A fascinating piece—lessons of history?—from The New Criterion (hat tip Maggie’s Farm), with its many detractors bitching about it in the comments. A quote:

We Athenians, Pericles said, are “free and tolerant in our private lives; but in public affairs we keep to the law”—including, he added in an important proviso, “those unwritten laws,” like the lawlike commands of taste, manners, and morals—“which it is an acknowledged shame to break.” Freedom and tolerance, Pericles suggested, were blossoms supported by roots that reached deep into the soil of duty.

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