar lines” (Hunter). Hunter argued that two definable polarities existed in the major issues of the war. The new shift in cultural acceptance of the times has changed the culture war. Many Americans argue that “there is a religious war going on in this country, a cultural war as critical to the kind of nation we shall be as the Cold War itself, for this war is for the soul of America” (Fiorina). However, some argue that the culture war is only based on small differences between the Democrats and Republicans. The issue at hand is how divided the American public is today and how much time is focused on this polarization. This division is not just a small difference in parties, but more a difference in moral and religious issues.
One of the major issues in the cultural war is the idea of abortion. The Republican Party supports the human life amendment while opposing abortion funding. They “assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed [upon]” (Republican Party Platform ). The Republican Party also strongly promotes adoption and abst...
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...w the issue regarding their beliefs from religion. The culture war of America is always in view for the population. So much time is focused on the issue at hand instead of the actual progress being made. The moral differences between parties take preference over solving the issue. The culture war is not an issue of cultural differences, but more of religious and moral differences.
References
Bowman, Carl Desportes. "The Myth of a Non-Polarized America." 2011. The Hedgehog: Critical Reflection on Contemporary Culture. 1 March 2014.
"Democratic Party Platform." 2013. On The Issues. 27 February 2014.
Fiorina, Morris P., Samuel J. Abrams, and Jeremy C. Pope. Culture war?. New York: Pearson Longman, 2005.
Hunter, James Davison. Culture Wars: The Stuggle to Define America. NewYork: BasicBooks, 1991.
"Republican Party Platform ." 2013. On The Issues. 28 February 2014.
Fiorina, Morris P., and Samuel J. Abrams. Culture war?: The Myth of a Polarized America. 2nd ed. New York: Pearson Education, 2006. Print.
Dye, Thomas R. , L. Tucker Gibson Jr., and Clay Robinson. Politics In America. Brief Texas Edition ed. New Jersey: Pearson, 2005.
Increasingly over the past two decades and in part thanks to the publication of James Davison Hunter’s book, Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America, the idea of a culture war in American politics has been gaining attention. While the tension between conservatives and liberals is palpable, it’s intensity has proven hard to measure. However, it doesn’t seem that many Americans are polarized on the topic of polarization as most would agree that the culture war is real (Fiorina, 2005). This thinking is what prompted Morris Fiorina to write the book Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America. In it, Fiorina outlines an argument against the idea of a culture war by looking at party affiliation by states, how public opinion on hot button issues changed over time and various explanations for why Americans are so hung up on the topic of polarization. While Fiorina makes a good argument, the evidence supporting the culture war is too powerful to explain away.
Both works provide valuable insight into the political atmosphere of American society, but vary greatly in their intended message, usage of persuasive method, projected audience, and choice of tone. One can see resemblance, however, in the fact that the authors of both articles strive to spark a reaction in their readers and encourage change. In that regard, while Hedges’
During the Antebellum period in America, the country’s thoughts were changing drastically. Escape from religious persecution was a key player in many minds when choosing to come to America and so it became a melting pot simmering with multiple thoughts and ideals. The European Protestants, Roman Catholics, and African American religions were forced to intermingle and the unique qualities of each were particularly useful in the establishment of personal validity (Fox 201, 202). After the American Revolution, most Republicans argued that churches, “brandished superstitious dogmas and mysteries that kept people in the dark about the rational capacities of their own minds” (Fox 159). On the flip side of this, “a few Republicans such ...
Just as there is a variety of identities involving race, gender, and class, so too are there a range of religious identities. Byzantine Catholics, Hindus, born-again Evangelicals, atheists, agnostics, and Buddhists are only a few religious identities I have encountered in America. This environment, at best, allows religious variety to be understood and embraced—and at worst, divides us. In Acts of Faith, author Eboo Patel discusses his belief that the “faith line” will define conflict and concord in the 21st century.
Dye, Thomas R., L. Tucker Gibson, Jr., and Clay Robison. Politics in America. Ninth ed. Vol. 2. New York, NY: Longman, 2011. 337. Print.
There is a fine line between what American society looked like during World War II and contemporary America. The dilemma is that society has gone from patriotism and a fight for liberty to “everyone walking around with a chip on his or her shoulder” (Carr 2). This two distinct differences on America culture and society is manifested in, Howie Carr’s “Take $2000 and Call Me in the Morning” and Ronald Reagan’s speech, “The Boys of Point du Hoc”.
This has caused American society to have a rather unique view on religion. America is ...
They believe that fighting this war to defund Planned Parenthood is worth it and in any case, one that speaks to a basic point for the Republican Party. A strong Republican stated “If Republicans can’t fight against the sale of dead baby parts, then we probably can’t fight for anything.”(Akins, September 2015) That is a strong statement because if they don’t fight for it what is the point in having them apart of the government system that is for that people who supposed to be run by the people. They view is really what’s right for the people and what is seen to be savage. The Republicans focuses to the recordings that have uncovered Planned Parenthood practices and talk plainly about their objective. However, there are majority of the conservatives that would not vote in favor of any spending bill that keeps subsidizing for Planned Parenthood like Cruz, Mulvaney, and
James Wilson’s article, “How Divided are We?”, attempts to convince the reader that there is polarization (a culture war) in the United States. Wilson does not define polarization by partisan disagreements solely, rather as “an intense commitment to a candidate, a culture, or an ideology that sets people in one group definitively apart from people in another, rival group” (Canon 205). This polarization stretches to the extent that one group’s set of beliefs is totally correct and the rival is wholly wrong (Canon 206). Wilson provides three chief factors for the growth of polarization...
The government of the United States of America is very unique. While many Americans complain about high taxes and Big Brother keeping too close an eye, the truth is that American government, compared to most foreign democracies, is very limited in power and scope. One area American government differs greatly from others is its scope of public policy. Americans desire limited public policy, a result of several components of American ideology, the most important being our desire for individuality and equal opportunity for all citizens. There are many possible explanations for the reason Americans think this way, including the personality of the immigrants who fled here, our physical isolation from other countries, and the diversity of the American population.
Andrew Hartman’s A History of the Culture Wars: A War For the Soul of America was shockingly hard to digest due to harsh reality of the right and left controversy that we see in America politics today. Hartman focused this so called “culture war” throughout the sixties on issues like feminism, racial segregation which contradicted equality and separation of church/state in the educational system.
Political culture is a method of how a country should execute its economic and political policies in its own manner. The four sources of American political culture are the struggle for liberty, widespread participation in government, religious diversity, and family instillation on morals. These four qualities affect how citizens interpret the laws of the Constitution as they come from various backgrounds, leading them to dispute over numerous controversial matters, such as abortion legalization, LGBTQ rights, religious policies, and racial equality. The struggle for morality on these issues has divided the citizens into two opposing parties, the Orthodox and the Progressives, that fight one nationwide battle: The Culture War.
Family-planning policy in the United States has recently taken a dramatic change in direction. Over the last decade, the pace of legislation designed to restrict access to abortion services has accelerated [1]. At the same time, public funding for contraception has been singled out as the specific target of ideological opposition [2] and has become newly entangled in the abortion debate. Although abortion has long been controversial, this shift in attitudes toward contraception is both surprising and recent. It marks a striking change from the 1950s and 1960s, during which the family-planning movement generated strong bipartisan support for widespread voluntary access to contraception [3]. This era culminated in 1970 with a Republican president,