Culture wars: our cross to bear, here and everywhere we go

By BILL CHAISSON
A recent exchange of letters in our “Readers’ Forum” section brought to light a local outbreak of the “culture wars.” The exchange is ostensibly about the pros and cons of the politics of Hobby Lobby’s owners; no one is arguing that the store doesn’t have affordable, diverse, and plentiful merchandise. In the culture wars that is all beside the point.

Rather than naming the letter writers, they can be Mr. Dislike and Mr. Like. In his first letter Mr. Dislike wrote “I’m fairly certain that their market research included not only a financial prospectus, but also community analysis to determine whether this setting would receive their business favorably.” Hidden in the polite term “community analysis” is the presumption that Hobby Lobby would somehow count the number of religious conservatives in a region before moving. As they installed quite a large store in Ithaca, New York while I lived there, I doubt this. Ithaca is an almost hilariously progressive college town where the Unitarian church is packed and the Catholic elementary school just closed.

Mr. Dislike then proceeds to the culture clash, which is that Hobby Lobby does not allow their employees to include access to birth control or abortion in their health insurance plans. This he attributes to the owners “‘personal’ religious superstition.”

Mr. Like on the other hand is grateful for the 50 new and decently-paying jobs that the store will provide. But he quickly moves on to the culture discussion. He calls the religious beliefs of the owners “ideological foundations” and attributes to it a “philosophical approach” when it deals with the community. He notes that their convictions can cost them money; they are not open on Sundays, for example. Mr. Like congratulates the company for refusing to pander to the likes of Mr. Dislike.

All of this is quite hopeless. The two people represent two camps who are simply talking past each other. Mr. Like represents the so-called traditionalists or conservatives who believe “truth is rooted in an authority outside the self,” as James Davison Hunter put it. Hunter’s 1991 book “Culture Wars” introduced the term and concept to modern American conversation. The progressives believe that “freedom is predominant,” especially freedom for groups traditionally subjugated by tradition.

There are holes in the arguments of both Mr. Like and Mr. Dislike, but these don’t matter much because there is no middle ground and no possibility of consensus or compromise. Mr. Dislike dismisses religion as superstition and Mr. Like equates it with an ideology and a philosophy. 

In the context of their debate on abortion, religion is none of these things, but is much more akin to law. If your religion insists on the existence of a spirit that enters the zygote at the moment of conception and all subsequent rules are based on that belief, then there is no room for discussion, so that isn’t much of an ideology or philosophy. Labeling religion as superstition leaves no room for discussion either.

This refusal to accommodate one another’s view is the cause of the war and it is also a sad rejection of the vision of the 18th century Enlightenment that led to the founding of the United States, among other projects. 

As James Willick put it in a May “Wall Street Journal” opinion piece that revisited Hunter and his ideas, today’s progressives are ostensibly dedicated to “expanding universal equality and dignity, but without a foundational source of authority outside reason and science.”

It is odd that Mr. Like should claim that science has definitively shown that a fetus is a “distinct human life.” Mr. Dislike in his rejoining letter (below) jettisons science to claim that defining personhood is not a matter for science, but for our philosophy. And yet the philosophy of Mr. Like (and the Hobby Lobby owners) is their religion, which already has a definition of personhood and doesn’t need science to back it up. For Mr. Like personhood is bestowed by a higher power. For Mr. Dislike it is not.

We are happy and actually honored to publish these cultural exchanges in the Eagle Times because we would like to be a place where all views can be expressed and where readers can take them in in private. Mr. Like and Mr. Dislike remained civil albeit a tad strident. No accusations were made, no character assassinations carried out. Instead the strengths and weaknesses of their positions were laid out for all to see and consider. In a culture war, that might be the best we can hope for.

 

Bill Chaisson is the editor of the Eagle Times and is a conscientious objector in the Culture Wars.