ABSTRACT
In a speech to the Centre for Independent Studies in 2007, Tom Switzer, an opinion page editor for The Australian, proposed that the Right was ‘no longer losing the culture wars’. Celebrating the shift to the Right in the public sphere during the Howard era, Switzer advocated continuing these divisive cultural campaigns about minority rights, bioethical issues and national identity. This chapter shows how the culture wars arose initially in the context of a critique of the new capitalism, but turned in the 1970s towards a defence of the alleged religious foundations of Western societies against modern critical thinking. Economic rationalism tells that enhanced choices in markets should mean greater opportunities for individuals’ self-realisation. There is an overlap between many Left and Right critiques of contemporary cultural crisis. From different perspectives, both concentrate on the ‘anything goes’ logic of the postmodern cultural bazaar and its links to the deregulated marketplace.
