Are the Culture Wars Ending???

[Crabtownboy]

A very interesting article on our current society and changes that may or may not be taking place.

Last of the Culture Warriors


Why has America turned on Sarah Palin? Obviously, her wobbly television interviews haven't helped. Nor have the drip, drip of scandals from Alaska, which have tarnished her reformist image. But Palin's problems run deeper, and they say something fundamental about the political age being born. Palin's brand is culture war, and in America today culture war no longer sells. The struggle that began in the 1960s -- which put questions of racial, sexual and religious identity at the forefront of American politics -- may be ending. Palin is the end of the line.

This won't be the first time a culture war has come to a close. In the 1920s, battles over evolution, immigration, prohibition and the resurgent Ku Klux Klan dominated election after election. And those issues played into that era's version of the red-blue divide, pitting newly arrived, saloon-frequenting, big-city Catholics against old-stock, teetotaling, small-town Protestants. In 1924, the Democratic convention split so bitterly over prohibition and the Klan that it took more than 100 ballots to nominate a candidate for president

Then, in the 1930s, the culture war died. A big reason was the Depression, which put questions of economic survival front and center. In the 1920s boom economy, politicians were largely free to focus on identity politics. By Franklin Roosevelt's election in 1932, that was a luxury America's leaders could no longer afford.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy.../11/02/AR2008110201718.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

 

[NaasPreacher (C4K)]

Interesting article and good food for thought. Not sure how I feel about it after the first read.

Have to think that one over.

 

[targus]

Obama is just stoking an old culture war that LBJ started...

The self reliant/self determined against the Nanny State.

In the end the free government hand outs hurt instead of help the lower classes thus creating demand for a new round of government dependence to fix the very problems it created.

Look at what welfare did to American Black families.

It amazes me that a Black President wanna-be would go down that road.

 

[Palatka51]

I think that it shows the basic fleshly nature of unregenerate man. Most people want to be morally correct. Which may explain why there so many religions in this world. Then when the basic needs are threatened, like dogs fighting over a food dish, they resort back to their basic fleshly nature of self preservation. Connotations of Chicago gains that smuggled the booze, Valentine Massacre, Bonnie and Clyde, Dillinger and others come to mind as examples of moral collapse during those hard times. However, Most people during those times did not succumb to their basic survival instincts but shared with their neighbors through their Churches, sought honest work even with the CCC and stuck by their families.

Today our nation is not the same nation of the '30s and the '40s. It is a throw away culture. Nothing is being done to make this generation self reliant. It doesn't want a culture of self reliance. This generation wants to be catered to, to the point of dependency. It is ripe for socialist led government imprisonment and the wiping out of all our freedoms.

I am perplexed and dismayed at how many self named Christians have thrown out the protection of the unborn, resistance to alternative lifestyles and prayer in schools for the sake of their pocket books. The "Greatest Generation" did not have to give up these things because the Democratic Party (though progressive) did not espouse these anti-cultural alternatives during the '30s and '40s.

Yes Crabby you have given us much to think about.

 

[Crabtownboy]

What I found most interesting in this article was the history of various cultural wars in the past. That, to me, is a fascinating topic.

 

[Revmitchell]

Propaganda. America has not turned on Sara Palin.

 

[Crabtownboy]

Propaganda. America has not turned on Sara Palin.

Did you read all of the article? Were the descriptions of the cultural wars in the early part fo the 20th century interesting to you?

 

[Revmitchell]

Did you read all of the article? Were the descriptions of the cultural wars in the early part fo the 20th century interesting to you?

If the first sentence is propaganda why would I read the rest.

 

[Crabtownboy]

If the first sentence is propaganda why would I read the rest.

To put the issue in context. It isn't as negative as you think, but if you refuse to read it you will never know. If we are at the end of the cultural wars of the past 30 years, then other issues will come to the fore. Of course, when the great depression killed the cultural wars of the 1920s, the issue became survival. Could happen again with the current state of the economy. The Baby Boomers are getting older and their generation will soon pass from the scene. That alone will cause great changes in the American society as the younger generations do not see the world in the same way as the Boomers. It is the same with my generation, the one prior to the Boomers, we see the world differently also. But that is normal and continually happens as generations pass.

 

[Revmitchell]

To put the issue in context. It isn't as negative as you think, but if you refuse to read it you will never know. If we are at the end of the cultural wars of the past 30 years, then other issues will come to the fore. Of course, when the great depression killed the cultural wars of the 1920s, the issue became survival. Could happen again with the current state of the economy. The Baby Boomers are getting older and their generation will soon pass from the scene. That alone will cause great changes in the American society as the younger generations do not see the world in the same way as the Boomers. It is the same with my generation, the one prior to the Boomers, we see the world differently also. But that is normal and continually happens as generations pass.

Sorry I do not buy it. Nothing changes. There are always conservative views and always liberal views. The issues may change from century to century but the motivations behind them remain ever the same. And issues are like fashion. They always come back around sooner or later. FDR had a great effect on the culture with his New Deal and a profound and lasing negative effect on the economy. Even in hard economic times there is a fight for specific cultures wether it gets put in print on a daily basis or not.

 

[Crabtownboy]

Sorry I do not buy it. Nothing changes. There are always conservatives and always liberals. The issues may change from century to century but the motivations behind them remain ever the same. And issues are like fashion. They always come back around sooner or later.

Of course issues change and that is what the article is talking about.

This won't be the first time a culture war has come to a close. In the 1920s, battles over evolution, immigration, prohibition and the resurgent Ku Klux Klan dominated election after election. And those issues played into that era's version of the red-blue divide, pitting newly arrived, saloon-frequenting, big-city Catholics against old-stock, teetotaling, small-town Protestants. In 1924, the Democratic convention split so bitterly over prohibition and the Klan that it took more than 100 ballots to nominate a candidate for president.

Then, in the 1930s, the culture war died. A big reason was the Depression, which put questions of economic survival front and center. In the 1920s boom economy, politicians were largely free to focus on identity politics. By Franklin Roosevelt's election in 1932, that was a luxury America's leaders could no longer afford.

Something similar is happening today. Our era's culture war also began in prosperity. It was in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the high point of America's postwar boom, that African Americans took to the streets in vast numbers to demand equal rights. And it was in the early 1960s, as a result of the vast increase in postwar college enrollment, that students began challenging the conformity of American life. In 1962, the Port Huron Statement spoke of a generation "bred in at least modest comfort." It was those middle-class baby boomers who sparked the movements for women's rights and gay rights and the rise in blue-state secularism, all of which helped touch off this era's culture war

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy.../11/02/AR2008110201718.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

Read the entire article Rev. It is quite interesting whether you agree with it or not.

 

[billwald]

It is a new world out there. A pragmatic world. Young people are willing to try anything that might work. Young people don't care about the old religion/race prohibitions.

 

[TomMann]

Thought this was an interesting read!!!!!

http://www.globalpolitician.com/25109-barack-obama-elections

 

[Crabtownboy]

It is a new world out there. A pragmatic world. Young people are willing to try anything that might work. Young people don't care about the old religion/race prohibitions.

Bill, you are in good company. Here is a quote attributed to Socrates:

The children now love luxury; they have bad manners,
> contempt for authority; they allow disrespect for elders and
> love chatter in place of exercise. Children now are tyrants,
> not the servants of their households. They no longer rise
> when eleders enter the room. They contradict their parents,
> chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross
> their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.
>

Maybe todays young are not as bad as many of us older folk think. Let's hope so.