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William Wleklinski
Guest
4/12/2004
21:35:16
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 Subject: Winning the Culture Wars at City Journal
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City Journal, I think, has long been one of the best neoconservative publications, with its long, erudite articles by people like Roger Scruton and Theodore Dalrymple.
Two issues ago (fall 2003), CJ published "We're Not Losing the Culture Wars Anymore" by Brian Anderson. The latest issue (spring '04) has "It's Morning After in America" by Kay Hymowitz with a similar theme. The latter concludes:
"With their genius for problem solving and compromise, pragmatic Americans have seen the damage that their decades-long fling with the sexual revolution and the transvaluation of traditional values wrought. And now, without giving up the real gains, they are earnestly knitting up their unraveled culture. It is a moment of tremendous promise."
Do these articles persuade anyone? What were those "real gains" to which Hymowitz refers?
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Jim Kalb
Administrator
4/13/2004
14:52:07
| RE: Winning the Culture Wars at City Journal
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The Hymowitz article gives some interesting statistics and maybe there's something that can be built on. The trend toward more strait-laced conduct looks rather soft and unfocused though. Hymowitz and the people she writes about want to have it both ways: "without giving up the real gains, they are earnestly knitting up their unraveled culture." Everything's still a consumer good, you can do whatever you want, but tastes have changed so there's more of a tendency to choose something a bit old-fashioned.
In the Republic Plato writes about the attempts of democratic man to stabilize his way of life and give it a certain balance and decency. That kind of attempt to make things more settled without reference to anything beyond choice, comfort, utility and so on doesn't stand up, at least not in the long run. Life is more serious and real than that. That's why in the Republic democratic man becomes tyrannical man. I wonder how much of a reduction in the divorce rate will really be achieved through good intentions and the desire to avoid the last generation's mistakes.
I had read the Anderson piece and wasn't at all impressed. South Park, Andrew Sullivan, and cynical libertines who like the idea of force don't represent victory in the culture wars. It really made me wonder about the magazine, although I agree that a lot of the pieces are quite good. The more general point that the internet, talk radio etc. are breaking up the liberal monopoly on information and discussion is a good one and traddish types need to press the opportunity. The internet isn't a vehicle for tradition but ideas can be presented and confronted, and that's necessary too.
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William Wleklinski
Guest
4/13/2004
18:39:23
| RE: Winning the Culture Wars at City Journal
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I haven't read most of City Journal's articles on our wars on terror and Iraq. As they have published Victor Davis Hanson, my guess is that CJ fervently supports both, if maybe without illusions about planting democracy in the Middle East (see George Will's recent piece in CJ).
Anyway, if neoconservatives passionately support these wars, does it then make greater sense for them to publish "upbeat" articles on the culture? In other words, to the extent that our culture is sound, or at least recovering from catastrophe, we are further confirmed in our belief in, our affection for, the contemporary West, and are more immediately willing to support military action in its defense against enemies who find us corrupt and decadent.
WW
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Jim Kalb
Administrator
4/13/2004
19:05:32
| RE: Winning the Culture Wars at City Journal
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You're right, it's all a package, and one effect of war is that everyone rallies 'round the flag.
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Mark Richardson
Guest
4/16/2004
04:59:02
| RE: Winning the Culture Wars at City Journal
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The new "right wing" media refuses to recognise that there has been any unravelling in Western societies. The idea is that we've got individual freedom, nothing could be better, we've got to spread it elsewhere, and if you object then you're on the side of the enemy.
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