I'll tell you an explanation that I find commonly overrated and speculative in the extreme: the idea that things that succeed in popular culture do that because they hit the temper of the times.

Catholicism is a wide tent in terms of political and legal positions. We could have nine Catholics on the Supreme Court and a great deal of diversity toward the law.

We ought to ban hunting, I suggest, if there isn't a purpose other than sport and fun. That should be against the law.

Almost all gun control legislation is constitutionally fine. And, if the court is right, then fundamentalism does not justify the view that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms.

Liberals are sometimes defined as people who can't take their own side in an argument.

Government agents (and their allies) might enter chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine percolating conspiracy theories by raising doubts about their factual premises, causal logic or implications for political action.

A lot of people are focused on climate change as a defining challenge of our time. A lot of people think it is a non-problem, at least in the United States.