The culture wars are too useful as a distraction from what actually matters, so I find it hard to believe they would be allowed to end unless there’s a replacement ready to go.
Under what statute? Are we to just have one big all-encompassing Golden Rule law?
*You *apparently do. Under your system, it’s fine to dump arsenic into the reservoir, anyone who doesn’t like it is free to sue you. You may or may not wind up having to pay them, but you can’t be obligated to stop, because there’s no law against it.
Seriously, explain to me exactly how you envision your system working, please?
At one time in this country such rights existed. It was the right of the slave owner to harm his/her slaves. It was the right of the husband to punish his wife. Government allowed and enforced this. But is also only government that can step in and prevent it. Government via laws and court decisions decides what is and isn’t harm and what is and isn’t a right. Going way back in political theory, one major function of government is to allow a society to function without every dispute being settled by violence.
An inherent part of enforcing rights is restricting actions. If I have a right walk down public walkways, then to protect that right the government can forbid you from driving a motorized vehicle on them. If I have the right to use the water from a river to irrigate my crops then the government has to prevent you from building a dam and canal to divert all the water to your farm.
I love this argument. “You are suppressing my right to have the government enforce my beliefs on other! You tyrant! Don’t you understand that I am harmed by the very knowledge that someone, somewhere is doing things I find distasteful?”
In the 1950s – not so very long ago at all – the American population was not an order of magnitude less than it is now, but there did not seem to be any culture war, with the exception of the civil rights movement down South.
I would consider that a rather important exception. Certainly if you exclude the actual culture wars then you can claim that there were none, but it’s kind of a meaningless argument isn’t it?
I think McCarthyism could also be considered a part of the culture war. There are probably a number of other things from that time that could be considered “culture war”.
IMHO a lot of the culture war is a followup to the Civil War and has been brewing since that war.
Non-state actors have the power to compel through lawsuits, whose results can be enforced by the state. And there are other ways to influence others: publicity, demonstrations, boycotts, strikes.
Violence is of course criminal behavior, whoever does it. Since I’ve already stated I’m in favor of a strong state, I’m not sure why you think I want the state defanged. The ability to resolve disputes peacefully through the courts is essential.
I more or less agree with you.
People should be able to develop their property however they like. But just like the right to swing one’s arm stops at another’s nose, one’s right to develop stops at harming another’s environment.
Dumping carcinogens into someone’s water is harming them–that water is no longer potable.
If an action would inevitably harm others (like polluting a watershed), then the state has an obligation to prevent it.
Um, there’s plenty of laws that spell out and prohibit different ways of harming others. Assault, battery, rape, murder, etc.
I think you are misunderstanding my position.
Just like our current one, except the state refrains from prohibiting actions that don’t actually hurt anyone.
And they were wrong to do so.
That is exactly what I’m arguing. I’m in favor of a strong state that does not allow people to harm others. And I’m in favor of a state that does not restrict people from doing things that do not harm others.
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I think we’re getting off topic. This thread is about the culture wars. My position is we are having culture wars because we’ve allowed the state to dictate how we live our lives. Since we’ve given the state that power, then of course the people are going to argue about how it should be used. I think the we’d be better off if we stepped back and decided to let others live.
Take different issues of the culture wars.
Gay marriage: Let people get married. It doesn’t affect others.
Gun control: Let people have guns. There’s already laws against using guns to harm others. If someone has a gun and isn’t harming anyone else, then they’re not affecting others.
Abortion: Let people have abortions. A fetus may or may not have rights, but a woman undoubtedly does. It’s her body.
Food control: Let people eat what they want. Inform them of the risks, but it’s their body.
Drug control: Let people smoke what they want. Inform them of the risks, but it’s their body. There’s already laws against driving while impaired and other reckless behavior. If they’re drunk/high and aren’t hurting anyone else, then they’re not affecting others.
Political ad restrictions: Let people say what they want. The solution to speech you don’t like is your own speech, not censorship.
The culture wars are over whether or not the government should restrict this or that behavior. By answering “no, I have a right to do ___, because it doesn’t harm anyone else”, the culture wars would end.
The original principle of America was self-governance, not less government interference. Sometimes self-governance led to less interference but it was balanced by greater interference; one example is laws protecting slavery (the US Constitution indirectly strengthened slavery). More than one state had an official religion. The response to the Whiskey Rebellion showed that the new US government had no compunction against interfering, violently if need be.
I think the culture wars are put on for the most part, but as far as they do exist, your solution wouldn’t work. Has legalizing abortion made the issue go away? Flag burning was a big issue in the “wars” a few years ago and it has been legal the whole time. As long as one group doesn’t like certain actions of other groups and people can gain advantage by pointing it out and calling for action to stop it, this will continue.
Self-governance did not become important until revolutionary times.
It is still an issue because too many people believe the state should have a role in controlling how we live. If we don’t let the state have that role, there won’t be a debate about how the details of that role.
The Puritans came to the US to escape religious persecution and then promptly set up communities that persecuted other religions. This is not a group that wanted less government but a government they could control. See the biography of Roger Williams for an example of one person who befell the wrong side of the religious wall.
But most of them argue that the action causes them (or more often “the children”) harm. The main arguments made publicly against SSM have revolved it somehow harming children or infringing on freedom of religion.
You have stated repeated that government should have a strong role in preventing harm. The argument is not what is government’s role, but what causes harm?
I have come to feel that the most important freedom that the Puritans left England to find was the same one that LonesomePolecat feels he lost, the freedom to enforce your religious beliefs on others.
IMO slavery and its legacies have been a cultural war. Sure, nobody called it a “cultural war” at the time but the rhetoric was no less inflammatory. So I’d say that there has been one long cultural war in the US until at least the Civil Rights Act.
Interesting. The RW seems to see around that time as when the Culture War started.
In your view, when has the RW ever been correct? 
Much of this thread has focused on disagreement over the proper role of government. But much of the culture wars have to do with superstition and paranoia.
A lot of people oppose certain things because they fear they will incur the Wrath of God or rend the Fabric of Society. And a lot of people fear the mile that their opponents wil supposedly take if they are given an inch.
The latter case being the source of the conspiracy theories that are everywhere these days.
An argument could be made that the Post-WW2 generation was when mass communication and transportation and expanded access to education made it possible to perceive a broad-based “culture war”. But before there had been for time immemorial “culture clashes” in the sense not only of the abovementioned racial element but also involving various dialectics of nativist/immigrant, old religion/revival/new religions, rural agrarian v. urban industrial/commercial (e.g. Bryant and his “Cross of Gold”), traditionalist v. nontraditionalist, populist v. elitist.
Until mass transportation and communication and access to education expanded sufficently, these could be localized and compartmentalized, and reforms and changes would often take decades to slowly percolate across the elites first and then to the general public. Evolution of “values” would be almost imperceptible.
But once you can watch live in Des Moines or SLC what’s happening in Berkeley or Birmingham, and get to either overnight; once you have the same books and records hit the shelves on the same day in New York and in Coeur d’Alene; once the bank owner’s and the street sweeper’s and the school teacher’s and the preacher’s and the seamstress’ and the hog farmer’s and the cop’s and the doctor’s sons and daughters from 8 different towns are all at State U on the GI Bill or BEOG grants, then you have people noticing many thigns happening at the same time and believing things are going too fast or not fast enough, and specially vulnerable to the idea that if you are for/against X part of the platform then you must also be for/against Y part of the platform (Why did believers in law and order have to side with supporters of segregation? Why did supporters of peace and equality have to be associated with supporters of heavy drug use?)… and before you know it you are in “culture war” over the very overthrow of the *entirety *of the old order, when all you wanted was to be allowed into the front of the damn bus.
My religious beliefs? 
To whatever extent it could be said that I have any religion at all, it would consist of some vague metaphysical speculations that might somewhat resemble Hinduism or Buddhism if I ever took the trouble to try to systematize them. I’m not seeing their relevance to this thread.
I’d say Libertarianism is a religion. 