Spiritual Quote of the Day (David Brooks, on 21st-Century ‘Globe-Spanning Holy Wars’)

“Over the last several years something interesting happened: Authoritarians found God. They used religious symbols as nationalist identity markers and rallying cries. They unified the masses behind them by whipping up perpetual culture wars. They reframed the global debate: It was no longer between democracy and dictatorship; it was between the moral decadence of Western elites and traditional values and superior spirituality of the good normal people in their own homelands.

“The 21st century is turning into an era of globe-spanning holy wars at a time when the appeal of actual religion seems to be on the wane.”—Columnist David Brooks, “When Dictators Find God,” The New York Times, Sept. 10, 2021

Quote of the Day (E.J. Dionne, on the Old and New Culture War)

“The new culture war… is about national identity rather than religion and ‘transcendent authority.’ It focuses on which groups the United States will formally admit to residence and citizenship. It asks the same question as the old culture war: ‘Who are we?’ But the earlier query was primarily about how we define ourselves morally. The new question is about how we define ourselves ethnically, racially and linguistically. It is, in truth, one of the oldest questions in our history, going back to our earliest immigration battles of the 1840s and 1850s.”— E.J. Dionne, “Culture Wars, Old and New,” The Washington Post, January 26, 2015