One of the frustrating tics of our society's progressive vanguard is the assumption that every evil it discovers was entirely invisible in the past, that this generation is the first to wrestle with dominance and cruelty.
I think true atheism is a rare thing in human affairs: Even in the most secularized precincts of Europe, a lot of nominal nonbelievers turn out to have all sorts of supernatural and metaphysical beliefs.
For a divided, balkanized America, it might take the looming-up of a rival power, the rise of a dark but all-too-plausible alternative, to remind us of who we are, and what we do not want to be.
It's a long way from Martin Luther's 'On the Freedom of a Christian' to 'Eat, Pray, Love,' and a vigorous Protestantism should be able to prevent the former from degenerating into the latter.
It's always good to have fears for your eternal soul.
The idea that America has some distinctive role to play in the unfolding of God's plan is compatible with orthodox Christianity. But it should be tempered by recognizing that America is not the church.
I think it's totally possible and plausible that racial balkanization is a recurring aspect of the nature of human politics.
When I started reading George R.R. Martin's 'A Song of Ice and Fire' novels, it was the late 1990s and obsessing over fantasy novels was (if painful memory serves) a super-nerdy thing to do.
Whatever role the structure of the Internet plays in radicalization, the root causes are still primarily sociological and political, and they will perdure and manifest themselves somewhere, somehow, no matter what YouTube suggests for your next video when you watch a Milton Friedman lecture.
The days of noblesse oblige are long behind us, so our elite's entire claim to legitimacy rests on theories of equal opportunity and upward mobility, and the promise that 'merit' correlates with talents and deserts.
It's an oversimplication to say that more monks and nuns are the answer to the Joel Osteen-ification of Christianity... but it wouldn't hurt.
I think religious individualism doesn't fulfill impulses toward community and solidarity and it doesn't necessarily work for people when things go really bad.
Awards shows are being pushed to shed their genteel limousine liberalism and embrace the race-gender-sexual identity agenda in full.
It is not white nationalism to believe that countries like the United States would be better off with more babies. That belief can be held for racist reasons by racists, but it can also be held, reasonably and righteously, by people who worry about the economic consequences of demographic decline.
There are all kinds of great things that megachurches and successful fundraising appeals can allow you to do, especially in terms of overseas charity work, and so on. I'm just arguing that American Christians need to recognize the temptations that can expose you to as well.
To visit the West Coast, now and always, is to be overwhelmed by its beauty - the blue water and blue skies, the temperate air and the beaches and the looming mountains not so far away.
Even Warren Buffet is allowed to have an awful year from time to time.
Cultural arenas and institutions that were always liberal are being prodded or dragged further to the left.
Genuine cosmopolitanism is a rare thing. It requires comfort with real difference, with forms of life that are truly exotic relative to one's own.
Our founders built a new order atop specifically European intellectual traditions.
