Books, Arts & Manners

Before the Shooting Begins: Searching for Democracy in America’s Culture War, by James Davison Hunter (Free Press, 275 pp., $22.95)

THIS extraordinarily important book, following up on the author’s Culture Wars of 1991, reflects an understandable reluctance to say straight out what some Americans are beginning to suspect is the case: cultural warfare may be on the edge of turning into civil war. That’s the meaning of the book’s title. The author’s ambivalence about that ominous prospect is reflected in the uncertainty about the subtitle. In the advance proofs first provided to this reviewer, the subtitle on the cover was Searching for Democracy as the Culture Wars Rage. Inside the cover was a different subtitle: The Rise of Irreconcilable Differences in American Public Life. The first subtitle was considerably more hopeful than the second. The book itself replaces “culture wars,” plural, with “culture war,” singular. That is in keeping with the evidence examined. The lines of warfare are clearly drawn, and there is one war going on, not several. Meanwhile, the second subtitle’s accent on the irreconcilable is in keeping with the book’s concluding call for a renewal of “substantive democracy,” a call issued in tones ever more wan and wistful as the author realizes that the likelihood of its being answered continues to diminish.

RJ

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Richard John Neuhaus

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Before the Shooting Begins: Searching for Democracy in America’s Culture War, by James Davison Hunter (Free Press, 275 pp., $22.95)

THIS extraordinarily important book, following up on the author’s Culture Wars of 1991, reflects an understandable reluctance to say straight out what some Americans are beginning to suspect is the case: cultural warfare may be on the edge of turning into civil war. That’s the meaning of the book’s title. The author’s ambivalence about that ominous prospect is reflected in the uncertainty about the subtitle. In the advance proofs first provided to this reviewer, the subtitle on the cover was Searching for Democracy as the Culture Wars Rage. Inside the cover was a different subtitle: The Rise of Irreconcilable Differences in American Public Life. The first subtitle was considerably more hopeful than the second. The book itself replaces “culture wars,” plural, with “culture war,” singular. That is in keeping with the evidence examined. The lines of warfare are clearly drawn, and there is one war going on, not several. Meanwhile, the second subtitle’s accent on the irreconcilable is in keeping with the book’s concluding call for a renewal of “substantive democracy,” a call issued in tones ever more wan and wistful as the author realizes that the likelihood of its being answered continues to diminish.