Oh fuck me, back to the Civil War yet again? I think Andrew is referring more to where religious/ethical truths were distinct from political truths - where Richard Nixon or Jimmy Carter wouldn't presume to introduce Quakerism and Baptist scripture to the administration and political landscape, that JFK wouldn't bring the Pope into secular decision, that MLK would use a Hindu as his guide along with teachings from his the Black Southern congregation, but he would litigate and campaign based on the Constitution and the more secular Rights of Man.

Abortion has become a religious issue - "when life begins" on one side, and "a woman's undeniable right to her body" on the other. A middle ground of societal values and scientific uncertain modesty and real concers about both mother and child pre- and post-birth have left the building. The religious fervor in LGBTQ has bloomed in the peculiar soil of men-turned-women proclaiming inalienable rights to femalehood that the now-dodgy biological-from-birth women can barely hope for. It's not that LGBTQ includes a unity of rights for those plus straights - it's 5 more silos of a religious beliefs with seperate canons depending. The canon on immigration states open borders, the right to relocate with a faint nod to possible limits, or closed borders. GOP "no new taxes" counterfqcing a new liberal certitude partially bolstered by the dubious MMT that we can just print money to fix health, housing, education, global warming, guaranteed monthlies, and racial imbalance, regional problems (just not down South). This is now closer to a religious fervor than it was in the past - our "moral obligation" in health care for all, moral obligation in free tuition, moral obligation to fix carbon outputs. Find the right balance is passé, go-for-broke moon shots are the only acceptable, $15/hr probably appears in new printings of 1st Corinthians.

Yes, religion has always been a part of our social discourse, but still, we paid homage to a supposed separation of church and state, and what Sullivan notes is that the personal secularism of atheists now approaches the activist Madeline Murray OHare rather than Einstein or Bertrand Russell as the standard. 

It's a shame that the author doesn't appreciate that Sully acknowledges his tribes, while trying to reject tribalism. He's renouncing the antiliberal liberalism, just as he renounces anticonservative conservatism. We long suggested that extremes meet back around on the other side that extreme illiberal illiberalism at some point becomes anither type of conservatism. But maybe we just don't want it pointed out to us.

first things first  is proving to be the main thing that works so far>

....just like everywhere else, the virus and the lockdown are colliding with longstanding inequalities. That means that even as Greece performs well compared to other countries, many of its inhabitants are more at risk than others.

That’s especially true when it comes to the five refugee camps on the Greek islands, where around 40,000 people are held in legal limbo in squalid conditions....

 from How has Greece escaped the worst of the coronavirus so far?

whole article addresses that. They already had problems like a horrible economy and a lousy unprepared health care system. But the populace mostly accepted they had to set those problems aside for now and prioritize coronavirus lockdown early. Precisely because they knew the problems. And that this can't wait for those things to be fixed.

Um also comes to mind late hearing the words "civil rights" used in this context. When public health experts truly take over a society for a pandemic or similar reason, which they haven't here, there are few civil rights at all! They are taken away for the duration. The true nature of public health in a pandemic is authoritarian, is the nature of the beast. In that field they learn theoreticals like how to triage and ration ruthlessly. and even cruelly for the greater public good. We haven't had much of that yet, we're doing voluntary stuff. How's that working out so far?

Trump's whole being is like the opposite, he thinks only me me me rather than greater good of any kind.Hence he often sides with any kind of libertarian ethos such as the open-the-economy protestors right now. (Oddly on an international level, he's the opposite, anti-free-trade and admirers dictator and totalitarian types.)

And it IS happening: