Yes, Mr. President, We Are a Nation of Takers. By Nicholas Eberstadt.

Yes, Mr. President, We Are a Nation of Takers. By Nicholas Eberstadt. Wall Street Journal, January 24, 2013.

Syrian children attend school in Aleppo despite continued bombardment, bloodshed.

Syrian children attend school in Aleppo despite continued bombardment, bloodshed. Photo Blog. NBCNews.com, January 2, 2013.

A girl looks up to the sky after hearing the sound of shelling as she sits on a toy pony in the playground of Al-Tawheed school in Aleppo, Syria on Jan. 1. Muzaffar Salman/Reuters.

Tumor and Teeth in Late Roman Spain.

Tumor and Teeth in Late Roman Spain. By Noah Wiener. Bible History Daily, January 23, 2013.

Toothy Tumor Found in 1,600-Year-Old Roman Corpse. By Owen Jarus. LiveScience, January 21, 2013.

An ovarian tetratoma of late Roman age. By Núria Armentano, Mercè Subirana, Albert Isidro, Oscar Escala, Assumpció Malgosa. International Journal of Paleopathology, December 2012.

Wiener:

Archaeologists excavating a Spanish necropolis discovered a calcified tumor with a bone and four teeth in the pelvis of a late Roman woman. This is the first time that archaeologists have come across the bizarre cancer in the ancient world. Known as ovarian teratoma, the tumor can form human eggs from germ cells to create hair, teeth and bone. This 1600-year-old tumor appears to have been benign, and may not have caused the death of the 30-something year-old woman, who was part of a lower economic class during a period when a fragmented Spain was divided between the Vandals, Suevi and Alans as the Roman Empire collapsed.


 

Senator Rand Paul on US, F-16 Fighters, Egypt and Israel.

Senator Rand Paul on US, F-16 Fighters, Egypt and Israel. Video. On the Record with Greta Van Susteren. Fox News, January 24, 2013. Also find it here and here.

Kerry Defends Weapons Giveaway to Muslim Brotherhood Terror Regime. By Daniel Greenfield.

Kerry Defends Weapons Giveaway to Muslim Brotherhood Terror Regime. By Daniel Greenfield. FrontPage Magazine, January 24, 2013.

Morsi Claims his Comments Were Taken Out of Context. By Daniel Greenfield. FrontPage Magazine, January 16, 2013.

Rand Paul Grills John Kerry on Israel, Pakistan. Video. Real Clear Politics, January 25, 2013. Also find it here.

Obamaism Will Fail Because Socialism Always Does. By Rush Limbaugh.

Obamaism Will Fail Because Socialism Always Does. By Rush Limbaugh. RushLimbaugh.com, January 23, 2013.

Obamaism Will Fail Because Socialism Always Does, Pt 1. By Rush Limbaugh. The Rush Limbaugh Show, January 23, 2013. Video. YouTube.

Obamaism Will Fail Because Socialism Always Does, Pt 2 & Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods - A Way Out 2. By Rush Limbaugh. The Rush Limbaugh Show, January 23, 2013. Video. YouTube.

Rush:

So if you think that we can’t do any better, why not vote for Obama? If you think, if you’re part of the new group of pessimists, you say, “What difference does it make? I’ll vote for Obama, what the hell. I’ll vote for the first black president. At least they won’t call me a racist. What the hell, I don’t want anybody new.” If you think that you can’t do any better, the whole thing’s over. “I’ll vote for Obama. Why not vote for Obama, what difference does it make anyway?” We were outnumbered by the takers in the last election. Makers didn’t show up.

Kirsten Powers: Liberals Shun Opposing Views Because They’re Used to Controlling the Media.

Kirsten Powers: Liberals Shun Opposing Views Because They’re Used to Controlling the Media. By Noel Sheppard. NewsBusters, January 23, 2013.

Are Liberal Internet Users Less Tolerant Than Conservatives? Video. The O’Reilly Factor. Fox News, January 23, 2013. Also find it here.

Kirsten Powers To O’Reilly: Dems Less Tolerant Of Dissent Because They’re Used To Controlling The Media. By Josh Feldman. Mediaite, January 23, 2013.

Liberal columnist Kirsten Powers: Liberals unsettled by opposing views. By Joe Newby. Examiner.com, January 24, 2013.

Anti-American Asians Don’t Speak for Me. By Michelle Malkin.

Anti-American Asians Don’t Speak for Me. By Michelle Malkin. Real Clear Politics, January 18, 2013.

Don’t clone a Neanderthal baby. By Arthur Caplan.

Don’t clone a Neanderthal baby. By Arthur Caplan. CNN.com, January 24, 2013.

Obama speech: Anti-government era is over. By Van Jones.

Obama speech: Anti-government era is over. By Van Jones. CNN.com, January 23, 2013.

Democrats Exploit Tragedy to Implement Their Utopian Agenda of Behavioral Control. By Rush Limbaugh.

Democrats Exploit Tragedy to Implement Their Utopian Agenda of Behavioral Control. By Rush Limbaugh. RushLimbaugh.com, January 16, 2013.

Missouri Bill Taxes Violent Video Games & Dems Exploit Tragedy to Implement Behavioral Control, Pt 1. By Rush Limbaugh. The Rush Limbaugh Show, January 16, 2013. Video. YouTube.

Democrats Exploit Tragedy to Implement Their Utopian Agenda of Behavioral Control, Pt 2. By Rush Limbaugh. The Rush Limbaugh Show, January 16, 2013. Video. YouTube.

Limbaugh:

And I want to remind you, I want to tell you one more time what’s driving all this.  I mean this, again, from the bottom of my heart.  You got Biden and Obama up there today.  It could be John Kerry one day, Harry Reid the next, or Nancy Pelosi.  But whatever, the Democrats, they’re all up talking about things we must do to make our country safer, our children.  We must do this to protect people from the rich, whatever, it’s all rooted in the exact opposite of the way they want you to think of it.  They want you to think of them as loving you, understanding you, protecting you, relating to you, on your side.  You're the little guy and they’re looking out for you.

The truth of the matter is that these elitist leftists who want to control every aspect or as much of life as they can do so precisely because they have no faith in you.  You look at a guy like Ronald Reagan, or look at any conservative.  I’ll use myself.  When I look out across the country I make an assumption that we are populated by a country where the majority of the people are decent and good and trustworthy. We can count on them, they're reliable, and when they’re needed, they’ll show up.  We look at the people of this country optimistically.  We look at our future optimistically.  We look and see a country of people who can take care of themselves and who want to, who are self-reliant, who want to be self-reliant, maybe in some cases even rugged individualists.  We don't see anything wrong with that.

The one thing we don’t do is look out across this country and see a majority of people that we look at with contempt.  We do not think the majority of people in this country are predisposed to evil or bad behavior or rotten behavior.  We don’t look at the majority of these people having to be controlled.  We don’t look out over the country and see a bunch of incompetence and ineptitude.  We don’t look and see a country filled with people who don’t know what's best for them.  We do not see a population that is incapable of doing the right thing.  Quite the opposite.

The left however, people like the president and other Democrats look out over the country and they don’t trust the inherent goodness of people.  Quite the opposite.  Why would they have all this legislation to control as much behavior as possible?  They don’t trust you to do the right thing.  They don’t think you're very smart.  They don’t think you’re capable of becoming very smart.  They don't think you're capable of becoming very educated.  They don’t think that you’re wise enough to make the correct decisions that they think you should make in raising your kids, in taking care of yourself, running your own life.  They have to do it for you.  And they approach you in this effort by making you think that they have great compassion for you and love and caring and that they only want the best for you.

I would simply ask you to look at every group of people who accepts that behavior, every group of people who vote for them, take a look how their lives are.  The people who have turned their lives over to the Democrat Party or to liberalism, people who have bought the notion that the government will take better care of them than they will take care of themselves, look at how they live.  They’re not happy for one thing.  They’re not in control of their own lives.  They don’t have any self-confidence.  They don’t have self-love or self-respect.

When we look over the country, when we see people in trouble, we see people who have turned their lives over to Democrats, who have become dependent on government, who have thrown themselves away, essentially, and it breaks our heart.  It crushes us, and we want to reach out and fix it. We want to reach out, teach people that they’re better than they think they are. That they can do more than they think.  That they can be more than they think they can be. That they are far more competent and far more capable than they think they are, than they’ve been told.  We reach out, we want people to know we have faith in them, we do see the goodness in them, we do see the decency in them, and we want all of that to surface.

We don’t look out over this country and see every aspect of it we want to control.  We’re not into controlling anybody.  We like freedom.  We believe in free will.  We think that you are the best steward of yourself and your self-interests, not some faceless, distant capital that claims to care about you more than you do or than we do, that claims to have your best interests at heart.  Because I’m telling you, the truth is, when they look out over this country, they look at people with a contempt and an arrogance and a condescension that says, “Those people can’t get through the day without me.  Those people can’t get their kids to school and keep them safe without me writing laws about other people and their guns.”  You don’t know and don’t have what it takes to take care of yourself.  They have to do it for you.  And they want to do it.  They want to control your life.  They want that power over you.

We conservatives don’t. We want the greatest country we can have. We want the greatest, best place to live in this world. We want a place where people can be whoever and whatever they want. We want to get as many obstacles out of people’s way as possible, not put obstacles in your way. And that’s what’s happening. Everything that happened today did that: 23 executive actions, a big summary of all this new gun legislation.

Why? Because you don’t have the sense to protect yourself. You don’t have the sense to protect your kids. “Now, we’re not gonna let you protect your kids the way the president protects his because his kids are more important than yours, and you’d better understand that right off the bat. But we still are gonna look out for you because you simply can't.” That’s what all this means.

Practically every piece of legislation that comes from the Democrat Party is rooted in your inability to run your own life, and that comes from their looking at you and seeing incompetence and inability. You have no wisdom. You don’t know how to make the proper judgments in life. The way to understand this is to understand that they don’t love you. You are to be used to advance their power.

You’re an experiment to prove that they know better than you do how to live your life, ’cause you don’t have what it takes. There’s no other reason to want to enact all of these controls on people’s lives. There’s no other reason to want to take this kind of freedom away from people. That reason is simply power for themselves, rooted in their sincere belief that you don’t have what it takes to get through life without all kinds of problems being caused that you don’t know how to fix.

Futuristic Blues. By Walter Russell Mead.

Futuristic Blues. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, January 23, 2013. Also here.

Also see: Is Meritocracy A Sham? By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, July 1, 2012.

Mead:

When Americans peer ahead into the future, the most consequential question we ask is about jobs: in a world in which manufacturing jobs won’t support an affluent middle class and in which many professional jobs will be transformed by automation, how will most Americans make a living, and what will keep the middle class afloat?

A conventional, widely shared view informs the way that blue America looks at that future. This view holds that the death of industrial society means the death of the mass middle class. When millions of people can’t make a living “making stuff” in factories anymore, wages for the unskilled will fall. America will be increasingly polarized between a small group of high skilled creative professionals and a larger group scavenging a living by serving them: mowing their lawns, catering their parties and so on.

Those who think that the blue model needs to be preserved and extended into the future (including, I think, our current president and most of his top allies and advisors), tend to think that under those conditions we will both need and be able to afford an ever-more active redistributive state. The tycoons and the very successful minority will be so rich, thanks to their continuing gains from globalization and technological change, that they can pay progressively higher taxes to fund basic services and middle class jobs for enough of the rest of the country that something like a middle class society can be preserved.  From this perspective, a government-funded health care system is more than a method of delivering health care: it is a way of providing protected, blue-model type jobs when the factories have mostly disappeared. In general, from this perspective you wouldn’t worry about the growth of public employment compared to jobs growth in the private sector; a highly productive private sector might employ fewer and fewer people to generate the wealth that would sustain the larger but much less productive public sector.

This view of the future sees a supercharged private economy pumping huge amounts into the system in a way that, unless corrected by sustained government action, polarizes incomes to an unacceptable degree.  It sees a handful of very large and very successful businesses—an information-finance-entertainment complex, perhaps, including everything from movie studios to investment banks to software firms—generating vast profits. Top research scientists and a few other groups will also do well: the celebrity chefs, the famous writers and intellectuals who attract funding and publicity from the lords of the earth, and other clever, creative types. Wall Street, Hollywood and Silicon Valley will anchor the vibrant, creative side of the American economy, but the rest of the country and the very large majority of the citizenry will live much less productive lives.

The people who work in the cutting edge firms, directly or as contractors, will do extremely well and live fascinating lives. But the rest of the country will be cut off from wealth creation. For 4.0 liberals, the programmatic consequences are obvious: tax the productive private sector in order to fund a dignified life for those in education, health care and especially for the large majority of the population without the skills or the creativity that would qualify them to join the productive minority.

This vision of the future can’t be dismissed with contempt, and it would be wrong to call this socialism. It is a recognizably liberal approach to the problems of governance and distribution. It does not seek state ownership of the means of production and it does not seek to crush freedom of expression. It assumes that the private economy and the creative power of gifted individuals will remain the wellsprings of innovation and prosperity.  But if this vision retains some of the essential features of the liberal outlook, it offers a darker and more elitist vision than classic American approaches have had, and it is a much more pessimistic philosophy than liberalism 4.0 was in its prime.

. . . . . . . . . .

The concept of an elite guiding national development for the benefit of those it governs remains operative today among blue partisans, but what’s changed is that the blue elite no longer sees a bright future for the masses. It turns out that there are two ways to think about the trajectory of liberal society. The traditional view is that over time the differences between elites and non-elites can and should shrink, and it is the proper goal of liberal policy to ensure that they do.

The other view is to believe that differences of talent and ambition ensure that the world will always be divided between a creative minority and an inert majority, and that the goal of social policy isn’t to eliminate that ineradicable difference, but to ensure that the process of recruitment into the elite is genuinely fair. Once the privileges of race, gender and fortune have been neutralized so that the elite is a purely meritocratic body, the members of the elite are obliged to concern themselves for the welfare of the majority, but there is nothing more to be done about equalizing their condition with that of the elite. Authority must rest in the hands of the qualified; those who score poorly on aptitude tests, don’t do well in classes and/or lack extraordinary beauty, artistic talent or ambition must resign themselves to taking direction from the natural aristocracy that a well ordered society has brought so smoothly to the fore.

The economic vision of the meritocrats nicely complements this view that the revolutionary and leveling phase of the liberal experiment has come to an end. An economy in which the talented minority generates wealth that, in its wisdom and compassion, it then shares with the passive majority becomes a society destined to be ruled in perpetuity by that talented minority.  The titans of Wall Street, Silicon Valley and Hollywood, advised by the professors of the great universities and the high civil servants, can perpetuate their social privilege and power forever as long as careers are open to talent.

From the standpoint of America’s blue meritocracy, this vision of the future is both humane and inevitable. Economic development is disempowering the many and empowering the few; and there is nothing that can be done about that. The only decent and fair thing to do is to make a trade. The few will be taxed for the sake of the many, and in return the many will accept the wise guidance of the few.

In this vision, liberalism has accomplished its historic mission by bringing a true meritocracy into our midst. No longer do accidents of race or gender block the path of the talented to the heights of power; hardwired into the social structure by the shape of the economy and legitimized by equal access, a radical inequality of power and status will indefinitely persist. Liberalism now has nothing to do with attacking or eroding the power of the liberal elite; as long as that elite carries out its duty to share with the masses and accepts that its children must in turn earn their own place in the elite rather than simply inheriting one, the elite has no further need to democratize. The long job of social evolution, the fight against entrenched power going back to Magna Carta is over. It has done its job, it has brought us into the golden age of absolute and permanent meritocracy. The best now truly rule.

And something else has also come to an end: the rise of the common people. In the industrial economy, the rising productivity of ordinary people underpinned their rising political power. Karl Marx was not the only observer who could see that a country where the majority worked in factories was a very different place from a country where the majority were peasants on farms. History demonstrated nothing if it didn’t show that peasants could be oppressed with impunity for hundreds of years. Industrial workers, though, literate, organized, and urban, were a much more formidable force.

Gentry liberals today see something different: the ‘ungifted’ majority is the object of their pity and care, rather than a force that demands their respect and even their fear. As they contemplate what post industrial society will look like, they are filled with pity for the incompetent losers, the untalented, those who will only be able to get jobs as pool boys and cocktail waitresses in the post-manufacturing world. Industrial society saw the workers as a rising irresistible force whose interests could not be ignored; post-industrial liberals seem to see the common folk as a collection of sad and weak losers whom the strong must protect.

The economy is making us more unequal, but a wise elite can mitigate the harm—if only we are willing to live under their tutelage. That is what liberalism 4.0 offers today; from an ideology of populism and reform it has mutated into a defense of the status quo.

Morsi Explains Anti-Semitic Remarks by Saying Jews Control Media. By Walter Russell Mead.

Morsi Explains Anti-Semitic Remarks by Saying Jews Control Media. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, January 24, 2013.

Exclusive: Morsy implies Jews control the American media. By Josh Rogin. Foreign Policy, January 23, 2013.

Morsi: Jewish-controlled media distorted my “apes and pigs” remark. By Raphael Ahren. The Times of Israel, January 24, 2013.

Mohamed Morsi Is a Scandal Bigger Than Benghazi. By David Goldman (Spengler). PJ Media, January 16, 2013.

The Blind Sheik and Our Mute President. By Michelle Malkin. Real Clear Politics, January 9, 2013.

More posts on Morsi Anti-Semitic remarks here, here, here, and here.

Mead:

The reality is that insane anti-Jewish conspiracy theories are the mother’s milk of political analysis in Egypt and in much of the rest of the Middle East. The emotional, visceral reaction against what is seen as Israel’s shaming, alien presence in the Arab world has fused with ugly and backward western anti-Semitism to create a turbo-charged fear and hatred of Jewish influence and Jewish power. A political and religious culture which cannot help but see the survival of a Jewish state in the region as a badge of humiliation and failure takes comfort in exaggerated ideas about Jewish power.

President Morsi didn’t think he was saying anything weird in claiming a Jewish conspiracy runs the American media. In the world in which he lives, this is like saying that the sun rises in the east. It is a cliche, not a smear.

Israeli policies can exacerbate the problem, but it is Israel’s existence not its excesses that are the heart of the problem. The Arab world will never prosper, and real peace in the Middle East will never come, until the mental disorder represented by anti-Semitism heals. That won’t happen soon—and until it does, a huge cultural gulf is going to keep Arabs and Americans apart.

Iraqi Sunnistan? By Emma Sky and Harith al-Qarawee.

Iraqi Sunnistan?: Why Separatism Could Rip the Country Apart—Again. By Emma Sky and Harith al-Qarawee. Foreign Affairs, January 23, 2013.

Israel’s major parties support a non-democratic one-state solution. By Roi Maor.

Israel’s major parties support a non-democratic one-state solution. By Roi Maor. +972 Magazine, January 5, 2013.

In controversy over Peres remarks, Israeli “center-left” pays lip service to two-state solution. By Roi Maor. +972 Magazine, January 1, 2013.

The ethnic vote and the “white coalition”: 7 takeaways from Israel’s elections. By Noam Sheizaf.

The ethnic vote and the “white coalition”: 7 takeaways from Israel’s elections. By Noam Sheizaf. +972 Magazine, January 23, 2013.

Netanyahu’s re-election threatens Israel’s identity as Jewish state. By Rula Jebreal.

Netanyahu’s re-election threatens Israel’s identity as Jewish state. By Rula Jebreal. MSNBC.com, January 22, 2013.

Review of Anatol Lieven, “America Right or Wrong.” By Michael Hirsh

Bloody Necessary. By Michael Hirsh. Washington Monthly, April 2005.

Review of Anatol Lieven, America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Europeans won’t admit it, but America’s violent messianism isn’t all bad.

Liberalism and Freedom. By Ed Kilgore.

Liberalism and Freedom. By Ed Kilgore. Washington Monthly, January 23, 2013.

Taking Liberty. By William A. Galson. Washington Monthly, April 2005. Also find it here.

Liberals ignore and conservatives misunderstand America’s guiding value: freedom.

Liberalism’s Unfinished Agenda. By Michael Lind.

Liberalism’s unfinished agenda. By Michael Lind. Salon, January 22, 2013.

Lind:

American liberalism (or “progressivism,” as it is called by those embarrassed to use the L-word) has always been characterized by its commitment to reform in two areas: caste and class. Think about caste as rules restricting those allowed to play the game, and class as the rules of the game itself. The project of American liberalism is to allow everybody to play — and everybody to win, at least at the level of a decent minimum.

In combating the injustices of caste and class, American liberals find what allies they can. On caste issues like nativism, racism and discrimination on the basis of gender and sexual orientation, American liberals often find allies among libertarians who do not share their commitment to a fairer and more inclusive economic system. On class issues like generous public retirement and health and unemployment insurance programs, American liberals often find allies among populists who may at the same time be nativist, racist and hostile to gays and lesbians.

. . . . . . . . . .

Barack Obama has secured his place in American liberal history, in the tradition of the two Roosevelts and Johnson. By the time he leaves office, America’s caste system will have shrunk and its safety net will have expanded. But plenty of work will remain to be done by American liberals, in opportunistic alliances with libertarians, populists and enlightened conservatives.

Ralph Peters on Benghazi Hearing and Gift of F-16 Fighter Jets to Egypt.

Ralph Peters: Congress Went Easy on Hillary Clinton. Video. The O'Reilly Factor. Fox News, January 23, 2013. Also find it here and here.

How Dangerous are US F-16 Fighter Jets Gifted to Egypt. Video. Hannity. Fox News, January 23, 2013.

F-16 deal redefines US relationship with Egypt’s Morsi administration. By Ahmed Eleiba. Ahram Online, January 14, 2013.

No Matter What, Egyptian “Aid” Won’t End. By Bethany Mandel. Commentary, January 23, 2013.

Egypt: The Rule of the Brotherhood. By Yasmine El Rashidi.

Egypt: The Rule of the Brotherhood. By Yasmine El Rashidi. New York Review of Books, February 7, 2013. Also find it here.

More on Egypt and Morsi here.

Christianity After Constantine. By Walter Russell Mead.

Christianity After Constantine. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, January 23, 2013.

Religion As An Activity Engaged In By Consenting Adults In Private. By Peter Berger. The American Interest, January 23, 2013.

Berger:

But I do want to make a general observation: In all these cases the authorities accused of violating the plaintiffs’ rights operate with a definition of religion as a private matter to be kept out of public space. There is here a general issue of government overreach, as clearly illustrated by the (still unresolved) attempt by the Obama administration to force Catholic institutions to provide contraception coverage in their employees’ health plans. Beyond that, though, there is a very ideological view of the place of religion in society. In other words, religion is to be an activity engaged in by consenting adults in private. The attorney for the Judeo-Christian side in the aforementioned American case had it quite right when he compared the treatment of his client’s religion with measures of disease control. This is not an attitude one would expect to find in a Western democracy. It is curiously reminiscent of policies toward religion in Communist countries and toward non-Muslims under Islamic rule.

An aggressive secularism seems to be on the march in all these cases. It seems more at home in Europe, which is far more secularized than America. Even in the United Kingdom, it seems, the drums of the French Revolution still reverberate. But how is one to explain this sort of secularism in the United States? The “nones”—that is, those who say “none” when asked for their religious affiliation by pollsters—are a very mixed lot. One theme that comes through is disappointment with organized religion. There is an anti-Christian edge to this, since Christian churches continue to be the major religious institutions in this country. Disappointment then, or disillusion—but why the aggressive hostility? There is yet another theme that comes through in the survey data: An identification of churches (and that means mainly Christian ones) with intolerance and repression. I think that this is significant.

Let me venture a sociological hypothesis here: The new American secularism is in defense of the sexual revolution. Since the 1960s there has indeed been a sexual revolution in America. It has been very successful in changing the mores and the law. It should not be surprising that many people, especially younger ones, enjoy the new libidinous benefits of this revolution. Whether one approves or deplores the new sexual culture, it seems unlikely to be reversed. Yet Christian churches (notably the Catholic and Evangelical ones) are in the forefront of those who do want to reverse the libertine victory. Its beneficiaries are haunted by the nightmare of being forced into chastity belts by an all too holy alliance of clerics and conservative politicians. No wonder they are hostile!


Mead:

For most of Western history, ever since Constantine linked the church and the state in the ancient Roman Empire, Christians set the cultural and political rules that governed society. When it came to public morality the church and the people agreed more than they disagreed. Whatever people did in their private lives, everyone agreed publicly that the legal and ecclesiastical definitions of marriage should line up. To them, lifelong, heterosexual monogamy wasn’t a specifically Christian idea, or even a religious idea, but merely the commonsensical solution to the problem of sex and babies.

No longer. Today churches themselves don’t agree about what defines marriage. Many condone divorce; others don’t. Some churches celebrate gay weddings; others hold that all homosexual acts are sinful. Some churches frown on premarital sex; others say live and let live. And even greater diversity exists in society at large. In a democratic society, laws about marriage reflect the majority’s views. A century ago, this wasn’t a problem because the majority of individuals, as well as churches, agreed about what marriage was. Today, no such consensus exists.

Where we disagree with Berger, then, is that the conflict over public morality isn’t a cage match between a unified Christian body and a unified secular movement. Society is becoming so diverse that any civil law on marriage will coincide with fewer people’s beliefs about what the law should be. This breakdown of cultural consensus is going to haunt American jurisprudence and political discourse for the foreseeable future.

But Berger is right that traditional Christian teachings on sex are, rightly or wrongly, driving hostility to Christianity. These teachings—no sexual intercourse outside heterosexual marriage, ever—have never been particularly popular, especially among the young. In our society, where widespread access to birth control and the long interval between the onset of puberty and the security of economic adulthood make traditional chastity look unthinkable to a lot of young people, it’s less popular than ever.

Gerri Willis: The South is Kicking New York’s Butt.

Wrangel: Southern Areas Have Cultures That We Have To Overcome. By Gerri Wilis. The Willis Report. Fox Business, January 23, 2013. Video here.

Rand Paul Questions Hillary Clinton at the Senate Benghazi Hearings.

Watch the Full Clinton-Paul Exchange at the Benghazi Hearing. Video. PBS News Hour, January 23, 2013. YouTube.

Watch Secretary Clinton’s Testimony on Consulate Attack in Libya. By Larissa Epatko. PBS NewsHour, January 23, 2013.