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The article offers information on the need for conservatives to redefine virtue within a shared moral vision that reflects American traditions and culture. Topics discussed include the decline of religious influence on American life; the challenges posed by secular elites to conservative values; and the necessity for a coherent conservative response that emphasizes obligations and community over individual rights.

The article informs that Americans largely agree on the decline of religion's influence in public life, with 80 percent acknowledging this trend, regardless of their religious affiliation or political beliefs. It discusses the partisan and generational divides regarding perceptions of this decline, highlighting fears and contrasting views between conservative Christians and secular liberals, with each side regarding the other as overly influential and active in public affairs.

The article focuses on the decline of humanistic education, cultural forgetting, and the consequences of the Great Forgetting, where traditional humanities and literary knowledge have been increasingly sidelined in favor of technocratic and scientific approaches to education. Topics discussed include the erosion of cultural inheritance, the shift from literary to technocratic thinking, and the isolation of the modern, secular world.

The article focuses on the decline of community and increasing loneliness in the secular West, highlighting the connection between unbelief and social isolation. It discusses the challenges faced by community-building efforts without religious or doctrinal foundations and emphasizes the role of faith in providing realism, hope, and love in the face of suffering and loss.

The article focuses on secularism seems inevitable fate and woke revolution crashes through many beloved institutions, like storm-driven waves breaking on the shore and clerical abuse scandals demoralize. It mentions Church leaders are often paralyzed, unable to speak clearly and forcefully, even as ideologies such as transgenderism directly contradict natural and biblical truths. It also mentions spiritual capital through negligent experimentation and widespread pusillanimity.

The article presents reflections on Catholicism and public life in the United States as of March 2013. Major attention is given to discussion of the next pope to follow Benedict XVI, commenting on how he will be the first post-Vatican II primate of the church. The conflict between freedom of religious practice and secular government policies in the U.S., what the author calls "the secular imperative," is addressed. Anecdotes of the author's walking through New York City are also given.

The author presents an essay on how secular intellectuals have created a mythology used by elites to justify their power. The author states that Stephen Greenblatt’s new book “How the World Became Modern” is the most current manifestation of this secular intellectual philosophy. The author discusses Greenblatt’s views on the Renaissance humanists, Epicurus, and Lucretius' "On the Nature of Things." The author claims that the Social Darwinism of the early 20th century has been replaced with new materialism of Greenblatt. The author accuses new materialism of being a nihilist philosophy that lacks a love of Christ.