In addition to US media, I often read British and sometimes Australian press.

In recent months I've been struck by how the "culture wars" have spread to Britain and Australia. In the case of the US, it's more or less clear: the country is solidly religious and still very Puritan,

But why is Britain now gripped by the same malady?

For example, not a day goes by that I open Guardian.co.uk and don't see an ugly fight about religion, with the ever-present Richard Dawkins or Hitchens on one side and religious Brits/Australians on the other.

Every day there are op-eds and columns in The Times, The Guardian, The Telegraph that attract hundreds of comments and are about religion, atheism, abortions, raising the drinking age to 21 like in America, or some other politicized social issue.

Just today, what is the front-page story in The Guardian?
"School Chastity Rings":
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/s...2109204,00.html
Apparentlky there are now sects in Britain where girls wear the same "abstinence pledge" rings as in some of the more backward US states.

What's going on here?! What is it about the English-speaking countries that ignites these culture wars? As far as I know, in other countries (Europe, South America), cultural issues may exist also, but they are not politicized to the same extent. People just don't vent so much about religion, for example, it's not part of public discourse.

Funny, I thought the Anglo culture was Protestant, and therefore less religious and traditional than its Catholic/Orthodox relatives. So why are the roles now reversed?

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"The favorite American pastime is not baseball, it's moral crusades."

The media is trying to throw off the public by ignoring the real issues at hand and making them go into some other unorthodox direction. Media is always trying too hard. UK media, especially, is very sensationalist.

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Define "culture wars" as a specific?
Because if you're talking about some vague, cover-all metaphor for stories about cultural disagreement between ethnic backgrounds or a pro-traditional against pro-modern differences of opinion or even the old right vs left political debate, it's a huge topic.

It's also not endemic to just western media, though your mileage may vary depending on the actual liberties the press in some countries are able to put to print. Media as a rule, tends to only have one rule and that is itself moving it's media to people that want to read, look and listen to it. So, it only makes news out of the things which people will want to take notice of and that comes down to association and for lack of a better word, 'care factor'
Domestic and local have more interest for the average person because they are a directly relevant topic or even which is close to hand and has a chance of affecting them.
You as an individual want to know if someone is offering free dinner or worst case, running around with a machinegun in your suburb shooting up your neighbours.
You care less about someone throwing charity handouts of food from the back of a helicopter in sub-Saharan Africa or someone shooting up someone else's neighbourhood in Iraq.
One is pertinent to your survival, one is of a lesser effect on your immediate well being and safety.

And because we're people, we like the human interest 'crap' because it is essentially junk food for the bit of the brain that likes to gossip and if you think that's only endemic to the US, UK and AU, then you've probably not been very to many other countries or read outside their media groups. Most of which are multinational to some degree, almost all the media groups in the US, UK and AU are all owned by a handful of companies and they all behave this way, because it moves product, it moves a lot of product and it does so consistently.

I do find the problem of people grabbing anything printed, screened or read on the internet being regarded as 'it must be the truth' because it reeks of ignorance taking something simply at face value.
Note, I did not use the word 'stupidity' and I did use 'ignorant' there- ignorance can be fixed through education, stupid is something which takes a few extra blows to the body, ego or bank balance to sink in as something which must be rectified.

When I read a European paper like Frankfurter Allgemeine (FAZ.de), I do not see constant battles about atheism and religion on the front page.

When I open The Guardian or The Times, or sometimes The Washington Post in the US, I do.

Besides: in France, where the headscarf issue came up, it wasn't like there was a "debate" or anything - the majority of French people were solidly against religious symbols in schools. The hilarious thing is, the debate occurred in English-speaking countries - Britain, the US. There, people were split, because many Anglo-Saxons consider religion to be something sacred.

So I repeat my question: I thought the Protestants were supposed to be more progressive - what happened to the Anglosphere?

___________________
"The favorite American pastime is not baseball, it's moral crusades."

quote:

Originally posted by HardTranceProd When I read a European paper like Frankfurter Allgemeine (FAZ.de), I do not see constant battles about atheism and religion on the front page. When I open The Guardian or The Times, or sometimes The Washington Post in the US, I do.

I don't actually have my portfolio on world domination media ownership any more as I dumped the idea of media shares as an investment awhile ago, so I'm going off memory.

German media is mostly owned by either conglomerations of independents, but there is the biggest two, which are the Verlag group and GmbH which control most of the media there as far as news services go.
The big players in news services in US, UK and AU are-
News Corp, Viacom, AOL Time Warner, Vivendi, PBL, Fairfax & a couple of smaller ones I can't remember. However I do know they have very little in the way of substantial holdings in Germany.
All the ones in US, UK and AU have substantial holdings in each other's countries (and many others), hence the similarity of news services in those countries.
FAZ is also one of those papers that likes to have a fairly conservative, right kind of leanings and a unique way of editing along with it's independent correspondents.
It is by no means an a-typical western news service, but it is owned in part by GmbH, which is also an L.L.C and slightly different to a corporation.

quote:

Besides: in France, where the headscarf issue came up, it wasn't like there was a "debate" or anything - the majority of French people were solidly against religious symbols in schools. The hilarious thing is, the debate occurred in English-speaking countries - Britain, the US. There, people were split, because many Anglo-Saxons consider religion to be something sacred.

France is something of a red herring to the rest of the topic as it is unique in it's federal law which does not allow religious law to be practiced, back to the topic of US, UK and AU media.

quote:

So I repeat my question: I thought the Protestants were supposed to be more progressive - what happened to the Anglosphere?

Define 'progressive' for me?
Progressive compared to whom?
Progress can also be negative in some aspects?

I'm not repeating my explanations, if you didn't understand then you can either re-read it or point out aspects which are unclear. But I thought I was being fairly concise as I could given the broad range of subject.
And no, this is not something which can be made 'simpler' as much as people like to put them in a simple context.

By something of a definition an Anglosphere, encompasses a lot of different and very broad cultural, language, political and religious similarities. Places like Germany and France (and everyone else in the world which is industrialised) have their own influences on this 'Anglosphere' in so much as they export their own ideas as well as absorbing other countries influences, so it's not exactly an island either by definition.

The question is too broad to be pinpointed by simply one or two paragraphs.

quote:

Originally posted by HardTranceProd Every day there are op-eds and columns in The Times, The Guardian, The Telegraph that attract hundreds of comments and are about religion, atheism, abortions, raising the drinking age to 21 like in America, or some other politicized social issues

Can you give me some more examples of what you mean cos I'm not aware of what you mean by "culture wars"

Are you referring specifically to religious debate? Or to any moral issues?

I'm also certain that religious debates do not make the front pages of British newspapers but then I'm not sure exactly what you're talking about!

WOW just read this:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/co...icle1934760.ece

An editorial in The Times (UK) about abortion. The columnist is against abortions.

But even more interesting than the article are the comments - from the USA, Australia, and of course Britain. They are about 95% anti-abortion. That's why I say "WOW". The figure 95% would never occur even on the pages of a conservative paper in Continental Europe.

Is that a good enough example, George?

Perhaps for the first time in my life, I saw Australians venting about abstinence (a big ) and squeamish Americans predictably distancing themselves from something that is not "100% moral".

But the big shock is the Australian comments, wow. Never thought the Aussies were so conservative.

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"The favorite American pastime is not baseball, it's moral crusades."

Last edited by HardTranceProd on Jun-25-2007 at 22:53

But if you agree with a story then you're a hell of a lot likely to comment on it than if you disagree fundamentaly! And the comments are hardly representative of the British. Personally, I am not aware of this "culture war" and I think you're making something out of nothing...