This really captures the central problem for the left, the right and society as a whole.

Your values conflict with those of society as a whole, which you see as based on injustice. Likewise, the Christian right sees a society based on immorality. So you both share the difficulty of trying to adapt while maintaining your integrity.

But more importantly, you both also share the goal of transforming society into something more in line with your values, which would make all these morally compromising issues go away.

The problem is, of course, the rest of us who aren't necessarily interesting in having our culture changed to suit you or the Christian right. I mean, I agree with feminism and even Christianity on a lot of levels, but at the same time, I'm not interested in spending my life feeling guilty about liking sports or spending it in self-loathing because I like sex. If feminists and Christians want to do that, that's fine. Have fun with that. But it's really annoying when either group starts trying to put pressure on the whole of society to do the same.

What I'd like to figure out, is how we can have a society where everyone can live in the kind of social, cultural environment they want to live in, instead of constantly engaging in absolutely unresolvable conflicts over what the national cultural environment is going to be.

It used be that every state, every locality, was in some sense its own mini-culture, but the modern problem is that culture is nationalized or even internationalized by mass media and ever more powerful and invasive centralized government and corporate structures. This is a recipe for cultural conflict because it means that there's in the end going to be only one homogenized dominant culture and every individual culture is going to want that to reflect their beliefs. So they are all going to fight tooth and nail to make sure it does.

That, I think, was in part the original reason for local control as envisioned by the original American Constititution because local control accomodates cultural diversity and America was already a very culturally diverse place at its founding.

His argument sounds like the opposite of any kind of fundamentalism to me.

I'm not a feminist because I want to force Amish or Hasidic women to live another lifestyle. I simply want to make sure that there are laws to allow their 18 year old children to chose another one if they so desire.

"Consciousness raising" is what I think you're getting into here, John. That's about culture change, and it's an eternal struggle, one he's addressing it in his comment. Everyone's allowed to try consciousness raising to alter culture in a society with freedom of speech. Some are very successsful at it. Others get so shrill that they end up working at cross-purposes to their agenda, getting blow back effects from those they are trying to reach.

And I should add that typically, you cannot force culture change by law without being ready to accept tremendous blowback consequences.

I think he's right to point out that "live and let live" is a very interesting underlying concept of "the American experiment."

If you read his piece, he mentions that he feels guilty about his increasing sports addiction. That's what my comment was based on.

In the comment about self-loathing over sex, I WAS refering to fundamentalist Christians.

In the piece above, he also notes how fundamentalist Christians are basically in the same boat as feminists in the sense of living in the culture they abhor.

It used be that every state, every locality, was in some sense its own mini-culture, but the modern problem is that culture is nationalized or even internationalized by mass media and ever more powerful and invasive centralized government and corporate structures. This is a recipe for cultural conflict because it means that there's in the end going to be only one homogenized dominant culture and every individual culture is going to want that to reflect their beliefs. So they are all going to fight tooth and nail to make sure it does.

The irony here of course is that the great social revolutions of the past, ones which no liberal can reasonably say were wrong, were in many ways impositions by the central government over local norms and culture.  Does anyone think that the racial and sexual progress in American history, going back to the Civil War, really, would have happened if all localities were able to set their own standards?  Would we really want a country where people can be left alone to practice bigotry, in the name of preserving local culture?  That's essentially what southern racists yammering on about states' rights were saying.

The thing is, cultural conflict, whether between a national government and a locality, or between opposing forces at the national level, is not a bad thing.  You wouldn't want a society where change was totally unfettered.  That's what revolution entails, and it usually isn't pretty.  Similarly, you wouldn't want a society that was totally unable to change.  That's called stagnation, and it stifles all that is good in life.

What you want is a creative tension between these two forces, one that allows enough flexibility for change, but changes in a way that doesn't throw away what is good about the status quo.  There is always tension and people don't agree where to draw the line.  But the purpose of politics is to resolve that question.  So the answer is not to disengage from the battle because you don't like the way things are now.  The answer is to battle on, and set your expectations such that you understand that society won't ever reach its ideal, but it might just get a bit closer due to your efforts.

The irony here of course is that the great social revolutions of the past, ones which no liberal can reasonably say were wrong, were in many ways impositions by the central government over local norms and culture. Does anyone think that the racial and sexual progress in American history, going back to the Civil War, really, would have happened if all localities were able to set their own standards?

Exactly right. The culture wars are in part the direct consequence of changes that liberals made to the structure of government in order to achieve certain ends. I agree those changes, that infringment on local culture, was necessary at the time, and in the narrow case of race relations justified in part because not all the people existing within that local culture were being allowed to have a hand in shaping it or even fully participate in it. So that's really different in a sense then what we're talking about today.

Nor am I saying that there hasn't always been a national culture of some sort, although at the time the Constitution was written you would have found people far more likely to refer to themselves as a Virginian or a New Yorker or a Pennsylvanian, than as an American. National identity was not nearly as well established.

And of course we need a national culture to bind all the locals together and that's why the intervention on race relations makes sense to me, because it was really affirming the basic broad national culture that we started with that grants individuals certain rights and the free will to persue the life they choose, including their associations (blacks should be able to associate with whites)

But now with feminism and Christian fundamentalism, attitudes about violence, racial attitudes and whole lot of other things -- we're talking about insisting on a national culture on a very personal level.

Everything from how people raise their kids -- spanking or not -- to divisions of household duties to attitudes toward sex -- absolutely every fricken personal thing is a matter of national politics.

The Constitution deliberately left the development of any laws governing personal life to the states and localities because they would be closer to the people they represent and therefore closer to culture they represent.

Of course I don't support bigotry that denies people choice or access to participate. That's at the root of the framework for this nation.

But it seems to me with politics today, we're going far beyond that in the nationalization of culture.

My ever-growing sports obsession, to name just one example, is a source of guilt, even shame. It feels like some secret endorsement of the patriarchy. Likewise my increasing desire for what my wife and I have taken to calling a Modicum of Bourgeois Comfort.

You have got to be f***ing kidding me. Please tell me you're a figment of Rush Limbaugh's imagination; you can't possibly be real.

If you are real, for the love of God do the left a favor and stop writing political essays until you've learned how to boil the preening, inauthentic, wimpy, submissive sniveling after approval out of it. There's nothing more revolting than someone incessantly apologizing for imaginary sins in the hope of winning little moral gold stars.

"All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out." - I.F. Stone

I think he's right to point out that "live and let live" is a very interesting underlying concept of "the American experiment."

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

So you've got a trap. You can "live by your principles" and drop out and join a commune and thereby completely remove yourself from the levers of power that might alter all the unjust structures that rule society, or you can live in the world with the inevitable complications and compromises that entails and risk being called a hypocrite or a sellout.

That's a self-induced trap, a natural result of the way we are raised to believe that there is always a higher authority that knows what's best for us. Baloney. We, all of us, if we bother to think about it, know what's best for ourselves. Even a lizard in the desert knows that much.

It's possible to live (largely) by ones' principles and remain in society. It does require an effort, though, to buck the societal affluvium. Mainly it involves controlling what comes into ones' head. Avoid GIGO (garbage in, garbage out). That definitely means no teevee and probably no newspapers, mainstream weeklies and other such pap. Instead seek out the reality of nature, and the honesty of the web, rather than the common bottom-dwelling spectacles of civilization. The objective is to live in a world of ones own making, with as little compromise as possible, inside of the larger world which we needn't abandon.

I enjoyed a twenty year army career and largely operated by my standards. It brought me some sticky situations but my standards were true and I survived. As Frank Sinatra sang: If you can make it there you can make it anywhere. And nobody has ever called me a hypocrite or a sellout--that's a bogus fear. (Fear, that's another thing to be avoided.)

"We are all educated thus to be sons of [William] Tell. The air is full of invisible bolts. Every path but your own is the path of fate. Keep on your own track, then."--Henry David Thoreau

ecotourism
WeGoEco.com

There's reason why martyrs were stoned...

My boyfriend makes a show on fantasy football for a living and he has a lot of guilt moments about that same sports complicity. I find his feelings a bit odd, but then again, I don't know much about sports, so I suspect that it's far more sexist a culture than I'm aware. Anyway, glad to hear that it's a concern shared by some sports fans---I think the more fans who speak out about these concerns, the better the chances of getting those concerns addressed.

The monk's use of peaceful noncooperation demonstrates the usefulness of their religious viewpoint which, while apolitical is also profoundly grounded in a sense of justice. Their moral courage is undoubtedly derived from the fact that they do not have material attachments in the world. Death is nothing for them to fear. Their strong sense of justice moves them to put themselves in harms way demonstrating to the army they can't have the one thing the army needs which is the fear of the population. The monks defiance has been utterly peaceful and there are not enough guns to defeat them. It is precisely because they have no fear that their actions are so powerful---and disturbing to the junta in Burma as well as encouraging to the citizens. Hopefully, their example will instruct others around the globe regarding the power of peaceful noncooperation.

I don't think it is a very big chunk at all of the left. I think it is a very small, shrinking even, isolated, completely disconnected group of intellectual types. It's the gloomy/whining left. There has always been this strain on the left and it is so foreign to the average person's thinking the right uses this kind of thing to make people think it is common on the left when it isn't. Actually, I'd say it is smaller than ever at this point in history because the left has been growing despite these kinds of atypical viewpoints. But those who hold these views are often in positions to make their views, however, out of step, well known. Their heart's in the right place (usually), but they don't live in the real world because they don't have to and that makes it all the easier to hold on to this kind of thinking.

instructs believers to "be in the world, not of the world."

I think an important translation is needed here.
I would interpret this to say,
"live in the present, not in the past or future"

The Firesign Theater has a phrase to speak to this,
“how can you be in two places at once when
you are not any where at all."

-----------------------------------------------
Today, are we searching for I deals or Ideals?
-Thinking

There always has been a fight between the federation and the members who remember the confederation myths. Without some commonality there is no federation.

States Rights in the past was about race, in the past 30 plus years what has happened is the right has pushed back to the states things they can control at the state level and to the federal government those things states have done well to take control of this things.

Politics is a real contact sport to be played that affects your life; spectator sports today are a diversion and a form of drug to distract the public!
-----------------------------------------------
Today, are we searching for I deals or Ideals?
-Thinking

Oh get over yourself. I was having some fun with him. My point was that there's this anti-sex stereotype that is the product of anti-feminist propaganda more than reality. Had I made the bald assertion that feminists are generally pro-sex without "self-obsession", someone would have whined "DWORKIN". But by referring to direct, personal experience, one can avoid red herrings. What you call "self-obsession", I call "smart rhetoric".

Man, I hope you're right. I certainly hadn't seen this kind of attitude in a long time before reading Hayes's piece. I prefer even the berserk moral condemnation of the Earth Firster over this.

"All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out." - I.F. Stone

Hey, I've never had a football fantasy that didn't involve cheerleaders!

*Rimshot*

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

I was having some fun with him.

You were having fun with him?  No, you were trying to shoehorn another tedious rant against the "patriarchy" into a thread that had nothing to do with it.  And when I pointed that out, you tried to make it seem like you were just joking around.

Sorry, you're full of it.