ABSTRACT
Many observers believe that our political culture is increasingly divided. In the early 1990s scholars began speaking of a culture war that began in the 1970s and has been growing in strength since then. It divides our secular citizens against our religious, our urban versus rural. Our traditionalists uphold the older values of patriotism, nationalism, and nuclear families, while our progressives promote the acceptance of new social arrangements and the freedom to choose among them. This creates another way of understanding the competing ideologies, which take clear positions between Red and Blue America, between our traditionalist and progressive values. James Hunter’s book Culture Wars popularized the term, which is employed frequently by political pundits and media commentators.1 “Red states”—the more religious and rural states of the South and Midwest-are contrasted with the “blue states” of the more secular and urban Northeast and West Coast. While the coastal states and flyover states have distinct cultures, the greater political differences are between the urban and rural areas within those states. For example, Pennsylvania is neither a red or blue state, nor a purple state as it is sometimes described. It is strongly blue in the major cities, and clearly red in the rest of the state. Having grown up in central PA and spent many years in Pittsburgh, I am familiar with the saying that Pennsylvania is Philadelphia and Pittsburgh separated by Alabama.
