The Culture War as Five Big Arguments, With Each Side at Its Best

The culture war is over, a commentator announces. It is usually announced the afternoon before a school board meeting in which three hundred citizens line up at the microphone to discuss a library book. The culture war, it turns out, is like the weather in the Midwest: you can declare it over, but you'll want to keep an umbrella handy.

I have a theory about why this fight never ends, and why most people hate it while taking part in it. We think of it as a shouting match, a thousand skirmishes with a thousand different villains. It isn't. Strip the volume out and what remains is a short list of very old questions about authority, tradition, freedom and who gets to decide. Each one is a real argument between serious people. The side that understands this wins more of them, because the side that understands what the other is actually claiming can answer it. The side that treats its opponents as cartoons ends up shouting at cartoons.

So here is the plan. First, where the phrase came from. Then five disputes, each laid out with the best case on both sides and the answer I'd give as a conservative. At the end, a short verdict.

Where "culture war" comes from

The phrase has a longer pedigree than most people think. In the 1870s, Chancellor Otto von Bismarck of Germany launched a campaign against the Catholic Church's influence in the new German state. The Germans called it the Kulturkampf, which translates, awkwardly, as "culture struggle." It was a fight over who would control schools, marriage and the training of clergy. Notice the cast of characters: the state, the church, the school. They sound familiar.

The American use of the term was fixed by two moments. In 1991, the sociologist James Davison Hunter of the University of Virginia published Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America. Hunter argued that American public life was increasingly divided not by denomination or class but by two broad outlooks, which he called the "orthodox" and the "progressive." The orthodox, he said, tended to appeal to a transcendent authority, like religion or natural law. The progressive tended to locate authority in reason, experience or the evolving understanding of the present. His claim was that Catholics, Protestants and Jews who had once fought one another now often found they had more in common with their own side of that divide than with the people in their own pews.

Then came August 17, 1992. At the Republican National Convention in Houston, Patrick Buchanan, who had run against President George H. W. Bush in the primaries, gave a speech that described a "cultural war" for the soul of America, and the phrase went into the bloodstream of the country. Bush lost that November. Republicans have argued ever since about whether the speech helped or hurt, and I'll leave that fight to the historians. What matters here is that the term, from both the scholar and the politician, stuck.

Now to the substance.

The scorecard: five disputes at a glance

Now let's go through them one at a time. I will keep the pledge in the title: each side first, at its best.

1. Who decides what children are taught?

The progressive case at its best. Education is a profession. A child gets better math instruction from someone who has studied how children learn than from a committee of neighbors. A school also has a duty to prepare every child for a diverse country, to include material that families may find uncomfortable, and to tell the truth about American history, including its shameful chapters. Parents have rights, but a child is also a person with an interest in knowing things his parents may not want him to learn.

The conservative case at its best. The family comes before the school, not after it. In Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925), the Supreme Court struck down an Oregon law that required children to attend public schools, with the Court saying the child is not the mere creature of the state. In Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972), it protected the right of Amish parents to take their children out of school after the eighth grade. The American tradition is that parents hold the first claim over what their children are taught about right and wrong, and public schools serve parents rather than replacing them.

The rebuttal. I would grant the progressive that teachers are professionals and that history should be taught honestly, with the bad and the good. My answer is this: honest history has nothing to fear from sunlight. If a curriculum is sound, publish it. A parent should be able to read what is being taught, see the books, and move a child if the answer is unsatisfactory. That is why conservatives push for transparency and for school choice, which I discuss in How a School Voucher Works, From the State Check to the Classroom Door and A Parent's Checklist for Finding Out What Your Child's School Teaches. The principle that protects a teacher's judgment also protects a parent's. Notice, too, that West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943) held that a school could not force students to salute the flag. Justice Jackson wrote that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion or other matters of opinion. That sentence is the best defense of parents and students I know, and it cuts every direction.

2. Religion in public life

The progressive case at its best. A country with many faiths and many people of no faith needs a public square where nobody is made to feel like a second-class citizen. The Establishment Clause says Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, and a public school that leads prayer, even a mild one, uses the government's authority to push a belief. Keep government neutral and everyone's conscience is safer.

The conservative case at its best. The same sentence in the First Amendment also guarantees the "free exercise" of religion. The Founders did not mean to produce a naked public square. They meant to prevent a national church and to protect the believer. A coach who kneels to pray quietly at midfield, a student who prays over lunch, a church that wants to participate in a program on the same terms as anyone else: these are not establishments. They are free exercise.

The rebuttal. The Court has increasingly agreed. In Kennedy v. Bremerton School District (2022), it ruled that a public school district violated the rights of a football coach who wanted to offer a brief personal prayer after games, and it moved away from the older "Lemon test" that had governed church-state cases for decades. The conservative answer is not that government should endorse a religion. It is that neutrality means treating religious citizens the same as everybody else, and does not mean treating religion as a hazard. There is a real debate about where the line falls for school-led prayer, and I deal with it fairly in School Prayer, Bibles and the Ten Commandments, Eleven Questions Answered. A conservative who wants the state to favor his religion should remember who will hold the pen when the state favors the other fellow's.

3. Sex, gender and the family

This is where the temperature rises fastest, so let me say how I'll handle it. Argue the policy, not the people. The people involved are neighbors and relatives, and many are in pain. Nothing in what follows is a claim about medicine, and I make none.

The progressive case at its best. People deserve dignity, and law should respect how individuals understand and describe themselves. Discrimination at work, in housing and in public services is wrong, and the Supreme Court held in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020) that firing someone for being gay or transgender violates the federal ban on sex discrimination in employment. Beyond the workplace, supporters argue that recognizing a person's identity in records, schools and public life reduces harm.

The conservative case at its best. Law needs categories, and the categories of "man" and "woman," "mother" and "father" have carried real weight in the law of marriage, sports, privacy and parenting for centuries. When the law changes the meaning of a word, it changes how rights are assigned to people, and it should do so openly and by vote. For minors in particular, conservatives argue that parents, and not a school or an agency, are the proper decision-makers, and that a policy should not keep parents in the dark.

The rebuttal. The conservative answer is about process before outcome. These are questions with large consequences, from fairness in women's sports to the privacy of locker rooms to the role of parents, and in a self-governing country they should be settled by elected legislatures after open debate, not by agencies, courts or school staff acting alone. You can hold that view and still insist on respect for every individual's dignity and on basic fairness in workplaces and public services. The honest conservative position is firm on the structure of the law and courteous toward the people living under it. Contempt wins no votes and, more importantly, it is wrong.

4. Speech and offense

The progressive case at its best. Words are not harmless. Speech can intimidate, exclude and wound, and it is reasonable for a university or an employer to set standards of decency so that everyone can take part. A community has the right to decide what it will tolerate, and a speaker who is asked to stop is not being censored by the government.

The conservative case at its best. The cure for bad speech is more speech. Justice Brandeis wrote in Whitney v. California (1927) that if there is time to expose falsehood and fallacy through discussion, the remedy is more speech, not enforced silence. In Snyder v. Phelps (2011), the Court protected even picketing near a funeral that most Americans found loathsome, because speech on public issues sits at the core of the First Amendment. The deeper reason is about power: every official who has the authority to ban offensive speech also has the authority to decide what counts as offensive, and that authority gets used on the weak and the unpopular first.

The rebuttal. I'd give the progressive this: private institutions have rights too, and a company or a church can set its own standards. The answer is about government and public universities, where the First Amendment applies, and about the culture. Even in private settings, a country where nobody dares speak is poorer, safer for the powerful, and less able to correct itself. For the actual boundaries of the doctrine, see Seven Free Speech Myths, From Hate Speech to Shouting Fire in a Theater and Eight Supreme Court Cases That Explain What the First Amendment Protects. The conservative edge here is consistency: defend the speech of the person you would never invite to dinner, and you will have the standing to demand the same.

5. Life, and who decides

The progressive case at its best. A woman's decisions about her body, her health and her future belong to her. Restrictions on abortion fall most heavily on women who have the fewest resources, and supporters argue that a legal right gave women equal standing in the country's economic and civic life.

The conservative case at its best. An unborn child is a human life and deserves the law's protection. A society is measured by how it treats its most vulnerable members, and people who hold that view are not enemies of women. They believe two lives are at stake in the question.

The rebuttal. This is the deepest moral disagreement on the list, and I will not pretend the other side has no argument. But there is a constitutional point that even some legal scholars who support abortion rights have made about Roe: the question of how to balance those interests should be decided by voters, and not settled by nine judges. In Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (June 2022), the Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) and returned the question to the people and their elected representatives. After that decision, the argument moved to legislatures and ballot measures, where each side has to persuade. That is harder than winning in a courtroom, and it is how self-government is supposed to work. If you think the law should protect life, the job is to win votes with arguments and with the practical help that women in hard circumstances need. Conservatives who can do both will have the better of the argument over time.

What the five have in common

Look at the five side by side and the pattern shows. In each, the progressive case leans on expertise, equality of treatment and the evolving understanding of the day. In each, the conservative case leans on parents and families, on inherited institutions, on liberty from officials, and on the idea that large changes should come through voters and not experts. The whole of it can be put as a question that sits underneath every item above: who decides, and who is accountable when they decide wrong?

That framing is useful for conservatives for a practical reason. It lets us argue on ground where we are strong. Most Americans, including many who disagree with us on the specifics, believe that parents should have a say, that officials should be accountable, and that big changes ought to go through the front door of democracy. Starting there, we do not have to win every moral argument on the first round. We only have to win the argument about process, and then trust that voters who are asked will decide more sensibly than the people who decided for them.

It is also useful for the dinner table. If you want to carry these arguments to relatives, How to Argue Politics at the Holiday Table and Still Be Invited Back shows how, and the case that disagreement without contempt is a conservative strength is made in Civil Discourse Is Not Surrender, and Lincoln and Scalia Prove It.

The bottom line

• The culture war is five old arguments. Schools, religion, sex and family, speech, and life. Each comes down to authority, tradition, freedom and who decides.
• State the other side fairly. You cannot answer an argument you have not understood, and a fair summary earns you a hearing.
• Argue process first. On every item, "elected legislatures, parents and open debate" is a stronger position than "a bureaucracy or a court should decide."
• Be consistent. Protect the speech and the faith of people you disagree with, and you can ask the same for yours.
• Win with votes and persuasion. After Dobbs, the biggest dispute is in the hands of voters. Meet the arguments with arguments and with real help for real families.