Last question: Where do you find hope?

In the palpable desire of many people, right and left, populist and socialist and Catholic-integralist, for a different kind of politics — as risky as that different kind of politics might be! — than just the technocratic management of decadence. In the eagerness of Silicon Valley billionaires, whose power and influence I dislike in many ways, to spend at least some of their money on possibly-futile efforts to catapult us further into space. In the exceptions to film industry decadence like Pawel Pawlikowski and Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck and the Coen Brothers. In my own three-going-on-four children, and the big families that make noise in our parish every Sunday Mass. In the fact that I spent the day after my book’s release, Ash Wednesday walking the streets of oh-so-secular Manhattan, and there were ashed foreheads everywhere I looked – a sign that whatever may be wrong with American Christianity, there’s also life in those dry bones yet.

Rod Dreher interviewing Ross Douthat, mostly about decadence and about Douthat’s relatively optimistic Christian conservative outlook. That last part was the most interesting, and increases my already-high esteem for Douthat.

If only he’d lose that goofy enthusiasm about space travel!