I appreciate the following quote from an article I just read in The National Post in an article on the strong likelihood of Canadian courts approving polygamous marriages:

 

"We sit by and watch the barbarian. In the long stretches of peace we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence, his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creed. We laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond; and on those faces there is no smile."

The article is here: http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=1286229