Let me give you a little report from “the heart of the heart of Europe” (Salzburg). In this political atmosphere, conservatives and libertarians fall on one another like long-lost brothers. We’re so glad to be able to talk freely, with common values and aims.

Back home, in our Right Wars, or Rightish Wars, we tear into one another. They’re apt to call me a warmonger, Big Brother, a womb-obsessor. I might say to them, “How do you propose to stop enemy missiles? Hold up your bongs? What are you going to do about an invading army? Offer to have sex with them?”

Long ago, I was in a workplace where two of us were religious. Different denominations, but so what? Uniquely in that environment, we believed in God, prayed, went to church, and all that antique stuff. We had a special understanding of each other. We were brothers (and the whole place, frankly, was fraternal, religion or secularism aside).

Later, I worked in a place where everyone, or most everyone, was religious. So you had sectarian sniping, smallness, and enmity. Zero solidarity, zero fraternity.

Funny world. Maybe the Bolshevik-Menshevik thing is baked in?