“I can get gumbo and grits more easily in New Orleans than I can in Manchester, New Hampshire. The same goes for hearing live zydeco. These represent variations in a common culture. A farmer with a pickup truck in Wisconsin listens to music all the time that sings about red Georgia clay, and this despite the fact that he has never seen any. This is part of the texture of a common culture, and a big part of what makes it so enjoyable to live in a country as big as ours. But abortion represents an alien civilization.”
To State the Obvious
“You cannot build a federal system when the component parts belong to different civilizations.”
Losing the Original American Exceptionalism
“That self-awareness really was exceptional. But we have now lost anything resembling such humility, and have replaced it with Ozymandian pride, and are the laughing stock of the angels crammed into the balcony of the celestial matinee, who have seen then empires rise and fall, and it is not even lunch yet.”‘
Exceptional Foresight
“The founding of our nation really was exceptional, because the men who drafted our Constitution knew that American politicians, taking one thing with another, would be every bit as sleazy as the same class of men from any other clime.”
A Lawful Attempt
“So the American War for Independence was strictly speaking a war of independence—an attempt to recognize the ocean.”
Divided From the Start
“These culture wars have been with us from the very foundation of our nation. They are not something new that erupted when the first hippies started to disrupt Berkeley. From the very beginning, we have had men like Patrick Henry wanting America to take her place among the nations of Christendom. And also from the very beginning, we have had men like Thomas Paine, who wanted something much more like the French Revolution.”
I Mean, Really Odd
“An argument that would prevent us from doing the right thing in our social, cultural, and political life together because some people would pretend to support it when they didn’t really mean it is truly an odd argument.”
Holiness in a Kit
“The Mosaic law as given to Israel in the wilderness was holiness in a kit. The laws were hard-edged, cut and dried, God was present with them, they had prophets on scene, and God’s purpose was to define and defend a holy people called by His name. That law was, pure and simple, rough-cut justice.”
Imagine Your Legislation Under the Control of Your Enemies
“When you pass something like the Patriot Act, with much fanfare, in order to enable patriots to spy on the bad guys, what winds up happening is that the act is used to enable bad guys to spy on patriots.”
Judicious Threat Assessment
“The biggest blasphemy culprits in human history have consistently been these so-called lords of the earth—and not the mental patient who got off his meds and is saying erratic things in aisle 7 at Safeway. The state has always been the principal blasphemy threat, in other words.”