site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 1, 2023

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

9
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I've been trying to get myself to do a writeup of Walter Russell Mead's four traditions of American foreign policy, because he was confronting exactly this question in the late 1990s--the various conflicts involving the breakup of Yugoslavia produced an anti-intervention movement on the Republican side of the Senate, which lost to the pro-intervention faction led by President Clinton. This also seemed, on first blush, to be a reversal of the left-coded anti-war movements in earlier decades.

In short, Mead proposes a two-axis framework, where each quadrant contains the interplay of the axes and also an intellectual pedigree particular to the US. One axis is the usual hawk/dove; the other is nationalist/internationalist. (Here, "internationalists" favor more widespread and ongoing engagement with other nations, while "nationalists" prefer to interact with other nations only when necessary, and reserve most of their attention to domestic affairs.)

Hamiltonians are the dovish internationalists, who have a particular interest in expansive trade and the promotion of American business interests abroad. They don't have strong opinions about how other countries run their own affairs, so long as Americans have robust access to foreign markets.

Jeffersonians are the dovish nationalists, whose central ideal is perfecting democracy at home and avoiding foreign entanglements that might distract or corrupt American national purpose. These are your classic anti-war isolationists.

Jacksonians are the hawkish nationalists, who mostly don't care to have extensive involvement with other nations, but react with vigorous force to assaults on American interests and especially American honor. Unlike the other traditions, Jacksonianism is predominantly a grassroots/populist tradition, not elite.

Finally, the Wilsonians are the hawkish internationalists, who want to promote democracy, human rights, and other American ideals abroad whenever possible. The neoconservatives of the late 70s are a central example, but so are President Clinton's interventions in the former Yugoslavia in the 90s.

At different points in history, these traditions have individually been more or less popular, and have allied with each other in varying combinations. I think the overall framework makes a fair amount of sense descriptively, and a few thoughts towards refinement/critique.

Great comment, thanks!

It's nice to show your appreciation, but we discourage low-effort comments that are nothing more than "Good post."

Jeffersonians are the dovish nationalists, whose central ideal is perfecting democracy at home and avoiding foreign entanglements that might distract or corrupt American national purpose. These are your classic anti-war isolationists.

An ironic name, considering that Jefferson got America into its first war in the Islamic world in order to protect American trade.

An intended irony--Jefferson was a brilliant and creative man, but consistency was not among his virtues. See also his criticisms of centralized federal power, until the topic became "Louisiana is temporarily available at a low low price, act now!"

In this framework I'd say Iraq was hawkish internationalists using 9/11 to pull one over on Hawkish nationalists and get them to do a democracy/market access war that didn't really have much to do with national security. Ukraine is an alliance of dovish and hawkish internationalists that defends an international principle (no annexation of territory in Europe) without U.S. troops. My dovish nationalist Mennonite uncle is opposed because nothing is worth the risk of nuclear war and the young conservatives hawkish nationalists I know are opposed because it's money spent on something that has no obvious benefit to America.

But I don't think it's really that simple. The polarization over Russia post Trump and the legacy of the Cold War probably has a lot to do with why there's an age divide among conservative people I know. Older ones fantasize about America wiping the floor with the corrupt Russian army and the younger ones complain about the cost of foreign aid.

Broadly speaking, I agree (though I might characterize a few of the details differently). One thing to note, though, is that Hamiltonians are not simply "dovish internationalists." They are an American tradition of free-market, business-oriented dovish internationalists; a hypothetical French tradition of dovish internationalism might not have the same trade/economic focus.

IMO, GWB campaigned as more of a Hamiltonian--he made public comments about returning to a "humble foreign policy" in reaction to the Wilsonian bombast of the Clinton presidency. 9/11 changed rather a lot very dramatically, and the immediate Jacksonian demand by the public to do something about Osama bin Laden led to Afghanistan, and the second generation of neoconservative Wilsonians in his administration were a significant factor in getting involved with Iraq. I'd caution against painting Iraq as monocausal, though; there were several goals and motivations involved, some of them at odds with others.

Obama is an odd case; I think he's a relatively rare example of a Jeffersonian President. The problem with that combination is that foreign policy is one of the strongest points of Presidential power, and Jeffersonians are disinclined to wield foreign policy influence, so you have to refuse the temptation to pick up the hammer that is right there and go in search of nails. This is not to say that Jeffersonians are rare--they just show up more often in Congress or think tanks. Also, Obama's administration was not Jeffersonian; a major example that points out these tensions was Libya, where the combined force of Hillary Clinton, Samantha Power, and Susan Rice lobbied internally to support the French in the face of Obama's initial indifference.