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Culture Wars

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Culture Wars
Cultural wars have been prevalent in societies where there exist differences in beliefs, cultural settings and more specifically a way of life. They are prevalent in the American society today, as seen in recent conflicts over certain issues such as gay marriages and abortion. As a part of my explanation to the aliens, there is a need to go back in history and assess how the differences rose and how they have influenced the modern day perceptions of the key national matters. In the US and the UK, the cultural wars are commonly as a result of the differences in the settings of the traditionalists and the conversationalists. In essence, the differences in the conservative and the progressive values has been the main bone of contention between these two different groups. The root of the differences can be traced to way back in the 1920s, when the rural and urban cultures had an evident conflict. There then followed immigration of people from different continents into America for several decades, causing further culture wars. The differences have always taken a center stage in the various debates especially those touching the issues of the history of public schools and the delivery of the science curriculum in the US and the UK. The realignment and the polarization that took place in the 1990s played a huge role in transforming the modern politics, economics as well as religion.
In his 1991 publication, Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America, James Hunter touches on a couple of issues that have since shaped the destiny of the US to be specific. According to him, culture wars date back to the 1960s. Key Issues that the publication looked at were: gun politics, abortion, and alienation of the church from the state machinery as well the issues of privacy of the American citizens. For each of the items, there were two opposing sides signaling the axis of the culture wars in each case. According to Hunter, the American society had divided into two main groups, the progressives, who were mostly secular and the traditionalists who were mostly religious (Hartman, 2015). He also presented the fact that conservatives had previously had disagreements amongst each other over religious beliefs.
Cultural wars have been because of the warring groups in each case. There has always been a group that believes in the positive aspects of the issues at hand. In the other hand, the other group looks at the gloomy side of the issue at hand. Racial, religious, nationality or social class does not drive these two groups, as argued by James Hunter, motives; they are driven by the ideological worldviews.
Today, culture wars are more than mere isolated wars over policy issues. They represent deeper disagreements among different groups over pertinent matters such as the role of religion today, the role of art and the national ideals that are passed on to the next generations. In addition, these culture wars tend to have a link in the minds of individuals, implying that they are interconnected battles of a more comprehensive competition between rival ideas of morality and freedom. Today’s culture wars are waged over if culture is political and if it is the case, how people ought to express it as such. They have gone beyond the religious, political and academic institutions as it were before. They often result to continuous debates rather than simple resolutions (Rosenberg, 2014).
References
Hartman, A. (2015). A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Rosenberg, A. (2014). The culture wars are back, and this time, everyone can win. Retrieved from < https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/act-four/wp/2014/10/08/the-culture-wars-are-back-and-this-time-everyone-can-win/>

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