The news appeals to the same jaded appetite that makes a child tire of a toy as soon as it becomes familiar and demand a new one in its place.

Even the reporting of news has to be understood not as propaganda for any particular ideology, liberal or conservative, but as propaganda for commodities — for the replacement of things by commodities, use values by exchange values, and events by images.

Because it equates tradition with prejudice, the left finds itself increasingly unable to converse with ordinary people in their common language.

Adherents of the new religious right reject the separation of politics and religion, but they bring no spiritual insights to politics.

The left has come to regard common sense - the traditional wisdom and folkways of the community - as an obstacle to progress and enlightenment.

The attempt to redefine the family as a purely voluntary arrangement grows out of the modern delusion that people can keep all their options open all the time.

The question of the family now divides our society so deeply that the opposing sides cannot even agree on a definition of the institution they are arguing about.