The problem with MTD, in both its progressive and its conservative versions, is that it’s mostly about improving one’s self-esteem and subjective happiness and getting along well with others. It has little to do with the Christianity of Scripture and tradition, w hich teaches repentance, self-sacrificial love, and purity of heart, and commends

Rousseau advanced the idea that man is born naturally good but is corrupted by society. From Rousseau came the modern notion that the freer a society is, the more virtuous it is.

But the religious basis for the wars caused weary European intellectuals to explore ways of living peaceably with the schism between Rome and the Reformers.

To live “after virtue,” then, is to dwell in a society that not only can no longer agree on what constitutes virtuous belief and conduct but also doubts that virtue exists.

Even though conservative Christians were said to be fighting a culture war, with the exception of the abortion and gay marriage issues, it was hard to see my people putting up much of a fight. We seemed content to be the chaplaincy to a consumerist culture that was fast losing a sense of what it meant to be Christian.

religious conservatives would be better off “building thriving subcultures” than seeking positions of power. Why? Because in an age of increasing and unstoppable fragmentation, the common culture doesn’t matter as much as it used to.

The main thing that helps a culture survive, Rieff wrote, is “the power of its institutions to bind and loose men in the conduct of their affairs with reasons which sink so deep into the self that they become commonly and implicitly understood.”

Consider, says Havel, the greengrocer living under Communism, who puts a sign in his shop window saying, “Workers of the World, Unite!” He does it not because he believes it, necessarily. He simply doesn’t want trouble.

At the neurological level, the Internet’s constant distractions alter the physiological structure of our brain.