More on the culture Wars

I meant to post these articles, be somewhat witty about it, and be done. In, out. Quick. To the point. That kind of thing. I failed. The articles are nonetheless interesting. In spite of my desire to, I'm not going to erase my ramblings either. But first, here's the list of links.

1. Provides an interesting comparison of the reception of Kinsey's original work on sex and the movie "Kinsey"'s reception in round two of the Bush Era.

2. For the non-Canadians among us, three articles on gay marriage in Canada: the first on gay-marriage tourism, and the second on a supreme court of Canada ruling that may pave the way for the government to pass legislation broadening the traditional definition of marriage. The third on Alberta's efforts to try and prevent gay marriage in that province -- the red neck province.

3. This last one on the Dutch (how weird, the Dutch) talks of the challenges that a traditionally tolerant society faces when confronted with home-grown and external brands of extremism.


Now, what's left of this post is where I got into trouble: [I'm going to leave it up, though. Why? I don't know, because it seems important to me to think about what's really fueling "the culture wars." If anybody had artcles, books etc they want to suggest that would help my thinking on the matter, please fire away.] So here's what I originally wrote:

Here's some articles on aspects of the culture wars (left versus right) from three different parts of the globe. The articles aren't tightly related, and I don't really have a "thesis" for grouping them together other than to say that, to me, it seems that the cultural McCarthyism at play in the States right now is both specific to the US and also part of the broader challenge facing all of the western democracies.

It's easy to be tolerant when tolerance is akin to a pennies-a-week charity. But tolerance after a certain point costs more than pennies a week. It means redefining marriage. It means allowing society to be vulernable to (perceived and real) threats because living in a police state can't be any fun. These kinds of concessions are easy to make for a lefty like me. Obviously there're not so easy for others.

The real issue, I think, is that we've come to a point when our society's are trying to define where tolerance of others becomes a disrespect of oneself. All I'm trying to say is that I think we're at a turning point. Writing more of this post would mean defining what I mean by tolerance and thinking more deeply than I care to at the moment.