Why the Culture War Matters
Political solutions will become impossible when a people disagrees on fundamental questions
One of the most haunting paragraphs I have read comes from Richard Weaver’s Ideas Have Consequences:
That it does not matter what a man believes is a statement heard on every side today. The statement carries a fearful implication. …what [a man] believes tells him what the world is for. How can men who disagree about what the world is for agree about any of the minutiae of daily conduct? The statement really means that it does not matter what a man believes so long as he does not take his beliefs seriously. ...But suppose he does take his beliefs seriously? Then what he believe places a stamp upon his experience, and he belongs to a culture, which is a league founded on exclusive principles.
The situation has changed somewhat since Weaver wrote those words in the late 1940s. It’s not as common today to encounter the idea that it does not matter what a man believes. The subjectivism and secularism that dominated the intelligentsia for much of the 20th century has reached its inevitable end point, which is the creation of a new religion, nominally secular but every bit as evangelical as the Christianity it tried, but failed, to supplant. If you doubt that this is true, try to express the opinion that it doesn’t matter if you believe “the science,” or in absolute individual autonomy, or whatever ridiculous iteration of social justice ideology happens to be popular at the moment. You will be denounced not as merely mistaken, but as evil, a sinner against the new religion, its priesthood, and its canon of victim-saints.
Since by their nature religious beliefs are taken seriously, the creation of a new religion has led to the rise of a new culture, one that rejects the foundations of traditional culture while attempting to hold on to certain of its creations. Weaver called a culture “a league founded on exclusive principles,” and even in our culture’s embrace of diversity and inclusion we see the exclusiveness of culture persist. Again, see what happens when a person opposes, or even questions, the push for open-ended inclusion. That person is immediately excluded, because the culture of inclusion demands it. To paraphrase Roger Scruton, when everyone is included, it is vital to exclude the excluder.
Weaver explained that to become eligible for membership in any culture, “one must be able to say the right words about the right things, which signifies in turn that one must be a man of correct sentiments.” But, of course, which sentiments are correct depends ultimately on what a culture values, and given the vast chasm between what different factions of Americans believe, this brings us back to Weaver’s haunting question: “How can men who disagree about what the world is for agree about any of the minutiae of daily conduct?”
This is, I believe, the most pressing question we face today, far more important than figuring out who to support in the next election. And that is not to deny the importance of politics, it is merely to point out that without a certain level of common ground, of agreement about what the world is for, politics becomes impossible.
History, in fact, shows that even with broad common ground, maintaining civic peace is difficult. In his farewell address, George Washington pointed out to Americans that, “With slight shades of difference, you have the same religion, manners, habits, and political principles. You have in a common cause fought and triumphed together; the independence and liberty you possess are the work of joint counsels, and joint efforts of common dangers, sufferings, and successes.” He then spent the rest of that address warning against division. In his second inaugural address, given at the close of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln observed that both the North and the South “read the same Bible and pray to the same God,” but still they killed 750,000 of each other’s soldiers during the war.
Without question, even with a common religion and political provenance, there were and have always been significant cultural differences between the different parts of America. But this only reinforces the necessity of answering the question about how people without a common religion or agreement on political principles live peaceably together. What are the prospects for political stability between people who revere the Cross, and those who ostentatiously defile it in the name of sexual perversity; or between people who claim that individual autonomy extends to questions of sexuality and gender and those who know the truth; or between people with drastically different definitions of freedom and justice?
The traditional answers to these questions are no longer viable. Libertarians would say, well, just depoliticize society and give everyone the liberty to live as they see fit. But this ignores the fact that liberty is defined culturally and according to the values that people hold in common (and pervasively misunderstanding the cultural roots of liberty is one reason why libertarians are discordant among themselves, and a gazingstock to everyone else).
Nor is pluralism, the idea of respecting and giving room for differences, a satisfactory solution any longer, for pluralism, too, requires a common commitment to certain notions about toleration, human dignity, and the search for truth. Pluralism, no less than liberty, is defined by culture, and is similarly circumscribed by it. The limit to pluralism is met when it permits ideas that undermine its own cultural foundation. “A culture is like an organic creation,” Weaver would later explain, “in that its constitution cannot tolerate more than a certain amount of what is foreign or extraneous. Certain outside values may be assimilated through transformation or reworking, but fundamentally unless a culture can maintain its own right to its own choices—its own inclusions and exclusions—it will cease.” Where widely divergent cultures clash, there can be no meaningful talk of pluralism.
Increasingly, it’s difficult to see a resolution to this predicament that doesn’t involve one culture’s defeat at the hands of the other. It might be argued that this is an unduly pessimistic interpretation of the political and cultural landscape, but it’s not. Hysterical pessimism is no more useful than hysterical optimism, but it is nevertheless true that there is a degree of difference, particularly on fundamental questions, beyond which peoples lose their ability to get along. And it seems further true that if Americans haven’t reached that point, they’re not far off.
If this doesn’t fill people of a conservative bent with the warm and fuzzies, at least it clarifies the picture. The culture war is not some sideshow to larger issues, as some would have us believe. Given that not just peace, but faith, virtue, and truth are at stake, there is no larger issue.
As the defender of these traditional values, the conservative, wrote Russell Kirk, “is become our guide, whether he likes it or not, and regardless of the will of the crowd.” The future depends on the conservative doing his duty. “If he is unequal to the task,” Kirk warned, “the clock will strike, and Faustus will be damned.”
Agree: there need to be some common values. Vivek Ramaswamy is emphasizing this in his campaign, and James Lindsay is starting to dip his toes into defining what the minimal set of shared values is.
The situation, of course, is far worse than disagreement, although given how fundamental the areas of disagreement are, that would be bad enough.
Post-modernist and neo-Marxists view the fundamental Western beliefs as creating a power structure to favor white, heterosexual, non-disabled men. So, I agree with you it is hard to see ultimate agreement.
Until lately, you could say there was agreement on the need to avoid violence and respect the outcome of the Democratic process, but now that seems lost. There is resorting to violence, and both sides say there are legal decisions they would not enforce: rulings on abortion on one side and gun rights on the other. Although both these issues can be compromised on, it's hard to see deeper ones, like the foundations of knowledge, not leading to inevitable problems.
Challenge accepted. Another good one.