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

the means through which the president can reach a national audience both directly and immediately. In addition, the use of these media has entailed a fundamental change in the very medium by which the president communicates publicly: from the written to the spoken word; from a text that could be studied by a literate and politically engaged reader to a visible, dramatic performance that can be as easily switched off as switched on. Add .to this the fact that television and radio journalists

"filter" public speech by selecting comparatively small "sound bites."

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- 'T<>-fail to mention the pivotal role of ideologically oriented interest groups in all of this would be remiss. Here the relationship is dialectic. On the one hand, a "rhetorical presidency" increases the prevalence and power of the ideological interest groups. This occurs for the simple reason that a leadership based upon public opinion will give rise to groups wanting to shape that opinion. It is no accident, then, that ideological PACs have increased dramatically in number, size, and budget since the 1970s.35 The very context and requirements of national leadership under these new conditions encourages such groups to exert as much influence as possible. And presidents are vulnerable to it. On the other hand, politically oriented special purpose groups further institutionalize a "rhetorical leadership" by placing ever higher demands on the office as a condition of their support. Progressivist groups have made their financial and grass-roots support contingent upon a politician's promise of support for their concerns. Likewise on the orthodox side of the cultural divide, Catholic politicians (to give but an example) have been sent warning shots across their bows, as it were, with the indirect threat that they risk excommunication if they failed to support the Church's moral teachings, particularly on abortion. (John Cardinal O'Connor of New York was the first prominent Catholic to raise this possibility in public debate, and while he said he had no politician in mind, the excommunication of Catholics involved in the abortion business elsewhere in the country gave his words a sharpness that even he

might not have intended.) Under these cultural and political conditions, it is no wonder that the number of specific promises made by presidential candidates over the course of an election campaign has been escalating dramatically since the early 1950s.56

It is essential to point out, at this stage, that while the pressures generated by competing factions in the culture war are especially great for the national leadership, these pressures appear to be increasingly applied to state and local elections. This is particularly true since the highly publicized Webster v. Reproductive Health Services decision made possible state regulation of abortions. Because of this, state and local officials have to answer to antagonists as well. Four months after Webster, the issue of abortion and the factions mobilized on both sides proved to be decisive for the Virginia gubernatorial race.57 In local and regional campaigns across the country, incumbents and challengers have sought to duck for cover while the cannons of special interest lobbies are loaded and aimed. Even at these levels, leadership is fast becoming "rhetorical" in nature;

These institutionalized constraints, then" shadow more and more politicians, though it remains especially the case with the presidency and members of Congress throughout their tenure in office. Yet such forces are particularly pronounced in the election campaign. It has been observed that the modern campaign for national office is organized in such a way that "demagogy or pandering is almost necessary to stay in the

running."58 w~,~lt1i.o:~~~~~~c~~~s..im>~ inflatett~than·amTiltfhe:eamp'iiigna::xritf··mi'!l·11cs~M"~se;&ei

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If this is all true, then the meaning of national leadership in American democracy has indeed changed. Words not only rival deeds, words become deeds; speeches become events-events that are just as real as an action taken by the state. And in this, speaking becomes a principal mode of governing. The consequences of this for the contemporary culture war are not insignificant. The most extreme consequence is that it leads to the belief that those gifted in public speech will make good government leaders. Wilson himself said that "it is natural that orators should be the leaders of a self-governing people."59 This is what made it possible and credible for activists and ideologues like Jackson and Robertson-individuals with no experience in government-to run for the presidency, as they did in 1988. It is entirely plausible that other

major activists in the contemporary culture war (at least those skilled in public oratory) will follow in their wake.40 Note, for example, the call at the NOW national convention in Cincinnati in 1989 for a new independent feminist political party. At the very least, the consequences of a leadership predicated upon public oratory are that politicians will always be vulnerable to the power and interests of the opposing sides of the culture war. They will always and perhaps increasingly have to contend with competing symbols, ideals, and visions of the world.

POLITICIANS AND THE CULTURE WAR:

WHO IS USING WHOMl

The foregoing discussion invites speculation on the broader question in electoral politics of "who is using whom." The obvious answer is to say that it is the candidates who cynically use the symbols of the culture war and thus one constituency or the other in the service of their own political ambitions. The obvious answer is also undoubtedly true to a large extent.

·But recognizing this does not mean that all politicians who do employ the symbols of the present cultural conflict are motivated by cynicism. They are just as likely to be sincere-the ends are the same.

A much more intriguing and perhaps plausible reply to this question, however, puts it the other way around: electoral politics play a decisive role in furthering the interests of antagonists in the culture war. In this view, the ambitions of particular politicians are virtually irrelevant. Almost anyone could fill the spot. Why? Because it is the contemporary cultural contest that provides much of the language-the slogans, the aphorisms-through which all candidates and parties, whoever they are, must, at least in part, define themselves. It is the contemporary culture

war that establishes many of the parameters of campaign debate within

.which opposing candidates and parties must maneuver.

In reality, tliere is something of a symbiosis at play here-politicians indeed use symbols of the cultural conflict to realize their political· aspirations, but at the same time the mechanisms of electoral politics provide a device through which opposing interests and visions in the culture war are advanced. It is difficult to say, yet it is possible, quite possible, that in the broader flow of American history, the latter will prove to have the greater sway.

Listening to the foolish things many politicians say during an election campaign as they manuever around the thickets and booby traps of the culture.war, one almost cannot help but chuckle. But our laughter turns to nervous wonder the instant we remember that these same politicians are dealing with the most. urgent issues of the day as representatives of the longest standing and most powerful democracy in the world. The contrast between a sound-bite leadership driven by the competing interests of the culture war and the wise and noble leadership one might hope for given the legacy of our democracy is distressing to

~:=~

may be hostage to the issues, symbols, and interest groups 'rirthe culture war but it is they and the electoral organizations behind them who choose to respond the way they do and it is we, a distressingly passive electorate, who accept things as they are. The problem, of course, is that when the legacy is not upheld, when. democratic discussion and debate devolves

into the morass it has become, there is even less hope that the various battles of the cultu~e war can be resolved. The fissures that divide Amer-

ica can only grow deeper.

Parting Observations

Of the seemingly countless skirmishes and battles within the various fields of conflictjust surveyed, each dispute is rooted in events with their own unique characteristics and very often their own set of combatants. Maybe this is part of why we tend not to see the myriad controversies as being linked in any coherent way. Yet ifwe consider them more closely, we can see that within each conflict, however minor it may seem to be, are appeals to opposing visions of the good life and the good society. These underlying appeals to both fundamental assumptions and high ideals show that these controversies form part of a fabric: they are episodes in a larger culture war.

AMERICA ABROAD: A BRIEF WORD ON WAR

As we have seen, these opposing symbolic appeals create a cleavage that

. runs like the San Andreas Fault right through much of the territory making up domestic policy in America, including areas and issues not discussed here. It is also reflected in some areas of foreign policyperhaps most urgently in America's military involvement abroad.

-Few developments can change a nation-its mood, its identity;its people-like war. War always brings to light the most basic questions of national purpose:· What is it about our nation-our history and place in the world-that should obligate it to fight? What national purpose is

served by risking the lives of our young men and women? What compelling reason justifies the commitment of our military resources and manpower so far away from home? It is one thing for the country to wage war in order to defend its national borders. One will find little debate there. But should it intervene, as the United States has, in the affairs of other nations in the role of global policeman? That is a very different matter and one infinitely harder to justify in a democratic context. In such a situation, the fundamental questions of national identity and purpose are asked again and again with a certain relentless intensity-in marches and rallies, protest demonstrations, political pro-

nouncements, editorials, and political oratory. ~~ki",.t~-:l!' Consider the range of interventions the American military has un-

derqtken in recent decades: Vietnam, Granada, Lebanon, Panama, and the Persian Gulf. In the controversy that raged over each, the lines of division in public debate were drawn neither over different cost/benefit analyses of national economic interest nor over different assessments of national security. Rather, the public debate always centered on differing perspectives regarding America's role in the world community, and the different public philosophies that undergirded those perspectives. Put

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recently the Persian Gulf were about America too. In each case, the opposing interests of the larger culture war have been very much present and at play.

As noted in chapter 4, it is not that the moral epistemologies of either coalition need be directly linked by one position on the war or another. (It is worth noting that some Protestant dispensationalist Fundamentalists in the orthodox coalition did link the war in the Persian Gulf to Biblical prophesies of Armageddon, with Iraq as Babylon and Saddam Hussein as the successor to Nebuchadnezzar, but this was exceptional.) Rather, it is the competing public philosophies of the culture war (which, as we have observed, sometimes hold only loose affinities to these moral positions) that are at play.

One vision holds that America's extraordinary power entails· responsibility to intervene for the principles of good and fair play, through mediating disputes, deterring or thwarting the aggression of one nation against another, and holding regionat tyrants at bay. For one who is confident of America's essential goodness, it would seem only appropriate that American democratic institutions be encouraged abroad. A

290 THE FIELDS OF CONFLICT

strong military would be essential for these reasons alone; its use from time to time is simply one of the burdens of being a superpower. The chief opposing vision holds that a strong military represents a misuse of America's power and resources. As good as America may be, it has no right to impose its institutions or its way of life upon other nations. Meddling with the sovereignty of other natioi;is and regions hints too much of an unsavory, old-style imperialism. Besides, it is a singular injustice to commit America's considerable wealth toward its military, which can only deal with the management of the world's conflict, rather than toward alleviating social and economic inequality-the source, more often than not, of such conflict.

Clearly, the circumstances of American intervention greatly influence the appeal to one vision or the other. In the case of Vietnam, for example, the latter vision came to hold sway, and eventually forced the end of the war in defeat. In the Persian Gulf, the appeal to the former was virtually impossible to resist. The respective counter-visions were articulated, however, for the duration of both conflicts: in Vietnam, by those whose distrust of communism was uncompromising (including a preponderance of Evangelicals and conservative Catholics); in the Persian Gulf, by those whose distrust of American-sponsored violence was uncompromising (including the very vocal leadership of the mainline Protestant and Catholic denominations). In this way, the opposing interests and ideals of the culture war become part of the fabric of debate about American military involvement abroad.

A PARTING NOTE

As a parting observation, it is worth highlighting a fundamental feature of the contemporary cultural conflict, noted earlier in the abstract, but now-through this brief glimpse into the matter of American military intervention abroad, as well as through our reconnaissance into the other fields of conflict-amply illustrated. It is that the opposing moral visions at the heart of the culture war and the rhetoric that sustains them acquire something of a life of their own. True, the culture war is rooted in an ongoing realignment ofAmerican public culture and has become institutionalized chiefly through special-purpose organizations, denominations, political parties, and branches of government. The fundamental disagreements that characterize the culture war, we have seen, become even further aggravated by virtue of the technology of public discourse, the means by which disagreements are voiced in

public. In the end, however, the opposing moral visions become, as one would say in the tidy though ponderous jargon of social science, a realit;y std generis: a . realit;y muck larger th.an, and indeed autonomous from, the sum total of individuals and organizations th.at give expression to the conflict. These competing moral visions, and the rhetoric th.at sustains them, become the fi4ining forces of public life. Certainly there is a strong philosophical and sociological im- pulse toward moral and political consistency, such that people on one side of the cultural divide on one issue will remain on the same side for other issues. And yet we know at this point that the cultural dividethe overarching "binary opposition"-cuts differently on different issues, showing that an organization can maintain politically liberal positions on most issues while adopting moderate or conservative positions on others-and vice versa. These "exceptions to the rule" are common to every field of conflict, but their existence is ultimately irrelevant. However individuals or organizations align themselves on particular issues, they become subservient to, and if unwilling must struggle against, the dominating and almost irresistible categories and logic of the opposing visions and rhetoric of the culture war.

v

TOWARD RESOLUTION

12

Moral Pluralism and the

Democratic Ideal

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One might be tempte,d to say that the tensions created by the polarizing impulses in American public culture will quickly wane. The treason typically offered is grounded in the hunch th~t religiously based pplitical activism cannot be sustained for any length of time in a modern and forward-looking democracy.

Consider, for example, the dwindling public credibility of the Evangelicals. The titillating sexual scandals of the ministers Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart and the failed presidential campaign of Reverend Pat Robertson, televangelists all, in the late 1980s provided clear evidence for this conjecture. The discontinuation of the Fundamentalist Journal in December 1989 and the folding of the most prominent orthodox political organization of that decade, the Moral Majority, four_ months earlier, would also seem to confirm this notion. For one observer writing in the New Republic, the conclusion one could draw from the mounting evidence was plain. "Rarely in modern times," he wrote, "has a movement of such reputed potential self-destructed so suddenly. Free thinkers may want to reconsider their skepticism about divine intervention."2