The life of one of TV’s most successful shows lies in the balance. Phil has backers and antagonists. But the reaction of the culture to his words brings to light a contemporary issue: the transforming idea of liberal society. The problem facing a so called liberal society is this: liberal society, always priding itself on the liberty of its citizens, is threatened by the very tolerance it sought to defend. Liberal society has, up to now, focused on universalizing the rights of the people, but now it talks about sex. A lot. The first question is: why? What changed? Jonathan Chaplin argues that what was in the background, civil society,…