A Contrarian's Critique to the Culture Wars

Hearkening back to the aftermath of the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces, one can easily recall the deluge of punditry that swelled American media outlets. The bulk of such commentary from prominent conservatives excluded serious consideration of geopolitical complexities and military strategy, but rather focused primarily on cultural issues. What followed from the right (religious and secular alike) was an embarrassing muddle of critiquing “woke” ideology, lamenting the service of transgender and homosexual military members, and partisan counterfactuals and non sequiturs. Some of the more brazen arguments even going as far as to shift the balance of moral authority onto the ledger of Putin’s thuggish oligarchy. Odd, considering the context of one bellicose scofflaw of a nation violating the just autonomy of another’s. Amidst the churning of world events, it becomes quite evident that a facile framework of binary partisan dogma is inadequate in discerning real meaning and impact. Yet all too often this framework ensnares the heart of the Christian’s societal witness; wise judgment and charity are pawned off for superficialities and partisan rancor. Given these results, the decision to coalesce community identity around culture war belligerence deserves serious scrutiny and in the opinion of this writer, firm renunciation.

In the Aristo-Thomist tradition, from which the philosophical bedrock of American republicanism is formed, it is recognized that the highest end of human endeavor is the contemplation of the divine. The ideal political order allows for such contemplation and the lived experience of its daily implications. However, to achieve man’s highest end, the intrepid soul need not pass through such friendly territory. In fact, as the blood of the martyrs attests, the greatest of saints are made in the least ideal of political and social conditions. Even still and in any context, the blood of the saint and the blood of the patriot has no value if what the Jesuit political philosopher Fr. James V. Schall termed the “locus of beatitude” lies in the temporal and the superficial. The “locus of beatitude” meaning the transcendent goal for which our souls were designed and for which all Christians must strive. Wisdom and divine truth demand that the “locus of beatitude” remains fixed in the life of the world to come. For as St. Paul wrote, “we see in a mirror dimly” (1 Corinthians 13:12) and the fullness of the beatific vision lies just beyond the veil. It is the transcendent that imputes meaning in the actions of both the saint and the patriot. 

Habituating the virtue of prudence over combativeness in cultural and political engagement is not only for the edification of one’s soul but advances the most profound of all overarching strategies—the grand strategy of the Kingdom of God. Even if one accepts the premise of the late journalist and gadfly Andrew Breitbart that politics is downstream from culture (I do not), the imperative will keep that any assessment or critique of a cultural phenomenon or current event must be buoyed by the transcendent and not mired in culture war tribalism. Alongside the cardinal virtue of prudence, charity must be one’s watchword when seeking to engage culture while keeping one’s soul and advancing God’s kingdom. Lest anyone mistake the virtue of charity for the error of contemporary “tolerance” and carte blanche moral acceptance of all manner of transgressions, let us settle on St. Thomas Aquinas’ practical definition of charity as “willing the good of the other.” Though it can be easily forgotten, we must always remember that “our wrestling is not against flesh and blood; but against principalities and power, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the heavens.” (Ephesians 6:12) But it is also in accordance with prudence and charity that we are not naïve, but shrewd enough to know that we will inevitably have enemies in this world—par for the course of human folly to which we are all subject. 

Our Lord commands us to love our enemies; the demands of culture war politics perpetually tempt us to spurn, mock, and demean those contrived enemies who are often our very neighbors. Neighbors for whom Jesus ups the ante and commands us to love as we love ourselves. Neighbors with “In this house we believe” yard signs, “Black Lives Matter” decals, and “pride month” social media badges. Consider the gauntlet of charity thrown down before you at every turn. The standing orders of the modern-day culture wars will have you doing an about-face at each gauntlet, only to post a superficial meme online to “own the libs” or truck your family out of state to some de facto political enclave with all the trappings of a phony utopia. Such tribal tomfoolery cannot pass for virtuous engagement in the polis and is the tragic antithesis to the characteristics of a gentleman identified by St. John Henry Cardinal Newman: 

From a long-sighted prudence, he observes the maxim of the ancient sage, that we should ever conduct ourselves towards our enemy as if he were one day to be our friend. He has too much good sense to be affronted at insults, he is too well employed to remember injuries, and too indolent to bear malice. He is patient, forbearing, and resigned, on philosophical principles; he submits to pain, because it is inevitable, to bereavement, because it is irreparable, and to death, because it is his destiny. If he engages in controversy of any kind, his disciplined intellect preserves him from the blunder. (The Idea of a University, 1852)

The discerning Christian must consider themself the gentleman of John Henry Newman’s academy, with an imagination vivid enough to also see themself as a gentleman in the Arthurian sense. A fighting man, yes; but a fighting man who knows there is a time for both war and peace and who can adroitly alternate between meekness and ferocity based on contextual posture. Culture war belligerence, with its constant need for turmoil and an enemy (real or manufactured), will have you playing patsy to self-serving politicians and odious political media figures. Mired in the memes, you will find yourself reducing complex issues into daft left-right proxy wars and deferring to political obsequiousness as the criterion for judging right and wrong, truth and error, good and evil. Indulging in the vainglory of “owning the libs” or “defying globalist elites” (what the hell that means is anybody’s guess) or whatever inane conservative culture war prerogative you can scrape off a social media feed is precisely how one finds themself in the dissolute position of parroting Russian propaganda—playing a type of  Hanoi Jane (look it up) to Vladimir Putin’s North Vietnamese Army. 

The opportunity cost of waging culture war on every front is too high, the prospective return too low. So let’s leave the parrying to the conservative political and religious jingoists—possessing none of the virtues of the honorable warrior, but rather more akin to soldiers of fortune. There will always be enough cheap political plunder to be had in the throes of the culture wars. But to go about the true business of the saint and the patriot will place you in league with the transcendent, where the true battle standard flies far above the plumes of lesser wars—fluttering in the breeze of a heavenly wind.