Calling Off The Hounds

At some point, the resistance to all this will surely reach a tipping point, and it will be a sublime piece of cultural irony if foxhunting is what does it. But if you think of what a country means, as George Orwell once wrote, it isn't an idea. It's familiar things, practices, habits: heavy coins, warm beer, monarchs and frightened foxes. There will always be an England, we reassure ourselves. But some Brits are beginning to worry that unless they stand up and do something--maybe sooner rather than later--there won't be.

Andrew Sullivan writes for the New Republic, the New York Times Magazine and andrewsullivan.com