Navigating the Political and Cultural Winds
As the 2024 election cycle concludes, evidence of “campaign fatigue” rises. Bombastic hyperbole abounds; draconian predications multiply about “losing democracy” or “never again having real elections,” or “they’re manipulating the weather against us.” Lots of verbiage is spewed about politics, but little is focused on the culture that brews such political folderol.
Because TxC engages in cultural apologetics, the time is ripe to take a deep breath and step back from all the political pedanticism. The next three Dicta editions will explore – calmly – the worldview implications spawned by the interface among culture, politics, and law. Our approach will be using humor and pop culture, combined with serious ethical, legal, and political analysis. Let’s get to the gist; but first a “word from our sponsors,” as the voice-over quips.
Understanding Culture: Hold My Beer?
Many of our “more experienced” aka, older, Dicta readers will recall this successful marketing campaign:
“Tastes great!!” “Less filling!”
“TASTES GREAT!!” “LESS FILLING!!”
“TASTES GREAT!!!” “LESS FILLING!!!”
This “lite beer” ad campaign[1] captured the attention of the world, while pitching a new brewed product: beer that contained less calories without sacrificing “real beer taste.” As the tagline chimed: “All you want from a beer . . . and less.” Here’s the marketing proposition: Can beer actually taste good and yet lessen the advent of a beer belly?
Law (and politics) and culture can be viewed similarly: does law follow culture, or does law catalyze culture? Or, can both propositions be true? It just figures: another beer commercial illustrates – and answers – this question.
A Man Walked into a Bar . . . “How ya Doin??!!”
The scene opens in a cozy, dark, not-so-new neighborhood pub that feels like Brooklyn or Queens; local characters press themselves to the bar and exchange greetings: “How ya doin?”– to which they respond in kind, “How you doin?” And, so it goes.
Another guest arrives, dressed unlike the locals, wearing not a ballcap or watch cap, but a straw hat with an upturned brim, marking him without doubt as a hayseed coming from a flyover state. He’s also greeted: “How ya doin?” He smiles, looks up and gushes in a decidedly non-New York accent:
“Well, thanks for asking; I’m doing fine. Just got in today. My brother-in-law picked me up at the airport, mighty big airport y’all got here, and the people here are so nice.”
The locals are aghast. And as each new local greets the “new guy,” Mr. Hayseed responds similarly, to the point where the bar keeper with urgency hand signals that folks shouldn’t greet this strange fellow.[2]
The humor flows from the stark clash between two competing cultures which shape the operative social expectations and conventions. To the neighborhood folks, “How ya doin” is an expected courteous acknowledgment of presence—and nothing more; the stranger, however, interprets the language literally as a seriously interested question and proceeds to answer it fully. In his view, courtesy requires providing a fulsome answer each time to each “inquirer.” Hence the cognitive dissonance. The cultures clash socially, but achieve detente as everyone orders the same American beer: A Budweiser.[3]
“The Culture” or Cultures??
These episodes comedically illustrate a crucial point: though we often speak about “culture” and “the culture,” the reality is that society percolates with many cultures, dynamically interfacing, interacting, and impacting in a sort of stew. What we label “the culture” actually consists of a multiplexity of cultures and cultural dynamics. This stands to reason since the idolatry resulting from the truth being exchanged for the lie expresses itself in many forms. And, this multiplexity influences, shapes, conveys, and cross-pollinates – all pre-politically, that is, before there’s legislation or formal law – our:
- Expectations
- Plausibility Narratives/Structures
- Permissions and Boundaries
In other words, our law and politics do not write on a tabla rasa, a blank slate.[4] Rather, these pre-political cultural currentsimpact how we think about, craft – and enact – law and politics. Or, as the saying goes, “politics is downstream from culture.” Why?
All these cultural currents feed into and shape “what counts” as facts, what frames what’s possible, and what’s conceptually permissive on multiple levels, including the positive law as we will see. First, let’s consider a few non-legal cultural examples that illustrate this dynamic.
“Inconceivable!” – The Sicilian Philosopher Vizzini quipped[5]
Until 1954, running a sub-four-minute mile was conceptually impossible – “Inconceivable!”; it was a fantasy reserved for dreamers and science fiction. Today, every world class male runner shatters that barrier as do most elite high school male competitors.[6]
Or consider free soloing, that is, climbing cliffs and rocks without the aid of ropes or other gear. The Holy Grail of free soloing consists of the 3000+ foot sheer granite wall known as El Capitan, located in Yosemite National Park – No one had ever free soloed that wall and several had died trying; it was “Inconceivable!” – until June 3, 2017.[7]
Both of these feats were abstractly possible as in the inane shibboleth “anything’s possible,”[8] but certainly not in any realistic or plausible sense; the collective cultural imagination simply could not conceive of performing either feat; these feats were inconceivable. Not today. Why?
The cultural paradigm – not the track, nor the granite wall — had shifted.[9] A similar dynamic occurs regarding law and society today, and we need to grasp this to fully appreciate – yet not over-appreciate – politics. And, as the truth is exchanged for the lie, one consequence is that things done in secret that are “shameful even to speak about”[10] now become celebrated and become the centerpieces to our entertainment and politics – nudging things to now be not only conceivable but approved: Will & Grace, Transsexualism, taxpayer funded abortion on demand,[11] same-sex “marriage,” and punishment for hiring and promoting the most qualified candidates instead of preferring “diverse” less qualified applicants based on their “gender identity”.[12]
Beyond the Letter of the Law!
“Law”[13] operating in culture is about, reflects, and implicates far more than the “black letter” of what’s been legislated or declared by courts or other political authorities. Society includes mini-platoons, as Edmund Burke noted, that also define permissions, set expectations, and inform and enforce the “law” of Civil Society outside the “black letter” legal regime. Civil Society “legislates and enforces” without recourse to law enforcement officers or agencies or other traditional “legal” mechanisms like prosecuting attorneys. How so?
Martial Arts Culture & Law: Breaking Boards (or Bones)?
I competed in traditional Tae kwon-do for years, achieving the rank of second dan, Black Belt. Part of every student’s training consisted of sparring practice, rotating among all the ranks, white belts (new beginners) to advanced Black Belts. The positive “black letter” law governing sparring was clear: “No excessive physical contact.”
Sparring instead focused on and developed technique and control; power, however was developed punching bags and breaking boards, not persons. But there was always “that guy,” the aggressive Brown Belt itching to be “considered worthy” to test for Black Belt. “That guy” would often thump lesser skilled students and sometimes hurt them, transgressing the dojang’s[14] “black letter” law.
The Black letter law’s existence, and then even the Master’s stern vocal republication, “Watch the excessive contact!” didn’t do the trick; that is, it didn’t retrain Mr. Aggressive. Weaker students continued to get thumped.
The Master, however understood the cultural relationship between black letter law and the school’s civil society: with subtle eye contact and a head nod, he alerted the sparring Black Belts of “that guy’s” misbehavior and noncompliance with the black letter law. This wordless societal act – not the published black letter law – granted permission for the Black Belts to “enforce” the operative rule being repeatedly violated by “that guy.” How? By “permitting” the Black belts to drop Mr. Aggressive with a well-timed, penetrating powerful technique – in this case a full-power spinning back kick to the liver and his short ribs. With Mr. Aggressive gasping for air while writhing and now sprawled on the mat, the Master intoned with a slight smile, “Watch the excessive contact” – this time sardonically directed to the Black belt enforcer. Mr. Aggressive finally understood – and felt – the import of the positive law.
This story illustrates another key worldview and cultural point: it was not the black letter law itself, nor the Master’s authoritative verbal warning that achieved this result. Rather, it was the school’s culture that instantiated and enforced it – making it real via particular conduits and transmitters: Black belt students.
The same dynamics apply to what is normally considered law: legislative actions and judicial declarations. Accordingly, we dare not “do law” or politics without understanding and taking into account these dynamic and catalytic facets of society and culture – and the Fall.
Things get morally complex because after the Fall the truth is exchanged for the lie.[15] Idolatrous practices now lurk in the culture and they push to be approved or affirmed[16] – by civil society as well as formal legal and political institutions. Why?
Culture and Politics Cook the Legal Books
We often think law consists of the rules and statutes “on the books.” In a sense, that is correct. However, how culture “does” law and politics reveals that the political sausage contains many additional ingredients. Put differently, law operating in culture consists of more than the “flat text.”[17] Jurists, despite what they may contrarily assert, function this way as well. They too invoke more than the text of the law when making decisions.[18] They often take cues from the pre-legal (and often idolatrous) cultural narratives that swirl around, under, and above the particular legal issue.
Consider how this looks. The well-regarded and elegant pen of Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes illustrates the contours of culture and its plausibility narratives impacting the operation and application of law. Here, Holmes, writing for the US Supreme Court, sets forth his analysis for determining whether involuntary sterilization – an overt eugenics initiative – passes constitutional muster. His reliance on cultural matters in crafting the Court’s ruling is explicit:
We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world if, instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. ii. Three generations of imbeciles are enough.[19]
Notice how culture and cultural assumptions generate and inform his legal logic here—beyond the flat or bare statutory text at issue: First, understand the writer’s context: Holmes fought in the Civil War and was writing less than a decade after the gruesome Great War had ended – both were times of sacrifice, suffering, and bloodshed – times of great societal strain, drain, and pain.
Second, the Court, via Holmes, takes notice that factors of the common good – utilitarian outcomes[20] – should matter. Society in general, and the State in particular should, where possible, work to minimize societal strain, drain, and pain. The ideology of Social Darwinism underlies this sort of thinking.
Third, the Court asserts that some citizens “sap the strength of the State” causing new societal strain, drain, and pain, which in Holmes’s mind, signals the gist of the matter. The question becomes how to remedy this harm. And, in his mind, this means how the State – given his social Darwinian commitments – should remedy this harm.
Fourth, he predicts – speculates actually – using a utilitarian lens, that draconian harm will be caused by those who “sap the [State’s] strength”: drastic crime deserving capital punishment and starvation due to their own alleged imbecility.[21] Not a pretty or desired social portrait. And not an iota of real evidence supporting his speculation.
Note: these first four factors stem not from statutory positive law, nor the constitution, but from other pre-political cultural cues. With this context, Justice Holmes now brings a legal principle to work:
The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes.[22]
The Court, given this purported legal cover, thereby affirmed Virginia’s involuntary sterilization statute[23] because “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”[24] Case closed: law (and culture) have spoken decisively.
How was such a thing even conceivable in a free society??!! – no pun intended. How? Because culturally derived pre-legal and pre-political plausibility narratives set and thereby shaped the Court’s – and the extant culture’s – moral imagination. That culturally brewed moral imagination countenanced Social Darwinism in general and eugenics in particular as being good and proper things for the State to promote and coercively impose.
The Court used the same methodology – this time for sustaining an actual good – when considering school desegregation in the 1950’s. Justice Scalia describes how cultural matters impacted how the Court got “civil rights” right:
Most of the constitutionalizing of civil rightsthat the courts have effected in recent years has been at the margins of well-established and deeply held social beliefs. Even Brown v. Board of Education [which ended school segregation] as significant a step as it might have seemed, was only an elaboration of the consequences of the nation’s deep belief in the equality of all persons before the law.[25]
These ethical moves – positive and negative – are thus not merely or solely legal. The ambient culture informs and shapes them. But there’s more. It’s also not merely or solely legal and cultural. From a worldview perspective, what’s actually happening is not simply cultural and legal, but rather reflects something theological: some religion – whether faithful or idolatrous – is ultimately shaping the legal and political landscape and the culture’s moral imagination. By what means or mechanism? By those who proclaim or preach culturalhomilies.
The Preachers of Cultural Homilies
If Culture is “religion externalized,”[26] it matters WHO preaches the “Culture’s Homilies.” Cultural Icons – who’s the predominant Preacher – matters:
- Dear Leader – North Korea
- The Central Party – China
- The Nation or National Review
- Or, legal institutions like SCOTUS . . .
In the West the predominant and enduring cultural and institutional icons – the Preachers – consist of the Robes of Culture – These robes consist of those institutions that traditionally and literally wear robes connoting authority[27]:
- Jurists – The Legal Realm: Enforces norms
- Clergy – The Religious Realm: Absolves or Condemns actors
- Professors – The Education Realm: Defines norms[28]
These “Preachers” largely and predominantly shape and deliver cultural homilies, which then shape and structure culture’s plausibility narratives and moral imagination. To the extent that these icons/Preachers listen to or imbibe the Lie’s idolatries, their cultural homilies will reinforce idolatrous ethics, law, and politics.
Robes inform within their disciplines, but because they are also attached at an iconic level to broader culture, they spawn impact beyond their disciplines. These icons mutually accelerate and catalyze the other icons circulating within the Culture – that is, they shape and deliver Cultural Homilies, which all the while press to approve cultural practices tethered to the ascendant cultural worship/religion.[29] Accordingly, we ought to understand culture in order to better assess its preachers and their preaching. Only then can we possess a full-orbed and informed view of law and politics.
What then is Culture?
We often speak of “low” culture or “high” culture: Warhol or Rembrandt; Taylor Swift or Beverly Sills; James Patterson or Tom Wolfe. Yet, what IS culture?
The question is actually a fairly recent one and the answer gets murky quickly. There’s a lot of recent scholarship and the topic is nuanced and complicated.[30] For present purposes, however, there is no need to probe the depths of these recent studies. Rather it suffices to note that “creation” is what God does and “culture” is what mankind does.[31]
And, since mankind is created by God, mankind is inherently religious. This means in part that the culture mankind produces is likewise inherently religious and cannot at bottom be neutral as to morality or religion. In fact, at some level every cultural manifestation reflects either the worship of the Creator or the worship of the creation; either the truth is echoed – or the lie is etched – culturally.
Culture also includes the ideas produced by mankind. While ideas do have consequences, bad ideas have victims.[32] Yet, ideas, while cultural, require conduits, champions, and translators; they do not act alone, as Kevin Vanhoozer notes:
“Ideas do not make their way in history except they be carried by persons and institutions.”[33]
Consequently, we also need to probe and understand the mechanisms and impact of their popularizing transmitters – a task for the next Dicta edition, replete with pictures for you visual learners. We will consider Alfred Kinsey, Hugh Hefner, John Graham Chambers, Muhammad Ali, James Naismith, LeBron James, Doritos, Target, The Gap, Burger King, Walmart, et al. Stay tuned, but better yet, stay attuned.
[1] See, e.g., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tI5P_unnW6Y
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhEYXcCB1Qw
[3] Ironically, the “All-American” Budweiser brand is owned by the Belgium based company AB inBev.
[4] The same holds true for humans. Locke is mistaken to consider humans a blank slate. Humans have an inherent nature, inclinations, preferences, talents, etc. and of course, are fallen due to sin. There is nothing “blank” or neutral about the human person.
[5] The Princess Bride (1987)
[6] Oxford’s Roger Bannister first broke the four-minute barrier in 1954; today’s world record is 3 minutes 43.13 seconds,achieved by Hicham El Guerrouj (Morocco) in Rome, Italy, on 7 July 1999. The top 34 high school boys’ times all break the four-minute barrier. https://trackandfieldnews.com/tfn-lists/high-school-all-time-top-10s-boys/#Mile. The world record for women still stands well above the four-minute mark: 4:07.64 (1976: Faith Kipyegon) – another reason that “gender ideology” discriminates against women, if men pretending to be women are allowed to compete against them.
[7] Alex Honnold accomplished this in less than four hours as chronicled by the 2018 documentary Free Solo.
[8] In a theologically informed sense, “anything” is NOT possible: God can’t lie, He can’t cease to exist, He can’t draw a square circle, He can’t deny Himself, etc.
[9] The notion that shifting paradigms recalibrate plausibility structures applies even to “hard science”. See the seminal Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1962, 1970, 1996, 2012).
[10] Eph. 5:12
[11] Note the language change this election cycle. While the Left has long trumpeted abortion, it had rarely used the “A word” – instead a collage of euphemisms sought to camouflage their support for the killing of innocents: “reproductive health,” “choice,” “autonomy,” “termination of pregnancy,” etc. Now, ad after ad leads with “abortion” being THE decisive issue for supporting or opposing certain candidates.
[12] Top Oregon official put on leave for allegedly prioritizing ‘qualified’ job candidates over ‘gender identity’, [capitalization in the original] https://www.foxnews.com/media/top-oregon-official-put-leave-allegedly-prioritizing-qualified-job-candidates-over-gender-identity
[13] “Law” includes more than what the state legislature or Congress has passed, or what the courts have decided. “Law” reflects enforceable norms and protocols that attach to various aspects of society – sports, clubs, societies, etc.
[14] “Dojang” is the Korean Tae kwon-do term for studio; it is analogous to the Japanese karate term, dojo.
[15] Romans 1:25
[16] Romans 1:32
[17] This is no departure from Originalism or textualism as the optimal interpretive choice – executing the law may include but differs from interpreting it. See generally, Neil Gorsuch, A Republic, If You Can Keep It (2019)
[18] Even self-proclaimed ‘textualists” bring something to the text: the rules of grammar, literary conventions, interpretive canons, and context, logic,and rationality, et al. See, Antonin Scalia and Bryan A. Garner, Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts (2012)
[19] Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200, 207 (1927), referenced and discussed in Jeffrey S. Sutton, 51 Imperfect Solutions: States and the Making of American Constitutional Law (2018), 113
[20] One might ask: By what standard are these to be computed?
[21] One may wonder why the State should not care more for those who have less and are the weakest.
[22] Buck, 274 U.S.at 207
[23] Query whether this principle actually works this way: with vaccinations, the goal is to protect healthy systems and tissue; with sterilization the goal is to attack a healthy system and render it inert.
[24] Buck, 274 U.S. at 207
[25] Antonin Scalia, Forward by Elena Kagan, Edited by Jeffery S. Sutton, and Edward Whelan, The Essential Scalia; On the Constitution, the Courts, and the Rule of Law (2020), 186
[26] See, Henry R. Van Til, The Calvinistic Concept of Culture, (1959, 1972), 200: “[C]ulture is simply the service of God in our lives; it is religion externalized.”
[27] Some contend that media likewise should be considered a cultural robe given their undisputed cultural impact. However, media are better categorized as being translators and transmitters – preachers – of the robes’ messages.
[28] This tripartite division reflects John Frame’s triperspectival structure: Situation; Person; & Norm. See, John M. Frame, A Primer on Perspectivalism https://frame-poythress.org/a-primer-on-perspectivalism
[29] This is how Paul understands “real reality” after the Fall: truth is suppressed; truth is exchanged for the lie (ho pseudos); the creation, rather than the Creator, is worshipped; unrighteousness is practiced; and then unrighteousness is approved – Romans 1:18-32. For an exposition of this in law and public policy, see, Jeffery J. Ventrella, Christ, Caesar, and Self: A Pauline Proposal for Understanding the Paradoxical Call for Statist Coercion and Unfettered Autonomy (2016)
[30] See, e.g, William Edgar, Created & Creating – A Biblical Theology of Culture, (2017)
[31] This taxonomy appears throughout the thinking of John M. Frame. See, e.g., John M. Frame, The Doctrine of the Christian Life, (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: P&R 2008), 854: “Creation is what God makes; culture is what we make.”
[32] John Stonestreet and Brett Kunkle, A Practical Guide to Culture, (2017), 80.
[33] Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Charles A. Anderson, Michael J. Sleasman, editors, Everyday Theology: How to Read Cultural Texts and Interpret Trends (2007), 102
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