[Note to other readers: Yeah, this doesn't have anything to do with Mamdani or mayors, but it is absolutely about the moral panic centered in the OP. I'm going to break my response to this extensive list of errors into one on culture and one on politics. Scroll past if you're looking for socialist mayor content. Cheers.]
I think this is unreal. We know theres a continual power struggle with groups maneuvering to influence and socially engineer society to how they want it ordered. Even the church does this lol.
Influence and control are different things, Steve. You wanted to know who "controls" society. I gave the only answer that makes sense: No one. This is because no one person or group "controls" society, certainly not the government. Societies evolve under a wide variety of influences. When authoritarians *try* to control societies, their efforts break eventually. Now lets look at some other ways you were wrong about this:
Especially in modern times with legacy media and social media. Even small groups can have a major influence of the direct of polcies and society. Its a bit like sales and marketing. Manipulating people to come around to certain ideas.
There are popular movements, fads, celebrities, influencers (old style and new), propagandists, advertisers, etc. They all "influence" society, but they do not "control" it.
The whole 'Long March through the Institutions was a socially engineered revolution to undermine and change the social order. Look what happened when it spilt into mainstream society around early 2000's. That was not natural. That was socially engineered through media, and ideologies pushed within institutions and government agencies.
What are you talking about?!?
On to social norms...
So what were the social norms based on during most of the 20th century.
They kind of change a lot, and not just the parts that are freaking you out in the last half of the century, so the only short answer I can give is: various things that changed.
What was the basis for say the anti abortion laws or the marriage laws before they changed around the 1960's and 70's.
Assumptions that abortions were mostly had by sexually promiscuous unmarried young women. (That and "baby killing" were the two things they tried to sell us on in church in the 80s.)
Coincidently the same time soon after the cultural revolutions that formed the catalyst for those changes that were held by society for generations.
[First "long march", now "cultural revolution", do you live to close to China down under where you see all "bad thing" as some how "Maoist"? Weird.] I don't know why you keep labeling women's liberation as "revolutions", 'tis very odd. That liberation is from bad husbands and the "tut tut" clucking of the town scolds. It is critical that the earlier decision on access to birth control products is based on a right to privacy in ones life.'
As for what was "held by society for generations" I would suggest reading a history on the topic (birth control/abortion) than just assumming that "society" was universally condemnatory until some magic "revolution" came.
But what was the basis for these social norms and laws.
Social norms and laws are very much not the same thing.
You don't have to have a State sanctioned religion to have religious foundation to social norms and laws. The west came out of the same empire that birth Christianity as opposed to Islam or Hinduism. This is our heritage.
So many possible things to respond here. Can't make up my mind...
There is "Christianity is just a variant of the non-Western religion of Judaism ." or "When the Christians got control of Rome it fell", but I think I'll go with:
Much of the best stuff "the West" has came from pre-Christian Rome and Greece or was revived from pre-Christian Rome and Greece during the Renaissance and Enlightenment.
You can find the same moralizing about sex and family from various non-Christian Classical writers and philosophies. Even the stuff you want to focus on has non-Christian antecedents. The rest is just which god you worship, and I don't care.
Western nations are more Christian that Muslim, Hindu or other religions. We draw upon Christian social norms and not Islam or pagan or no belief at all.
I'm not concerned about "the west" (unless you're talking hemispheres, then, like Jim Morrison wrote "the west is the best, baby".) only about discussing the US. I don't need to waste my time building meta-narratives that span so many different societies. You realize there are more actual atheists in the US than Muslims and Hindus combined, right, right?
My understanding of humans is far superior to yours. You may know physics and I give you that credit. But I know the behavioural sciences.
In what way do you know "behavioral sciences"? I've never seen evidence of this and behavioral science isn't relevant to our topic as we are discussing history and political science which don't fall in that grouping.
Yes it does. You just don't understand it.
I don't how you can say I don't understand when you are clearly wrong. Unlike you, I live in the land regulated by the US government, and I can say unequivocally that the US government does not regulate my beliefs. I get to decide those for myself.
If laws and policies are underpinned by morals.
They aren't.
They they are also underpinned by beliefs because morality is a belief. Comes from a philosophical belief.
Morality is subjective, but the government is not in control of it or controlled by it.
So the State has to make a moral and belief determination about the polcies they allow or don't allow.
But they don't. The State is not an entities with moral opinions because it is not alive. It's just a big bag of laws, people trying to enforce the laws, and other people making the laws.
To allow abortion is a moral and belief position. To make laws on any social isse involves a moral and belief determination.
This is falsified by the two principle abortion decisions in the US Supreme Court in 1973 and 2023. The 1973 decision put the right of decision on the pregnant woman based on her personal privacy during the period when the fetus was not viable to live outside the uterus -- overriding the power of the individual states to have restrictions beyond those. The 2023 decision was that the states had the power to regulate abortion since women were free to exercise their privacy rights to abortion by going to other states. This is a legal decision based on personal rights versus devolution of powers to states (federalism) and as it has in both eras flipped from and then back to "states rights" in a manner roughly consistent with other rulings of the period.
When the State says that a religious or any group pray or protest in certain places due to protecting a polciy they have allowed which relates to a moral or belief issue. They are taking a moral and belief position against those they deny and siding with those with the opposing moral and belief position.
I believe you are alluding to the clinic protection law. The right to protest abortion clinics is not taken away, but the protestors are prohibited from interfering with the rights of the patients to enter. Are you not aware of the "flying fist" analogy for the competition of individual rights. The short version goes like this: "my right to thrust my fist ends at your face".
Like I said its unreal to have two or more opposing moral and belief systems with equal status at the same time in the same society.
Two? We've got more than two and all have the same legal status.
I don't think you appreciate how diverse in morality, belief, religion, lifestyle, etc., the US has always been. We had radical abolitionists and slavedrivers; free-love communes and local theocracies; isolated communities with their own language and neighborhoon "melting pots" and so many more and I'm only talking about the 1840s and 50s.
One will be denied over the other an dwhne the State sides with one side they are taking a moral and belief position over another. The State cannot govern with a moral and belief position.
It sure can. (I assume you meant "without".)
If its not for God then its against Him.
This is the problem with your binary thinking. You speak as if there only two sides when there are many just as there are many gods worshiped by the people. This is why the best policy is religious neutrality in government. We try to keep it that way, though there are some...
I stop here as the rest is even more political.