Thanks, Vishal. Yes, I agree that culture consists of ideas, but one of the points I was trying to make is that those ideas only exist in the brains of living people, who do not all agree about the ideas perfectly. And to the extent that the ideas are represented in written form, those writings must be interpreted by people who construct or modify corresponding ideas in their brains.

So when you say, for example, “The entire nation … reeled against this transgression due to firmly-held beliefs in democracy and non-violence”, that isn’t quite true. Many people in the U.S. apparently shared cultural ideas with the people who attacked the Capitol, and those cultural ideas, including rights to overthrow an illegitimate government (as they believed it to be), are different from the cultural ideas expressed in the U.S. Constitution and living (more of less imperfectly) in the brains of other people.