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American Wars of Religion
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19527 |
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BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
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11 / 1991 |
2,973 Words |
| Author
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Robert Royal
Robert Royal is a vice president at the Center for Ethics and
Public Policy. |
CULTURE WARS
The Struggle to Define America
James Davison Hunter
New York, Basic Books
400 pp., $24.95
Moral arguments are interminable, which is why every sane culture in the history of the world has simply indoctrinated its young in certain patterns of behavior. Even self-evident--to already indoctrinated adults--moral truths such as prohibitions against lying, stealing, and murder could never be taught to children, as any parent knows, by so-called rational arguments. First, parents demand the good behavior; only then are they ready to enter into discussion about why the behavior is good.
For some time now, distinct groups in American society have been trying to socialize children in radically different ways. Lying, stealing, and murder are still commonly deplored, but sexual behavior, educational choices, and the origins and purposes of human life are deeply disputed. The difference in educational approaches reflect a moral and religious gulf between the various camps in these controversies that is both wide and profound. And when the issues involve decisions in the political realm, these deeply held private views inevitably turn into rapid political factions.
As the Founding Fathers of the United States knew, factions are the great danger in democratic republics. Factionalism is an ineradicable tendency of human nature. Since faction's causes are beyond human remedy (except by suppressing freedom), the founders concentrated in their writings (notably in the Federalist Papers) and in their crafting of institutions (checks and balances instead of "mere parchment barriers" against tyranny) on minimizing faction's effects. The result has been the untidy, yet stable, form of representative government that the United States has enjoyed for two hundred years.
In light of this success in establishing civil procedures to resolve disputes, the emergence of what James Davison Hunter, a professor of sociology and religious studies at the University of Virginia, calls "culture wars" is a sad commentary on the current condition of American public life. Our disagreements over the meaning and future direction of America have become so violent, Hunter thinks, that they are better characterized by military metaphors than by images drawn from domestic civil life. The philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre has quipped that contemporary politics are simply
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