Is There a Culture War?

I was prompted to raise this question when reading this NPR piece about right-wing conservative white people feeling they were losing despite Republican domination of US government.

It's shocking to see people fearing a civil war, advocating the separation of the US into two nations, or envisioning an apocalypse. Who are these frightened people? What culture war do they think they have lost?

Oh, you mean that "war" in which the Supreme Court reminded everyone that this is a secular republic, not a religious state controlled by one church or sect? And some people chose to interpret "no state-sponsored prayer" as "no prayer allowed"? Or that "war" that saw a certain brand of Christianity criticized--often by other Christians?

First of all, shouldn't we remember that intra-religious and inter-religious wars have raged in human societies for centuries? So it's not usually secularists or atheists who are fighting against religious people; it's religious people fighting each other. Sometimes physically fighting, sometimes arguing. Of course, people's arguments and battles over religious dogma are often as not really about something else, something cultural or socio-economic.

Second, the real cultural wars in this country have been marked by violence against marginalized groups by those with power and privilege. Wasn't slavery a war against Africans and their descendants forcibly brought to this country? What about segregation, Jim Crow laws, and the horrors of lynching? What about the injustices perpetrated against black people in courts and prisons? What about police brutality?

What about the war against women, relegating them to second-class status, denying them the right to vote or own property or have a say over their own bodies and sexuality? What about domestic violence, usually against women, that was ignored, covered up, even sanctioned?

What about the war against people who weren't heterosexual--against LGBT people, who were shunned, shamed, mocked, beaten, killed? Who were denied the right to express their love for other people, to get married, to have children?

What about the wars against immigrants? That's a catalogue too lengthy for this short blog post. It's a war that flares up every time a new group of immigrants becomes visible to the rest of the country, who conveniently forget their own immigrant past.

It seems to me that the losers in our 400-year-old culture wars are finally demanding and receiving some protections. They aren't "winning" a war against white conservatives. They are seeing the government and other institutions acting like UN peacekeepers to protect them from violence. They are winning because of decades of non-violent resistance and courageous action on the streets, in the courthouse, and in elections. They are not "winning" in the sense of becoming victors who now lord it over the vanquished. They are claiming their rightful place in this democracy.

Right-wing or "conservative" or nostalgic people, whether they are white or Christian or even people of color and of other religions, should stop seeing themselves as losers in a culture war. They should stop looking to some imagined apocalypse on the horizon, and look back on the terrors inflicted on too many citizens and residents of this nation. They should join with their fellow Americans in a rainbow coalition that celebrates the utopian vision of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution (especially its amendments), and the UN Declaration of Human Rights. And they might find that same vision in the Sermon on the Mount (and the prophets in the Jewish tradition, and the Quran, and many other sacred texts).

Look around oh beleagured "conservatives" and "Christians." If you stop fighting, you'll realize that the war is over. You have been the ones keeping it going.