Constant Conflict: Politics, Culture, and the Struggle for America's Future

The thesis of "War Without End" is that the U.S. is in a constant cultural civil war. A sub-thesis is that culture shapes American politics. For example, the electorate's sense of morality-a cultural value-was violated with the Lewinsky scandal. As a consequence, the democrats were deemed immoral. To correct the electorate's suspicions about immorality in a democratic president and to gain votes, in the 2000 presidential campaign, Gore advertised his religion. Gore's catering to American's morality and religiosity in this election is one illustration of political behavior shaped by largely held cultural values. Another argument the book makes is that there are cultural issues that never go away no matter how often they've been fed or beaten down. Religion is one of these. For example, the 1925 Scopes Monkey trial's ruling that religion and schools be separate did not prevent Reagan in 1980 from making campaign promises to permit prayer in schools. Because religion is a fundamental cultural value, religious issues are bound to rise to the surface time and time and time again, as illustrated by the decade long struggle between those who want religion to play a part in public schools and those who don't. Religion is one facet of the never ending Cultural War. The thesis--that America is divided by a never-ending struggle for cultural power--cannot be argued. Whereas political leanings (such as rooting for or booing Social Security) are important, they are not held close to the heart. Cultural values are. And when one side feels a value they hold dear is being violated (for example, the Christian Right feels its cultural values are violated by feminist ones, and vice versa), they will fight to defend not only their beliefs, but their life styles. I would recommend this book because it is a summary of the past forty years and gives the reader an understanding of U.S. history and of the tremendous impact that culture plays in shaping Government and politics-arguably a much larger impact than political issues such as Social Security, which hold little or no cultural significance.