A political cartoon by Steve Kelly (see Steve Kelly at Creator's Syndicate) on October 19 (to be posted on Halloween) brilliantly captured our current political climate. I'll leave it to my readers to puzzle out its full significance...

As everyone (presumably) knows, Dennis Prager is a conservative. As everyone (presumably) knows, Candace Owens is a conservative. Progressivism, 21st century style, is more totalitarian about matters of identity politics than their 20th century forebears.

For an interesting sense of perspective on this developing social/moral/political collapse, see "The Candace Owens Show: Rob Smith".

Basic principles we all should have learned to enter adulthood...

There is such a thing as natural theology, a theology that doesn't presume the truth of revealed scripture from any religious tradition. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle had interesting approximations (acknowledging that there are limits to what finite human beings can know about an infinite God) to a monotheistic concept of God that is as far above paganism as quantum physics is above Aristotle's concepts of motion, attraction, form and matter, etc.

Attorney and author Nicholas Zinos has a fascinating reflection on dystopian literature, and how it recognizes the impact of a totalitarian state on human sexuality and procreation.

In more than one video, I've heard Jordan Peterson speak of a right/left divide in what strikes me as simplistic terms. For him, the right is characterized as preferring the efficiency of hierarchy, while the left prefers to advocate for those at the bottom. I've also heard him say that no matter what system of individual value you set up (whether based on IQ, on skill, on education, on the "purity" of "political correctness"...) any system you set up will naturally evolve into a hierarchy. We have, of course, seen this in every government system in recorded human history. The end of history described by Marx and Engels was, according to this view (and all human experience) pure fantasy. We can recognize the truth of this, in part, by acknowledging the point that all systems develop a hierarchy.

Pope Francis' reflection on the challenges of prayer at a recent daily Mass at Casa Santa Marta highlighted the importance of humility and penitence. These remarks have a significant echo in Dr. Brant Pitre's latest reflection on Sunday Mass readings.

Michael Cook, writing at MercatorNet, makes excellent points in "Is pornography a public health crisis?". Clearly we do not live in a "Theology of the Body" informed culture. This article touches on the impact of pornography on marriage, parenting and the desensitization of the normal aversion to violence and exploitation.

I've come across the glib phrase "the wrong side of history" rather a lot, lately. According to a comment on the provenance of this phrase found in the link attached here, it is related to the phrase "God is on our side." I find that to be a very revealing comment.

On Friday, June 16, the United States Supreme Court handed down its decision in the case Obergefell v. Hodges, known popularly (or infamously) as "The same-sex marriage case." In a 5 to 4 decision, the court ruled in favor of James Obergefell, and against the State of Ohio (with Governor John Kasich identified as the original defendant in the case Obergefell v. Kasich, the Ohio Director of the Department of Health, Richard Hodges, became the defendant). The original suit concerned Mr.