‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

While technically true, in a real war the “tiny minority” (the military) don’t choose when or where or why to fight, that is done by the “large majority”, the voters electing a government.

Subject to the caveat that I haven't lived in the UK for over 15 years, overall the popular press in the UK is a bit shocking. I don't know of any liberal western country where you see the kind of racism routinely displayed on the front page of mainstream/popular UK newspapers. Perhaps xenophobia rather than direct racism would be a better description but it's not easy to tell the difference in many cases. It's all a bit weird as the UK is generally a tolerant society but somebody must be buying all those newspapers.

About the only UK newspaper I can read these days without getting upset is the Financial Times - there's pockets of good journalism in the Guardian also but it's almost too much of a struggle to find them in the swamp of opinion pieces. I guess the Times isn't too bad or at least tries to represent some sort of centrist view but it feels fairly shallow.

For me the Brexit issue is the UK's version of the culture war in the US. I've talked to people who say they can barely talk to members of their family any more because of Brexit stance differences. And I don't see this division healing very soon - I fear it's going to fester for years.

Corbyn is certainly left wing by US and UK standards, but has never been a Marxist, and is moderate by the standards of most of Europe. McDonnell on the other hand, could reasonably be described as Marxist.

The UK makes teaching religion mandatory in public schools: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_education_in_primary...

> Additionally, all schools are required by law to provide a daily act of collective worship, of which at least 51% must be Christian in basis over the course of the academic year.

This would be unconstitutional in the United States. We are far more religious than the U.K. But our Supreme Court has imposed a public secularism similar to that of France. (Based on an extremely strained reading of the Establishment Clause.) To this day, 2/3 of Americans oppose this 70-year old precedent.

In the UK, you legalized same-sex marriage by law. In the U.S. the Supreme Court found it to be a constitutional right (in a decision that is in my opinion correct as a legal matter, but many disagree). A year later, the European Court of Human Rights reached the opposite result (finding that denying same-sex couples the right to marry does not violate the European Convention on Human Rights) in a case arising out of France. It’s still not legal in Switzerland.

The UK legalized abortion by law. It’s 24-week limit on abortion for economic reasons is the longest in the EU. In the US, abortion was legalized by the Supreme Court. 24 weeks is a fairly typical limit in the US—a country that’s more religious than Poland (where abortion is illegal). The 12-week limit in Denmark or Germany or France, or the waiting periods that were place in France until 2015, would be unconstitutional. Germany’s abortion laws (where the constitutional court found it unconstitutional to legalize abortion so it’s still just decriminalized under 12 weeks, and where there is a counseling requirement) would be unimaginable. Indeed, at the same time as the Supreme Court found a constitutional right to abortion, the courts of Canada, Austria, and France found that it was a matter for the legislature to decide.

You passed a law banning discrimination based on sexual orientation. Since it was legislation, you were able to consider and impose a large set of exemptions for specific occupations. (You can’t sue a Catholic Church for not hiring gay clergy.) The Supreme Court just recently held (in a decision I think was correct) that our existing 1960s-era law already banned sexual orientation discrimination.

Our Supreme Court is dominated by our country’s cultural elites. Even the conservatives tend to be steeped in the cultural norms of the coastal urban areas. (The one Justice who is not, and has social views typical of Black men like himself of his age, is demonized mercilessly.) No other developed country puts a highly-educated elite in charge of dictating to the rest of the country how to handle these social issues. This is a huge source of resentment and polarization.

Put another way: If Marxism had any prominent support in the UK, RLB would have been outflanked on the left in the Labour leadership elections, rather than losing to someone on her right.