{"id":134,"date":"2012-11-30T19:02:40","date_gmt":"2012-11-30T19:02:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/davidtrend.com\/?p=134"},"modified":"2016-11-22T09:10:53","modified_gmt":"2016-11-22T09:10:53","slug":"a-culture-divided","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidtrend.com\/?p=134","title":{"rendered":"A Culture Divided: America’s Struggle for Unity (Paradigm, 2009)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Worries about a \u201cdivided\u201d America are no secret. \"\"<\/a>In the wake of several evenly divided election campaigns and polls showing vast public disagreement on vital social issues, fears are arising that the once \u201cunited\u201d states are being riven apart by conflicting views on issues like gay marriage, immigration, and the war in Iraq. As a recent report from the Pew Center for the People and the Press put it, \u201cThe red states get redder and the blue states get bluer, and the political map of the United States takes on the coloration of the Civil War.\u201dA lengthy debate on the subject has been taking place in American society for much of the past two decades, touched off by a handful of books published in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The most influential of these were Alan Bloom\u2019s The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy<\/em> and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students<\/em>, and E.D Hirsch\u2019s Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs To Know<\/em> in 1987.\u00a0Both books argued that America had been weakened by a declining cultural values, specifically by the abandonment by schools of the great books and traditions of Western Thought.<\/p>\n

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These debates were summarized in James Jefferson Hunter\u2019s 1991 book Culture Wars<\/em>. Hunter\u2019s book, whose title gave the conflicts a name, asserted that a new and expansive discontent had taken over the country. \u201cThe contemporary culture war is not just an expression of different \u2018opinions\u2019 or \u2018attitudes\u2019 on this or that issue, like abortion,\u201d Hunter wrote. \u201cThe culture war emerges over fundamentally different conceptions of moral authority, over different ideas and beliefs about truth, the good, obligation to one another, the nature of community, and so on.\u201d\u00a0Several years later, Hunter warned the controversies might even trigger violent conflict.\u00a0With the dawn of the 2000s the culture wars moved from the margins of academic discourse to the center of mainstream debate and concern. Search the term \u201cculture war\u201d at the Harvard University library and you\u2019ll come up with 1308 entries. The Library of Congress posts over 10,000 books with titles like Culture Wars, Culture War? Beyond the Culture Wars, Is There a Culture War?, Culture Warrior,<\/em> etc.<\/p>\n

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A Culture Divided<\/em> explores both the symptoms and causes of these contemporary divides in the United States, illustrating how differences of perspective and opinion have persisted throughout the nation\u2019s history\u2013\u2013from the earliest days of the revolution to the most recent events in international diplomacy. A Culture Divided<\/em> takes the somewhat contradictory position that the divided character of the American nation is both a curse and a blessing, giving rise to some of the nation\u2019s most vexing social and political problems, but at the same time imbuing the United States with a freshness and vitality that have kept its values relevant\u2013\u2013or at least potentially so. <\/em>In doing this the book makes an argument for increased civic involvement at a time when people often feel overwhelmed and powerless in the face of big government and multinational corporations. Looking to recent American history, A Culture Divided <\/em>discusses the ways that small pockets of activism and individual acts of political participation become the building blocks of social change and social betterment.<\/p>\n

Obviously this can be a tricky business. Faced with difficulties and problems\u2013\u2013what many politicians euphemistically call \u201cchallenges\u201d\u2013\u2013it takes effort to maintain a positive outlook. A Culture Divided<\/em> engages this task by taking a critical look at many of the social conditions and political forces that mitigate against democracy and unity. Barack Obama may have inspired the nation with an inaugural mantra that \u201cWe Are One,\u201d but no leader can wave a magic wand of change over a people with so many historical disagreements.\u00a0Certainly big questions remain unanswered in America\u2019s divided culture. But great possibilities exist as well. Perhaps more than any other country, the U.S. has demonstrated an ability to adapt and change throughout its history. Today America finds itself it a unique moment in its evolving democratic experiment. Will the United States rise to meet this challenge? Taking up the familiar refrain to \u201cthink globally and act locally,\u201d A Culture Divided <\/em>argues that causes are only lost when people fail to take action.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Worries about a \u201cdivided\u201d America are no secret. In the wake of several evenly divided election campaigns and polls showing vast public disagreement on vital social issues, fears are arising that the once \u201cunited\u201d states are being riven apart by conflicting views on issues like gay marriage, immigration, and the war in Iraq. As a … <\/p>\n

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