If we created our cultural institutions through the family, faith traditions, and voluntary associations, why can it not be believed that we also created the state as an institution which also embodies our culture? This is fundamentally my trouble with Speer and his more libertarian fusionist view. The state somehow exists outside society, and not something generated by families, faith traditions, and voluntary associations as a way to mediate value disputes along side courts.
Essentially, I disagree that the state can produce identity. The state can foster and support, or oppress and denigrate identities, but it cannot create them whole-cloth. groups which create coherent identities come together and petition the people to use the state to support those identities.
Culture is not down-stream of the state; the state does not create culture. States and governing institution are down-stream of culture; culture creates the state. This is why we as conservatives must articulate a positive cultural image, including a vision of the arts. Once the majority see the beauty of the conservative vision, the state will come to reflect it.
He makes his best argument regarding state created culture when nation-building is afoot. But I agree that politics are downstream from culture, with the caveat that if states are legal, safe and rare we have flourishing culture from a high-trust society. I suppose we are aware of cultures borne of low-trust societies, as they represent the majority of newcomers these days.
So politics are downstream, but it can be a dam, and has the power to divert as it sees fit.
My biggest gripe, among many, of the Trudeau government, of pretty much every provincial and even municipal government today is that they have actively imposed cultural values on us like never before, for the most part without our consent. Perhaps some of what we call woke had grassroots beginnings, but that is certainly not true for trans ideology which was forced upon us from above. Not to say there wasn't some activism on the streets, but when it came to legislation and pressure to conform, that was entirely from the top, first from our universities, and then directly into law and politics. That said, it's only community that can provide the force needed to address, to rebalance the social problems created. In this sense, society can mould politics, as it did for civil rights and gay rights in the last century.
But both of those are examples where the legal changes preceded and led to cultural changes? Gay marriage was made legal when a majority of people were still opposed and only afterwards did acceptance spread widely through the culture. Same with desegregation and racism. I think that both those examples are evidence for Andrew's thesis that popular culture is downstream from elite political decisions.
Legal desegregation laws came after decades of street protests, mostly in black communities. Modern music and pop culture in general in the 50s helped lead to legislation. I didn't mention gay marriage, but that only came about through increasing acceptance of gay people, both grassroots and legal, from about the 1970s. Pride started about then. Stonewall was in 1968.
I was mistaken about trans rights coming out of nowhere to be legislated. There were also grassroots efforts going back to the 70s. Laws weren't changed for decades to accommodate trans rights. That said, I don't recall any public events similar to those associated with desegregation or gay rights. What wasn't clear were the implications of accepting "gender identity" into law (done in Canada in 2016), what that meant for the meaning of sex and sex-based rights for women, what that meant for the medicalization of minors. In that sense, trans rights were imposed by government and the courts. To this day the federal government won't release the study it created back then that discussed the implications of this legal change.
Well constructed…great argument and quite convincing
If we created our cultural institutions through the family, faith traditions, and voluntary associations, why can it not be believed that we also created the state as an institution which also embodies our culture? This is fundamentally my trouble with Speer and his more libertarian fusionist view. The state somehow exists outside society, and not something generated by families, faith traditions, and voluntary associations as a way to mediate value disputes along side courts.
Essentially, I disagree that the state can produce identity. The state can foster and support, or oppress and denigrate identities, but it cannot create them whole-cloth. groups which create coherent identities come together and petition the people to use the state to support those identities.
Culture is not down-stream of the state; the state does not create culture. States and governing institution are down-stream of culture; culture creates the state. This is why we as conservatives must articulate a positive cultural image, including a vision of the arts. Once the majority see the beauty of the conservative vision, the state will come to reflect it.
He makes his best argument regarding state created culture when nation-building is afoot. But I agree that politics are downstream from culture, with the caveat that if states are legal, safe and rare we have flourishing culture from a high-trust society. I suppose we are aware of cultures borne of low-trust societies, as they represent the majority of newcomers these days.
So politics are downstream, but it can be a dam, and has the power to divert as it sees fit.
My biggest gripe, among many, of the Trudeau government, of pretty much every provincial and even municipal government today is that they have actively imposed cultural values on us like never before, for the most part without our consent. Perhaps some of what we call woke had grassroots beginnings, but that is certainly not true for trans ideology which was forced upon us from above. Not to say there wasn't some activism on the streets, but when it came to legislation and pressure to conform, that was entirely from the top, first from our universities, and then directly into law and politics. That said, it's only community that can provide the force needed to address, to rebalance the social problems created. In this sense, society can mould politics, as it did for civil rights and gay rights in the last century.
But both of those are examples where the legal changes preceded and led to cultural changes? Gay marriage was made legal when a majority of people were still opposed and only afterwards did acceptance spread widely through the culture. Same with desegregation and racism. I think that both those examples are evidence for Andrew's thesis that popular culture is downstream from elite political decisions.
Legal desegregation laws came after decades of street protests, mostly in black communities. Modern music and pop culture in general in the 50s helped lead to legislation. I didn't mention gay marriage, but that only came about through increasing acceptance of gay people, both grassroots and legal, from about the 1970s. Pride started about then. Stonewall was in 1968.
I was mistaken about trans rights coming out of nowhere to be legislated. There were also grassroots efforts going back to the 70s. Laws weren't changed for decades to accommodate trans rights. That said, I don't recall any public events similar to those associated with desegregation or gay rights. What wasn't clear were the implications of accepting "gender identity" into law (done in Canada in 2016), what that meant for the meaning of sex and sex-based rights for women, what that meant for the medicalization of minors. In that sense, trans rights were imposed by government and the courts. To this day the federal government won't release the study it created back then that discussed the implications of this legal change.