The examples given are ill-chosen, but the basic point is sound:
If not for Christian fundamentalists, after all, we probably wouldn't have punk rock. Or rap, Goth fashion, skateboarding and lots of recent art. Strong art comes from cultural ferment, from the clash of ideas, not from homogeneity. Liberals have failed to recognize that the "diversity" they so celebrate includes people who disagree with them -- churchgoers and mosque-goers, pro-lifers and hunters. And the life has gone out of liberalism as a result.
-- Ann Marlowe
On the other hand, one of the reasons why I dropped out of the conservative movement in the mid-90's was because it seemed like such an intellectual ghetto, where everyone read the same books and only a few honestly engaged the ideas of the world outside. If anything, it appears to have gotten worse:
I don't mean to impugn all righty blogs, but the ones I'm told to read - [Belmont Club], Powerline, LGF - are increasingly full of "know your enemy" shit that really bears no knowledge of the "enemy."
-- David Weigel
A final point about the Marlowe quote: most of the liberals I have known personally who fit her description (and certainly not all liberals do!) either grew up in fundamentalist Christian families or at least grew up in the Bible Belt. They themselves are the products of "cultural ferment" and do indeed try to create "strong art".
Today is the 100th anniversary of Ayn Rand's birth. Cathy Young at Reason Online notes a weakness of her philosophy that always stood out for me:
In its pure form, Rand’s philosophy would work very well indeed if human beings were never helpless and dependent through no fault of their own. Thus, it’s hardly surprising that so many people become infatuated with Objectivism as teenagers and “grow out of it” later, when concerns of family, children, and old age—their own and their families’—make that fantasy seem more and more impossible.
Whittaker Chambers, when he reviewed Atlas Shrugged for the National Review in 1957, put it this way:
Yet from the impromptu and surprisingly gymnastic matings of the heroine and three of the heroes, no children -- it suddenly strikes you -- ever result.
The possibility is never entertained. And, indeed, the strenuously sterile world of Atlas Shrugged is scarcely a place for children.
Rand's defense of capitalism and attack on altruism are both worth taking seriously, but Objectivism as a whole never seemed to have much to do with real life.