Culture Wars The Struggle to Define America by James Davison Hunter (z-lib.org)

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Part of this book was originally published in an article by the author in The Brookings Review, Spring 1990, pp. 20-27.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hunter, James Davison. 1955-

Culture wars: the struggle to define America I James

Davison Hunter.

p.cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-465-0I533-6 (cloth)

ISBN 0-465-01534-4 (paper)

I. United States-Civilization-I970- 2. Culture con- flict-United States. 3. Pluralism (Social sciences)- United States. I. Title.

El69.12.H77 1991 973.92-dc20

Copyright © 1991 by BasicBooks, A Division of HarperCollins

Publishers, Inc.

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address BasicBooks, 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022-5299.

Designed Uy Ellen Levine

92 93 94 95 NKIFG 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

For mychi/,(Jien, ..

Kirsten, Colin~ and WhZtney .

Contents

Preface

A European friend of mine recently observed that Americans typically conduct their lives in private and with little controversy. He did not mean to deny that such issues as abortion, gay rights, funding for the arts, women's rights, child-care policy, church and state litigation, multicultuTalism, and court-packing are followed in the press and even debated passionately among American families, friends, and coworkers. But, my friend asked, do these culture wars have practical relevance for· them? The answer will no doubt become more apparent to him as his stay in the United States lengthens. Eventually, he will see that these issues frequently seem abstract to people only until a part of their own lives intersects an issue of the culture war: a daughter or a friend wants an abortion, a marriage ends in divorce, a cousin comes out of the closet, the local school teaches values they deeply disagree with, they can't find decent day care for their kids; art at a local gallery is censored, a local activist burns the American flag at an antiwar rally. All of a sudden, what had long been confined to the abstract becomes very real. Not only their passions but their very life commitments are drawn into a public controversy much larger than their personal troubles-controversies that seem to have a life of their own. As we will see, the contemporary culture war touches virtually all Americans; nearly everyone has stories to tell.

The idea of a culture war taking place in Americ

to some; the term has of ate ecome a topic of conversation in certain