There's an element of truth to Joe Klein's recent comment in TIME Magazine:
"In 2004 the quality of the debate may be the election's most important question: Are we going to be serious about this or not? It is not hard to argue about two guys kissing, or a teenager getting a late-term abortion, or the death penalty, or school prayer, or flag burning, or smoking marijuana. There are even some broader principles that can be discussed: Should the question of gay marriage - or abortion, for that matter - be decided by the judgment of a court or by legislation? Is there any way to limit our commercial culture's ability to narcotize children with an endless stream of sex and violence? But those deeper arguments usually get as much attention as the size of the budget deficit. In fact, the Culture War isn't really a war; it's more a public entertainment, a Culture Circus. Wars require combatants. The general public is not up in arms but plastered in armchairs, occasionally roused to flaccid pique by a handful of show-biz gladiators - Rosie O'Donnell, Rush Limbaugh, Al Franken, Jerry Falwell - who fight carefully selected papier-mache lions."There's more seriousness and depth to the debates once one gets away from the USA's coastal centers, but Joe Klein won't see much of that and America's "mainstream" media won't reflect it. So what's my prediction for 2004? To quote another famous band of participants in the Culture Wars, who even have their own army: bq. "You're in the psycho circus And I say welcome to the show."
He's got a good point.
Which is exactly why nationalizing these types of problems was such a bad idea to begin with, IMO.
Many Americans are up in arms, only instead of screaming about it they are quietly withdrawing from mainstream society and setting up parallel institutions. Private schools. Home schools. Non-denominational churches. Caesar doesn't notice 'cause Caesar is still getting what should be rendered unto him. The Secession isn't geographic this time (at least for the most part) but spiritual, which is at least as dangerous for societal unity.
I completely agree with Tongue Boy. I also disagree with Klein about the relative importance of the culture wars. Underlying them are serious differences about what constitutes the good life and the good person. The answers to those most basic philosophical questions affect everything else. Economics, foreign policy, questions of division of power between the states and the feds or the courts and the legislature, everything can be subsumed under the great philosophical questions, and how those great questions are answered affects how the subsumed questions are answered.
Tongue Boy & Fred,
Much the same happened when Prohibition ended. Reality bites.
"Then again, voters in the early Democratic primaries, a perversely serious minority of the electorate, rejected the passionate Howard Dean in favor of John Kerry, a candidate nuanced to the point of paralysis."
Da hell? Yes, partisan Democrats are more serious about the country than the rest of us. How did this crap get by the editors?
Also, this was a bad editorial. I guess I expected more. It would be better if an editorialist simply attempted to explain where each side was coming from and their reasoning.
To those wailing about how the proposed FMA would violate Federalism and limit the choices of the people: Just how does something that requires a supermajority of the Congress (2/3) and a Supermajority of the respective legislatures of the states (3/4) in order to be passed violate the will of the people?