re positive use: i think you quoted a friend (was it the "those were different times" woman?) hoi'd come across a use of it among students where it was being used as ideological elbow room to escape the mental conflict of having a fundie upbringing but mixing with liberal-arts types, and not wanting to be torn apart inside (but i think this is just a topsyturvy of the pejoriative use)

by 2: i don't mean anything very startling, just that not only do (eg) left and right (or any other embattled polity) have different beliefs, but (alongside these) they have different institutions they trust to deliver or protect the important truths ("science", "the church", "the proletariat", gaia): so that claims about the unreliability of your given vehicle-of-faith -- inc. secular vehicles of faith like universities -- are declarations of political war: you see it when you put sacred truths up for debate --- darwin, glboal warming, the superiority of the free market over the command economy, pick a concrete embattled line and you see a political map behind it

(question that disrupts my claim: what's the politics limned by the teenpop battle?) (in answer i cite m.jacques attali -- "all noise is prophecy" -- and punt wildly: the teenpop battle marks the dim outlines of a politics that has NOT YET BEGUN TO FIGHT)