Does Court's Marriage Decision Mean Greater Individualism? How About Tolerance?

"It's worth taking a step back from the emotions and technical details of all these events," writes Walter Russell Mead, "to ask about the broader trend they point to."

Superficially, they point to a schizophrenic public: leaning pro-life; increasingly in favor of gay marriage; divided on gun control but unwilling to pull the trigger, so to speak, on significantly tightened gun laws. But on a deeper level, these all look like examples of the biggest cultural-political trend in America: a response to the growing complexity of 21st century life that revives individualism and states’ rights.

Individualism sometimes work for the Right and sometimes for the Left. The right to marry who you choose is as individualistic as insisting on your right to bear arms. With abortion, that same logic is muddier, which is why the public is still divided. Pro-choicers lay claim to the individualism mantle by stating that women should be free to control their own reproductive health, while pro-lifers do the same by arguing that abortion involves two individuals with rights, not one.

Given the nation's divisions, a future of a live-and-let-live individualism sounds appealing, but we've a long way to go to achieve it. The Left's passion for demonizing those with whom it disagrees reached new heights in Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion in the Defense of Marriage case, when he disparaged the motives of half the nation as well as DOMA legislators. As Justice Antonin Scalia retorted in his dissent,

Polygamy Next?

via Instapundit:

MATT K. LEWIS: The Case For Polygamy. “This is not some straw man argument. As BuzzFeed’s McKay Coppins pointed out, polygamists are, in fact, celebrating the court’s decision. And they have every reason to do so. After all, why shouldn’t marriage equality apply to them, too? . . . What’s magical about the number two? . . . As a man, I can only imagine how much more efficient it would be to have one wife in the workforce and another wife at home with the kids. This would be much better for the children than shipping them off to some nursery school. And having three parents is a lot better than having just one … or none.”