15 Observations on the New Phase in Cultural Conflict

they did, with terrifying impunity. Above all during these decades, social priorities in America and much of the world seemed to shift in the same direction: from the individual to the group; from private rights to public results; from discovering ideals to championing them; from attacking institutions to founding them; from customizing down to sca

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In a casual aside, Duke sociologist Keiran Healy offered a simple but terrifying observation.*

Culture has changed fundamentally.

It used to be the ballast of our world.

Now it creates chaos.

We've been accused variously of trying to "appeal to all of [our] bases" and of not taking a definitive stand on hot button issues because we "have no backbone." Perhaps this may be true...perhaps we are guilty as charged. But perhaps it is also true that the world today is too divided by petty, inconsequential "culture war

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For those growing into adulthood during most of the twentieth century, therefore, the backdrop to life was the loss of faith in coherent systems of thought and morality. Sophisticated people knew they were supposed to rebel against authority, reject old certainties, and liberate themselves from hidebound customs and prejudices. Artists rebelled aga... See more

Which brings us back to the question of traditionalism and dynamism, and their potential interaction: if you have had a cultural revolution that cleared too much ground, razed too many bastions and led to a kind of cultural debasement and forgetting, you probably need to go backward, or least turn that way for recollection, before you can hope to g... See more