| The United States of America has long been engaged in an increasingly bitter struggle to determine what is and what is not characteristic of American culture. Every citizen of the United States, Canada, and Mexico or for that matter, Iran, Tajikistan or the Republic of China has an opinion as to what constitutes American culture. Such is the nature of American culture.;A nation of immigrants, the United States was conceived during the enlightenment, born of revolution and built upon an entrepreneurial foundation of cotton, blood, sweat and steel. Two hundred thirty seven years after its foundation, despite having become the world's lone super power, the question as to the true (nature or character) of American culture remains a divisive topic of debate throughout the United States.;First publicly uttered in a national political setting by Pat Buchanan at the 1992 Republican National Convention, the term "Culture War" has come to define the range of cultural and economic issues separating the more traditional conservative political right from the more progressive political left.;This thesis will seek to explain through a historical analysis of American culture how the erosion of federalism in the United States has removed from the Constitution an essential check which had been intended to prevent the general government from imposing its dominate culture on the states. |
