Rufus F. offers an answer:
Culture matters. I disagree with the culture warriors on a number of issues, but not with the sense that, when we struggle over cultural issues in the public sphere, we’re struggling publicly over private terms of existence. Unless we take part in that struggle, internally or externally, existence is something given to us, instead of made by us. When we discussed The Republic, it was hard for me to fully condemn the censoriousness of Plato. Isn’t it better to tremble at the power of poetry than to see all cultural expressions as consumer items, no more threatening than deodorant?
2006-2011 archives for The Daily Dish, featuring Andrew Sullivan