Like virtually everyone in the United States, I find that this national tendency toward an ever greater, ever more radical individualism is not without problems. Even as I revel in some aspects of our increasingly free social life, other aspects of it give me pause. But this great human movement toward less external constraint on individual freedom seems to be the essence of American life. It is the mighty Mississippi River flowing down our national history, fed by tributaries from its right and left banks, gathering force and volume in its irresistible progress from colonial times right up through the end this very week of DADT. That river will roll on, swamping teacher unions trying to prop up the old school bureaucracies, drowning religious groups fighting issues like gay rights. The trend toward greater individual choice is too deep, too strong, too wide to be dammed (or damned, for that matter).

And so I say it again to all my many friends on the secular and religious left: relax. The Christianists aren’t coming to lock you up in camps. George W. Bush was the first president to choose a vice presidential running mate with an openly lesbian daughter; the dark night of fascism isn’t preparing to fall. The Left likely must resign itself to a long term trend of less compulsory social solidarity and more individual economic freedom; the right must accept that individuals in our society can only be compelled by their own consciences on an ever growing list of social and cultural issues. No one will be completely happy about the state of this society; Americans have been lamenting the downsides of American individualism for almost as long as we’ve been becoming more individualistic. And the less we can rely on external forces (laws and mores with as much binding power as law) to govern our behavior the more we as a people must learn to manage our liberty wisely.