Fanning the flames of the culture wars

Some excerpts from a column written by William McGurn at the Wall Street Journal:

...What makes issues such as abortion and marriage so contentious is that the opposing moral positions cannot be reconciled. The beauty of democratic politics, however, is its recognition that what free people want and what they will settle for as reasonable are two different things. Justice Kennedy’s unfortunate legacy on these hot-button issues is to take compromise off the table and thus ensure anger and ill will.

...Anthony Kennedy is an educated man who writes in the smooth tones of Stanford and Harvard Law. The effect, alas, is no less noxious. Next time America’s corrosive politics comes up, it’s worth remembering that the justice so often hailed as a “moderate” or “centrist” has done as much as any to fan the flames of America’s raging culture war.

Read more here.