Remember when we decided culture doesn't cause violence?

I wondered if I was the only one witnessed the argument that our culture encourages rape and heard echoes of the debate over rap music and violence.

Brendan O'Neill reveals thought the same thing, as revealed in his excellent essay on militant political correctness that has created "Stepford students" on university campuses. Please keep in mind Mr. O'Neill is writing for a British audience, so "fag-end" means a ruined end, such as the frayed end of a rope, when you read his paragraph:

When I told them that at the fag-end of the last millennium I had spent my student days arguing against the very ideas they were now spouting — against the claim that gangsta rap turned black men into murderers or that Tarantino flicks made teens go wild and criminal — not so much as a flicker of reflection crossed their faces. ‘Back then, the people who were making those censorious, misanthropic arguments about culture determining behaviour weren’t youngsters like you,’ I said. ‘They were older, more conservative people, with blue rinses.’ A moment’s silence. Then one of the Stepfords piped up. ‘Maybe those people were right,’ he said. My mind filled with a vision of Mary Whitehouse cackling to herself in some corner of the cosmos.

With all the work he and his wife did trying to censor rap music, Al Gore may be primed for a comeback on the coattails of "rape culture."