Universities used to have unwritten speech codes. There were insults and epithets, hurled in anger or drunkenness, followed by apologies, sincere or hypocritical. Everyone knew who was occasionally angry and who was habitually obnoxious, and campuses were generally civil and relaxed. What looked like doing nothing actually did something ameliorative. In a dense and diverse society, Rauch says, moral disputes and collisions of clashing sensibilities are incessant.
Otherwise communities become neurotic, quick to take offense, slow to assuage it.
In a Santa Fe, N.M., park, a fountain portrays a boy and girl playing, she aiming a garden hose at him, he aiming a squirt gun at her. The sculptor is going to make the boy a new hand, holding a hose. In its Baltimore headquarters, the Associated Black Charities is vexed by a proposed mural depicting Harriet Tubman holding a musket. Zero tolerance for guns. Zero common sense.