“It’s something like Nietzsche’s narrative—the “Nowhere Man” poised to make something of his own individualism and will to power—that creates the plausibility structure of contemporary living in the West. Its central dogma is the will to power and its doxology is actually self-congratulatory, like Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself.” It yields masters and consumers rather than pilgrims and disciples.”

SSM opposition isn’t really about gays at all; it is the battleground where the incompatibility of Christian anti-individualism with American individualism finally come in conflict. Sorta like how Russia and USA fought in Vietnam — Vietnam itself really had very little to do with that conflict.

“Why are there so few conservative professors?” The risky economics of the profession.

“It is more as if the occupants of various archaeological sites were all playing with the building blocks of civilization, looking for combinations that worked. In one place agriculture may have been the foundation; in another, art and religion; and over there, population pressures or social organization and hierarchy. Eventually they all ended up in the same place. Perhaps there is no single path to civilization; instead it was arrived at by different means in different places.”