Source: The Dispatch
by Michael Reneau & Kevin Brown
“In the early 1990s, sociologist James Davison Hunter coined the expression ‘culture war’ as he described a country divided between competing moral visions of orthodox traditionalism and cultural progressivism. We are still in a culture war, says Hunter, but of a different character. ‘[B]eneath the apparent polarization, beneath our seemingly incommensurable differences, we increasingly inhabit a common culture,’ he writes. One that is ‘chillingly nihilistic.’ If Hunter is right, cultural battle lines cannot be neatly drawn between political typologies of left and right. In an After Virtue moment where, claims the late philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, universal norms no longer derive from traditional moral authorities so much as feelings and preferences, nihilism comes to occupy the space once held by transcendence. This, says Hunter, is the essence of our war.” (09/21/25)
https://thedispatch.com/newsletter/dispatch-faith/charlie-kirk-nihilism-culture-war/