Quotes by Ross Douthat - Page 3

I think that liberalism and the centrist governing elite of this country need to learn lessons from the Trump phenomenon. It is part of the way that the country is governed and the country is shaped that induces spasms of populism, including spasms of bigoted populism.
Ross Douthat / Author
Liberalism
Phenomenon
Bigoted
Centrist
Elite
Governed
Shaped
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It's just silly to look at the incredibly steep decline in the mainline and the clear institutional weakening of Catholicism in the 1960s and 70s and pretend that something really big didn't change then. It did change. There really was a significant institutional decline.
Ross Douthat / Author
Looks
Significant
Silly
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Yeah, I think that social conservatives recognize that they didn't just lose the debate about same-sex marriage. They lost the debate about the institution of marriage, and those two things were sort of connected to each other. The way people thought about marriage changed.
Ross Douthat / Author
Debate
Conservatives
Institution
Same-Sex
Same-Sex Marriage
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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.
Ross Douthat / Author
Appeals
Arguing
Charity
Charity Work
Fundraising
Great Things
Christians
Expose
Overseas
Temptations
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Great preschools are no easier to build than great high schools, and if you think your kids might be better off in the care of a parent or with some extended family member, then a system designed around a dual-income plus day care norm will likewise feel like a burden, or a trap.
Ross Douthat / Author
Better Off
Burden
Easier
Extended Family
Norm
Parent
Plus
Family Great Your
Designed
Extended
Family Member
High Schools
Likewise
Member
Schools
Trap
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The decline of institutional Christianity over the last 40 or 50 years has empowered a side of American religion that has always been there. The sort of do-it-yourself, "create your own Jesus" kind of faith. But, the forms that faith takes do have a real reason they are so appealing.
Ross Douthat / Author
Jesus
Lasts
Real
Years
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In the end the recrudescence of racism on the right is conservatism's problem to solve, and it has to be solved independently of whatever liberals and leftists happen to be saying. But the task of solving it still gets a little harder with every nonsense charge or bad-faith accusation.
Ross Douthat / Author
Accusation
Conservatism
Nonsense
Racism
Charge
In The End
Independently
Liberals
Solved
Solving
Task
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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.
Ross Douthat / Author
Causes
Manifest
Milton
Sociological
Youtube
Lecture
Primarily
Root
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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.
Ross Douthat / Author
Better Off
Decline
Nationalism
Consequences
Believe Better People
Babies
Demographic
Reasonably
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Modern conservatism was forged in the crucible of the 1970s inflation crisis, and in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crash many conservatives were convinced that there was nothing the Federal Reserve could do about the vast army of the unemployed without touching off a similar inflationary spiral.
Ross Douthat / Author
Aftermath
Army
Conservatism
Crash
Crisis
Crucible
Federal Reserve
Financial
Forged
Inflation
Touching
Unemployed
Conservatives
Vast
Federal
Reserve
Similar
Spiral
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If we had a populist president who didn't alienate so many persuadable voters, who took full advantage of a strong economy, and who had the political cunning displayed by Modi or Benjamin Netanyahu or Viktor Orban, the liberal belief in a hidden left-of-center mandate might be exposed as a fond delusion.
Ross Douthat / Author
Advantage
Belief
Cunning
Delusion
Economy
Exposed
Populist
President
Strong Economy
Voters
Alienate
Full
Displayed
Fond
Full Advantage
Hidden
Liberal
Mandate
Netanyahu
Took
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When it comes to explaining the phenomenon of right-wing populism, liberals are likely to argue both that the populist era has exposed a darkness always present at the heart of conservative politics and that a toxic, post-truth new-media ecosystem has greased the skids for President Trump, Brexit and the rest.
Ross Douthat / Author
Conservative
Explaining
Exposed
Phenomenon
Populist
President
Right Wing
Toxic
Trump
Brexit
Ecosystem
Rest
Liberals
Likely
Present
President Trump
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I think it is very clear that, though great difference remained, evangelicals moved closer to Catholics, mainline Protestants and evangelical Protestants moved closer together, and this convergence coincided with greater institutional strength for all the Christian churches than, for the most part, you see today.
Ross Douthat / Author
Christian
Differences
Thinking
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My mother converted when I was 16. She was the driving force behind religion in our family. So, I'm sure I was heavily influenced by that. But, I also was, and still am, convinced by the Catholic churches historical claims to represent the continuity with the early Church that other forms of Western Christianity lack.
Ross Douthat / Author
Catholic
Historical
Mother
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In our age of digital connection and constantly online life, you might say that two political regimes are evolving, one Chinese and one Western, which offer two kinds of relationships between the privacy of ordinary citizens and the newfound power of central authorities to track, to supervise, to expose and to surveil.
Ross Douthat / Author
Chinese
Citizens
Digital
Online
Ordinary
Privacy
Regimes
Track
Western
Authorities
Constantly
Central
Connection
Evolving
Expose
Offer
Relationships
Supervise
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On the evidence we have, the meritocratic ideal ends up being just as undemocratic as the old emphasis on inheritance and tradition, and it forges an elite that has an aristocracy's vices (privilege, insularity, arrogance) without the sense of duty, self-restraint and noblesse oblige that WASPs at their best displayed.
Ross Douthat / Author
Aristocracy
Arrogance
Emphasis
Evidence
Inheritance
Privilege
Self Restraint
Tradition
Vices
Wasps
Displayed
Elite
Ideal
Oblige
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Fox News is really two news networks. It's a center right news network that has good, solid, interesting coverage if you're watching Chris Wallace or the panel on 'Special Report' or anything like that. Then, it has what Hannity and others like him do, which is just a sort of tribal identity politics for older white people.
Ross Douthat / Author
Coverage
Fox News
Identity
Interesting
Special
Politics Good People
Report
Center
Chris
Fox
Older
Solid
Network
Panel
Tribal
Wallace
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Like most places, America has always had potent strains of anti-Semitism - crude and polished, K.K.K. and country club. But unlike many places, we have always had important strains of philo-Semitism as well; there is a long American tradition, with both Protestant and Enlightenment roots, of really liking Judaism and the Jews.
Ross Douthat / Author
America
American Tradition
Anti Semitism
Country
Crude
Enlightenment
Judaism
Polished
Roots
Club
Country Club
Unlike
Jews
Liking
Places
Potent
Protestant
Strains
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Bill Clinton and Barack Obama represented somewhat different party factions, but they both embodied wonkery, a vision of competence and expertise governing to some extent above ideology, in which there are assumed to be 'correct answers' to policy dilemmas that a disinterested observer could acknowledge and the right technocrat achieve.
Ross Douthat / Author
Acknowledge
Answers
Barack
Competence
Disinterested
Expertise
Factions
Governing
Ideology
Assumed
Barack Obama
Bill Clinton
Correct
Somewhat
Dilemmas
Embodied
Extent
Observer
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Trump could also only win the presidency without a popular-vote majority because a large region of the country, the greater Rust Belt and Appalachia, had been neglected by both parties' policies over the preceding decades, leading to a slow-building social crisis that the national press only really noticed because of Trump's political success.
Ross Douthat / Author
Decades
Neglected
Presidency
Rust
Belt
Both Parties
Noticed
Region
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In the end, you do need institutions to transmit the faith for the long haul. That's why I make the case that, in certain ways, American Protestants could stand to recover the denominationalism that they've left behind over the last 50 years. They are real values in having a confessional tradition that can sustain your faith over the long term.
Ross Douthat / Author
Long
Real
Years
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I had just been sort of raised and formed in a general Christian context, and it seemed to my teenage self that I found the argument for Catholicism very compelling. To the extent that there was a personal driving force, it was more on the intellectual side of things than the mystical or deeply personal. When I converted, I thought it was true.
Ross Douthat / Author
Catholicism
Compelling
Driving Force
Mystical
Teenage
Context
Extent
Formed
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In many ways, American evangelicalism is somewhat stronger today than it was in, say 1955 - certainly more mainstream and influential in the culture as a whole. But, the increased strength of evangelicalism hasn't increased fast enough to compensate for the total collapse of mainline Protestantism and the pretty steady weakening of my own Roman Catholic Church.
Ross Douthat / Author
Catholic
Church
Stronger
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Independent of the critique I'm making, I'm just trying to paint a more comprehensive portrait of American religion than you get from a right versus left, religious conservatives versus secular liberal, believer versus atheist, binary. Too often, we just look at religion in America through that kind of either/or lens. I think it's much more complicated than that.
Ross Douthat / Author
Atheist
Independent
Religious
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Institutional Christianity has had clear secular benefits to American life for hundreds of years. It's played both a prophetic role in terms of generating moral critiques of American excesses, and so on, and also a communal role, in terms of building community as the country moved westward to the role my own Catholic Church played in assimilating generations of immigrants.
Ross Douthat / Author
Community
Country
Years
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During a frustrating argument with a Roman Catholic cardinal, Napoleon Bonaparte supposedly burst out: “Your eminence, are you not aware that I have the power to destroy the Catholic Church?” The cardinal, the anecdote goes, responded ruefully: “Your majesty, we, the Catholic clergy, have done our best to destroy the church for the last 1,800 years. We have not succeeded, and neither will you.”
Ross Douthat / Author
Catholic
Church
Years
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Our culture has few taboos that can't be violated, and our establishment has largely given up on setting standards in the first place. Except where Islam is concerned. There, the standards are established under threat of violence, and accepted out of a mix of self-preservation and self-loathing. This is what decadence looks like: a frantic coarseness that "bravely" trashes its own values and traditions, and then knuckles under swiftly to totalitarianism and brute force.
Ross Douthat / Author
Islam
Political
Self
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I think what you see a lot of in American religion, even in areas of American Christianity that don't go all the way with Osteen to the idea that God wants you to have this big house and so on, the nature of American religion right now, the fact that it is so non-denominational and post-denominational, the most successful churches have to be run more like businesses than ever before. I think that just exposes Christians to a constant temptation to think about the ministry more as a business than they sometimes should.
Ross Douthat / Author
Running
Christian
Successful
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Americans are an "almost chosen people," which is meant to suggest that there are clear parallels, literal, theological and everything else, between the American story and the Old Testament story of Israel and then the broader story of the Christian church. It's OK to recognize the parallels. It's OK to invoke them. But, you have to keep that "almost" in front of the "chosen." You can't go all the way and say, "America is Israel, America is the Church." That's where I think patriotism shades into, what I call, the heresy of nationalism.
Ross Douthat / Author
Christian
Israel
Thinking
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I do think you can see, throughout American history, this temptation, and it's both a liberal and a conservative temptation, to take a healthy patriotism a little too far. For liberals the temptation is to say the purpose of politics is to straightforwardly bring the kingdom of God to Earth. For conservatives, I talk about Glenn Beck, the temptation is more apocalyptic and messianic, it's the temptation to say we did have a covenant with God, a literal covenant beginning with the Founding, and we are, like Israel in the Old Testament, falling away from it.
Ross Douthat / Author
Fall
Israel
Thinking
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It's clearly the case that there's not some moment in American history when every evangelical is holding hands with every Catholic who is holding hands with every mainline Methodist, or what have you. Obviously, American Christianity was deeply divided in all kinds of ways at mid-century too. But there was a kind of convergence going on. Even though Reinhold Niebuhr, the great mainline Protestant theologian, didn't think highly of Billy Graham, he and Graham still, clearly, had more in common, both theologically and in their attitudes toward religion in public life.
Ross Douthat / Author
Attitude
Hands
Thinking
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Ross Douthat Quotes - Page 3

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