Safe Haven

Because that's what governments do. That's what politics literally is: public morality. If we make choices about what "marriage" is, or we decide that the makeup of a family is a matter of taste, we necessarily disfavor those traditional views. We also suffer the consequences of failing to appreciate those realities whilst being awash in misplaced sentimentality and false notions of "equality". I suppose we'd always sought refuge in "freedom," believing that a healthy pluralism would make room for our views, too. What if that viewpoint neutrality was always a ruse, an illusion? I hold Mr. David French in the highest esteem. His work to make America livable for all of us should never be forgotten. But maybe the biggest mistake is to believe that most people want to be reasonable. Or perhaps the illusion was so plausible because most Americans and their neighbors around the world still benefited from the West's consensus about the nat...

Everyone has almost a practiced habit of lamenting the incivility of politics today, and that's not altogether wrong. The conversation is uncivil, often emotional, and illogical. On the other hand, there is a privilege inherent in telling everyone else to calm down. Personally, I get angry when real issues of justice are at stake. I don't want to sing Kumbaya, politically speaking, with those who don't recognize children in the womb as persons, or who think separating families at the border as a punitive measure to discourage illegal entry is acceptable. As a consequence, the memes telling us all to just "get along" are patronizing and stupid. I know I find default libertarianism kind of stupid. A sort of dependence on the fact that large segments of the populace could and would find various instances of federal government conduct excessive, silly, or otherwise injurious to some notion of individual liberty has the curious effect of obscuring the fact that lib...