‘ I’m Worried About Weimar America’

Dreher: Well, Friedrich Nietzsche famously said in the late 19th century, “God is dead and we have killed him.” Nietzsche didn’t believe in God. He was talking about the idea of the Christian God in Western civilization. Nietzsche was not a romantic about this. He saw that it would be very dark and difficult for humanity to find some sense of meaning if God were dead.

And he was right. We can’t make our own meaning. Nietzsche was not a Nazi, but the ideological convulsions that came in the 20th century with Soviet Communism, with Nazism in Germany, and so forth, all of them are products of the death of God... [or maybe just good?]

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/09/opinion/america-politics-weimar-rod-dreher.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

Happy credo

If It’s not the only good, it’s still one of the better ones. “While I am opposed to all orthodox creeds, I have a creed myself; and my creed is this. Happiness is the only good. The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to make others so. The creed is somewhat short, but it is long enough for this life, strong enough for this world. If there is another world, when we get there we can make another creed.” — Robert Ingersoll Susan Jacoby, The Great Agnostic: Robert Ingersoll and American Freethought