New York Times

Kwame Appiah, writing for The New York Times Magazine's Ethicist column, helps explain Christian mission.

“It is unfair to threaten the well-being of young people who arrived in our country as children through no choice of their own.”

The fact that A.O. Scott writing in the New York Times cannot possibly decry the decline of adulthood (particularly, manhood) without being dismissed as a patriarch shows that we’ve lost the ability to conceive of manliness or grown-up adulthood without immediately hearing authoritarian patriarchy.

Douthat is right in his reminder of the important ways in which liberal Christianity contributes positively to Western culture, but he is wrong in his diagnosis of our decline.

With so much data and so many voices, we each have knowledge formerly hard-won by decades of specialization. With some new fact or temptation perpetually beckoning, we may be the superficial avatars of an A.D.D. culture.