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There's a lot in that. Certainly the efforts to use the courts to force states and communities to accept gay marriage are a good indication of an absence of a "live and let live" attitude in some quarters.

But if conservatives play their cards right we can defeat such efforts. Liberal activists are only a small percentage of the population in the country as a whole, and a minority even in the blue states, and on some issues time is against them.

I do notice, though, that some people in the blue states are coming to think that conservatives and the GOP don't have much use for them, and that could have consequences for the future. It's a tough situation. Some of the social conservative arguments against abortion, gun control, or homosexuality haven't had have much appeal in the blue states lately, so there's a lot of frustration with those parts of the country in conservative circles.

But a recognition that the Northeast and West Coast have contributed a lot to American culture might help. For some people around here whose parents voted for Eisenhower or Nixon or Reagan, conservative Evangelicals from the Heartland are the guys who wanted to take away granddad's beer, and would have outlawed dancing too, if they could have gotten away with it, and that's not a good rep to have.

I suspect 70% of Americans are not interested in waging any sort of cultural war, and it is live and let live, despite some of the rhetoric. That line in Pat Buchanan's speech at the GOP convention in 1992 (or whatever year it was) was a big flop. The gay marriage thing is an irritant because it has come from the robes. When it is legalized in California, and a few other places, by the ballot box, it won't matter much I suspect. Most American accept culturally induced changes via the ballot box, and cultural attitudes are not much affected in my view by politics. They are shaped by life experiences.

You just caused me to realize that NOT everybody involved in the "left vs right" fight is of my generation. I did NOT consider that a good many people have a whole different definition of "conservative".