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Is the culture war over?

Is the culture war over?

  • It's over. Liberals won.

    Votes: 7 53.8%

  • It's not over. Conservatives can still win this.

    Votes: 2 15.4%

  • I'm praying for a cataclysm. Time to start fresh.

    Votes: 4 30.8%
  • Total voters
    13
Amadeus

Amadeus

Chews the Cud
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Political Leaning
Very Liberal
It seems that America has shifted liberal, especially on social issues. From a liberal perspective, there's always room for improvement... but short of a cataclysm where society has to rebuild itself, is it safe to say the culture war is over? Seems that the heavy lifting is done, and its now all momentum.

What are your thoughts?
 
The march towards progress is not a war, it's an expectation of rational beings. The Egyptians were an improvement over the Babylonians, the Romans were an improvement over the Greeks, Christianity was an improvement over the Romans and so on and so forth. With every generation we live longer, we become more technologically advanced, we discard the old and unenlightened ways. Not everything about progress is necessarily good, but 1,000 years from now, we'll realize that social liberalism was definitely an improvement over what we had before. Liberal economics as known today? Not so much.
 
THe culture war will never be over as long as people think they are fighting it.
 
Gardener said:
THe culture war will never be over as long as people think they are fighting it.
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Maybe there was never a war and just people who thought they were fighting a war? In reality, they're fighting a naturally occurring progress.
 
The next "fight" if you want to call it that will probably be over whether corporations have duty towards social responsibility, social equity, and the general role of capitalism to look out for the least fortunate among us and other social concerns outside of government policy.

This will be a brutal fight I think as the end result will probably be a conceptual change in the role of capitalism in our society. Liberal groups are recognizing more and more that government enforced solutions are only so effective and are looking at alternatives and whether capitalism can be used as a tool for "the greater good"

At least this is the way it's looking among my very liberal friends who have a finger on the pulse of the community

I suspect given new tools by social media and the internet you are going to start seeing pinpoint and targeted messages to companies as the younger crowd is quickly losing faith in our political process to help social change. A lot of old ideas are being reevaluated to see if they can be used as tools. This I don't think is something that a lot of liberals will even realize they are doing but more of a subtle culture shift.
 
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Hatuey said:
Maybe there was never a war and just people who thought they were fighting a war? In reality, they're fighting a naturally occurring progress.
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Identity leads to conflight. Group identity leads to group conflict. Group identity based upon ideology leads to wars fought on that basis.

As soon as people opt out of this artificial left vs right paradigm, then they can see the acual issues. Until then, they are only soldiering.
 
If you look at society from a detached perspective, then yes, it's all very natural. There is no war. New and better ideas eventually replace old and irrelevant ones, as is the nature of collective organization and problem solving. The people on the 'frontlines' of those struggles see it as a war, as they have the most invested in societal progress and tend to fight the hardest for change. If no one fights, if everyone is indifferent, then nothing changes.
 
The only culture shift has been one of individualism/liberty/self governance to one in which the government is assigned authority to dictate what the culture will be. And it does seem that liberalism/progressivism/statism/leftism/political class is prevailing toward that end.
 
It is never over, as concepts and ideas are in an ever-changing flux, dependent on what a particular culture needs at any given point in time. Once a subset of ideas takes us to a point of unsustainability (or instability), a different subset will take hold, and we will move in a different direction.
 
lizzie said:
It is never over, as concepts and ideas are in an ever-changing flux, dependent on what a particular culture needs at any given point in time. Once a subset of ideas takes us to a point of unsustainability (or instability), a different subset will take hold, and we will move in a different direction.
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I agree, but a good idea generally gets better, not worse. Being accepting of gays has no downside or point of unsustainability, unless you're religious (and even then, it's below eating shellfish on the sin-o-meter).
 
Amadeus said:
I agree, but a good idea generally gets better, not worse. Being accepting of gays has no downside or point of unsustainability, unless you're religious (and even then, it's below eating shellfish on the sin-o-meter).
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Yeah, I was really referring more to the things that can cause fluctuations in economic stability long term, or major shifts in populations and natural resource consumption. To me, those are the biggies.
 
Amadeus said:
It seems that America has shifted liberal, especially on social issues. From a liberal perspective, there's always room for improvement... but short of a cataclysm where society has to rebuild itself, is it safe to say the culture war is over? Seems that the heavy lifting is done, and its now all momentum.

What are your thoughts?
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The problem is that most liberal policy items cost a lot of money raise the cost of production and reduce efficiency of the overall economy. As we already have a very large national debt and are competing with low cost economies with huge numbers of relatively well educated and disciplined but starving people liberal policies will overstretch society. Going in that direction is a fools game, though lots of voters love the honey.
 
Amadeus said:
It seems that America has shifted liberal, especially on social issues. From a liberal perspective, there's always room for improvement... but short of a cataclysm where society has to rebuild itself, is it safe to say the culture war is over? Seems that the heavy lifting is done, and its now all momentum.

What are your thoughts?
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No. The 'culture wars' aren't over and the 'heavy lifting' is not 'done'. Traditionalists are still strongly resisting social progress and marginalized groups are still working very hard to even be heard in our society. Beyond that, every generation develops a new idea of progress that the previous generation resists so the only way for this to ever be over is for humanity to become extinct.
 
Amadeus said:
It seems that America has shifted liberal, especially on social issues. From a liberal perspective, there's always room for improvement... but short of a cataclysm where society has to rebuild itself, is it safe to say the culture war is over? Seems that the heavy lifting is done, and its now all momentum.

What are your thoughts?
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The shift to social liberalism just over my lifetime has been nothing short of tectonic, whether it comes to minority rights, LGBT rights, social responsibility, respect for other religions, or the chimera of "American exceptionalism". I say that short of a true catastrophe - one that knocks out the internet worldwide - this trend will continue to grow and solidify.

As society shifts farther to the left, the more the right will shrink and become ever more hardened to their beliefs - and this is going to cause quite a bit of trouble over the years. But the left's embrace of multiculturalism is bearing fruit at long last - and it's driving the ever-more-lily-white right absolutely nuts.
 
Regardless of who wins the current battles, there are always new battles coming.
 
I think that success is the worst enemy of conservatism, the second that people don't have to worry about putting food on the tables and a roof over their head, the second that live becomes relatively easy, they stop working hard and start holding their hands out and that's what we've seen happen in the U.S. over the past 40 years. The standard of living for even the most destitute in America is far, far above most other nations on the planet. We have tons of money, lots of it borrowed from China, to throw around and now, people want more and more and more and they don't have to work for it. Conservatism is about hard work and making things better for yourself and your family and those around you but we have no conservative party in America. Those religious liberals running the GOP don't count, they wouldn't know conservatism if it bit them. We really have nowhere else to go and now we have a bunch of lazy, self-satisfied liberals who don't have to worry about the essentials, now they just want to run everyone else's lives.
 
Amadeus said:
It seems that America has shifted liberal, especially on social issues. From a liberal perspective, there's always room for improvement... but short of a cataclysm where society has to rebuild itself, is it safe to say the culture war is over? Seems that the heavy lifting is done, and its now all momentum.

What are your thoughts?
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It might be but I have doubts. I have a sneaking suspicion social conservatism is going to see a resurgence coming from unexpected circles, I'll leave it at that.

PS. Interesting data: according to the CDC, both the abortion and the teen pregnancy rates are at all time lows UNDER THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION. Sociologists credit the influence of MTV. Whoda thunk?
 
Smeagol said:
It might be but I have doubts. I have a sneaking suspicion social conservatism is going to see a resurgence coming from unexpected circles, I'll leave it at that.

PS. Interesting data: according to the CDC, both the abortion and the teen pregnancy rates are at all time lows UNDER THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION. Sociologists credit the influence of MTV. Whoda thunk?
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I think they will go underground for maybe a generation and then rise up with a new set of leaders better adapted to today's social reality. I see more and more that these groups are creating alternative cultures to preserve their heritage.
 
Glen Contrarian said:
The shift to social liberalism just over my lifetime has been nothing short of tectonic, whether it comes to minority rights, LGBT rights, social responsibility, respect for other religions, or the chimera of "American exceptionalism". I say that short of a true catastrophe - one that knocks out the internet worldwide - this trend will continue to grow and solidify.

As society shifts farther to the left, the more the right will shrink and become ever more hardened to their beliefs - and this is going to cause quite a bit of trouble over the years. But the left's embrace of multiculturalism is bearing fruit at long last - and it's driving the ever-more-lily-white right absolutely nuts.
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I've actually seen people make the argument (not here, yet, thankfully) that right-wing violence, such as the case of Anders Brevik (the guy who killed all those kids in Norway), is actually the fault of "the left" because of the advancement of socially liberal policies. If those damn liberals wouldn't stop being all inclusive and stuff, then right-wing nutbags like Brevik wouldn't feel the urge to go kill 50+ kids.

Seriously.
 
Society progresses by taking 2 steps forward and 1 step backward. If we could eliminate the backward steps, we'd progress twice as fast.
 
AlbqOwl said:
The only culture shift has been one of individualism/liberty/self governance to one in which the government is assigned authority to dictate what the culture will be. And it does seem that liberalism/progressivism/statism/leftism/political class is prevailing toward that end.
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Oh, bull****.
 
Glen Contrarian said:
The shift to social liberalism just over my lifetime has been nothing short of tectonic, whether it comes to minority rights, LGBT rights, social responsibility, respect for other religions, or the chimera of "American exceptionalism". I say that short of a true catastrophe - one that knocks out the internet worldwide - this trend will continue to grow and solidify.

As society shifts farther to the left, the more the right will shrink and become ever more hardened to their beliefs - and this is going to cause quite a bit of trouble over the years. But the left's embrace of multiculturalism is bearing fruit at long last - and it's driving the ever-more-lily-white right absolutely nuts.
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When society shifts left or right, the definitions of left and right shift accordingly.
 
For the most part its over....although there will always be a few extremely vocal right-wing extremists who will never give up. America has been behind many other nations of the world as far as personal freedoms go, which is sad....America is not always quick to get it right, but eventually does.
 
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