Ross Douthat : (2)

" America’s gravest moral evil, chattel slavery, was defeated by an authoritarian president in a religious civil war, not by proceduralism or constitutional debate. " - Ross Douthat

" I get the sense people sort of imagine that in my personal religious life I must be an intense rigorist wearing a hair shirt under my clothes while scourging myself. And, really, I’m not a rigorist by temperament. " - Ross Douthat