Pace Roger Kimball, my patron, my host, my colleague in literature: political stand-off, not some conspiracy against civilization, was and is depriving almost all the pupils at Liberty and Milton Elementary Schools of the most distant chance at Kipling, leaving the author a rather puny permanence in the company of people like me.If we want a strong, uniting culture, we have to build it on functional politics. The best thing Kimball could do for the traditions he loves is to withdraw any support for his partisans’ intransigence. The same thing has to happen on the Left, but it is fitting that someone on the Right should lead, since the “Christian nation” rhetoric is over there. Talk about ideology: it’s much more fundamentally part of the West’s principles and its genius to reconcile with opponents than to be “righteous overmuch.”