Ben Domenech

Politics is downstream from culture. ”

If you're a conservative who thinks the culture wars are over (they're never really over, of course), then you are a lot more open to the idea of a unprincipled blowhard who promises he's got your back on political correctness. ”

It is unhealthy to live in an environment where every aspect of our culture requires a great sort, where creative talents are for some but not for all, and where performing for the president of the United States becomes a point of regular and significant controversy. ”

Jindal's record in Louisiana is controversial, in part because, in a state which has historically favored patronage culture and a bureaucracy that offered uninterrupted employment for those who backed the right horse, he aimed to destroy the old spoils system. ”

In a healthy republic, there is a need for figures who understand that the presidency is not the be-all and end-all of the people. ”

We must not fall into the trap of thinking speech that offends is speech that must be forbidden. A healthy culture demands that much of us, to equip the next generation of Americans with the knowledge and reason they will need to confront an uncertain future. ”

Tolerance as practiced by the Christian, enlightened West was never about thinking that bad people are good but that we are all called to love the sinner and hate the sin. ”

When the holidays approach and the weather turns cold, you spend your nights watching and rewatching saccharine movies until you fall asleep, hoping for some gleam of happiness or catharsis that never comes, a version of life that looks like a Hallmark movie or where your idealized prince finally shows up. ”

Contemporary defenders of the Enlightenment shouldn't overgeneralize: the Enlightenment, however it is defined, is not an unalloyed good. ”

It is at best insufficient and at worst inaccurate to settle on a definition of the Enlightenment, for the obvious reason that there was not just one. ”