One of my pet peeves is that libertarians and Christians -- especially fundamentalist Christians -- have more in common than they realize, but they are distracted by spurious (yet highly emotional) issues which cause extreme animosity. This animosity causes them to forget the big picture, which is an area where they have a lot in common. So much in common that it dwarfs their differences.

I'm afraid I'm beginning to repeat myself here, and I really dislike repeating myself, but the issues don't change. Like the bull who charges the red cape instead of focusing on the matador, people think that the "issue" is condoms in the schools and wear themselves out fighting over it -- in the process missing precisely what is meant to be missed -- the dysfunctional nature of schools which are unable to impart basic skills necessary for citizenship.

Keeping in mind my aversion to repeating myself, here's one of my arguments about the condom-on-the-banana "issue":

Arguments over penises and sexual morality become quasi legalistic arguments over rights based on membership in identity groups. Ironically, the state is far more involved with matters of personal sexuality and privacy than ever before.

Because people get caught up (hung up, really) in these personal debates (what we call the "culture war"), the real debate -- which should be over confiscation of wealth and loss of freedom -- is avoided.

In schools, students are taught how to put condoms on bananas. As I have argued before, I don't think the goal is to "protect" them from AIDS, but as a diversion to inflame the sentiments of conservative parents -- who will then expend vast amounts of time and energy getting condoms out of the classrooms -- while the more horrendous reality that schools can't or won't teach (and prefer to indoctrinate instead) is ignored.

(In a real war, this would be called "flypaper strategy" of course.)

How can I make this more obvious? The Culture War is not a war, but a tactic, and to a large extent a diversionary one. Time wasted battling over what people do with their penises is precisely what the tacticians hope to accomplish. If demoralization results as a byproduct, fine. But the beauty of cultural, personal strategies is that they are malleable, and change according to the styles of the times. If a cultural attribute that shocked one generation (say, long hair) fails in another, well, then politicize head-shaving in another, and so on.

When tactics are cultural, fighting over them is as much a waste of time as it would be to police the sale of gasoline because people might use it to make Molotov cocktails. The phony Culture War thus insidiously subverts the real war (to protect freedom) into innumerable and constantly changing petty squabbles over personal behavior.

By its nature, the "culture war" is a tactic -- a viral, mutable one, but a tactic nonetheless.

(Plenty of unpleasant busywork for a blog like this...)

if I choose to plunge into deviancy I want it to be my personal decision, not the whim of some sneaky TV producer who suddenly feels like mixing his otherwise insipid didactic jumble with sleazy nuggets, sending me and my family, along with millions of other TV viewers on an unsolicited communal trip into the gutter. And I certainly don't want them taking my children for a ride in the deviancy amplification spiral; a media roller coaster attraction that glamorizes depravity, making it seem common or acceptable.

A truly free market would not only allow a diversity of media content, it would also sort the markets in the order of magnitude, keeping the mainstream in the mainstream and the marginal on the margins. This would be a refreshing change from the upside-down Big Media of today that mainstreams the marginal and marginalizes the mainstream. This compulsion furthers an elitist perception of the American audiences as some harebrained violent perverts with the attention span of a fruit fly, the mental aptitude of a walnut, and the moral fortitude of a gerbil. This isn't just an insult: according to analysts such perception generates aversion and hatred of this country among more socially conservative and less tolerant populations overseas, especially in the Muslim world.

The elitist media's view of its customer base as nitwits is the rationalization of its own failure, after decades of proselytizing, to convert America to the ideas of "progress." After all the marvelous columns, news stories, movies and shows with filtered facts, exaggerated failures and understated successes, after all the free unsolicited advice bestowed upon them by the media, the American people went ahead and reelected George W. Bush. Who would the media elites rather blame for it - themselves or the unworthy recipients of their wisdom? Come to think of it, one group in this equation deserves to be called nitwits, and it's not the American people.

So there's a war between God and sex. Jesus versus penises. Even between differing ways of viewing the unknown. An illegitimate war over inclusion. In reality, the government has no business in these things.

While I've touched on things beyond the proper scope of a blog post, for those who are interested, I recommend reading Edmund Opitz's Libertarian Theology of Freedom, which I read years ago and which convinced me that I was not insane as I thought I was when I used to wonder whether the animosity between libertarianism and Chistianity was necessary.

I'm sorry to read (via Reason) that Reverend Opitz died last year, so I thought I'd close with a quote:

"There is a place for government in the affairs of men, and our Declaration of Independence tells us precisely what that place is. The role of government is to protect individuals in their God-given individual rights. Freedom is the natural birthright of man, but all that government can do in behalf of freedom is to let the individual alone, and it should secure him in his rights by making others let him alone."

Considering Bill Whittle's brilliant essay discussing "The Remnant," is it too much for me to hope that these radical ideas are becoming contemporary?