This is terrific ...

... A Year in Reading: Alexander Theroux. (Hat rip, Dave Lull.)

We live in a secular age, a period of dim understanding when it is a virtual blasphemy to say “Merry Christmas” or put up a Nativity crèche. This is the kind of desperate self-consciousness and hideous circumspection that indicates how morally weak we are, farcically overconsidered, foppishly irrational. We live in a period when religion itself seems not even spiritual, when simonists on television are trying to make money selling God and halfwits are burning Korans and ordained priests are pedophiles. We live in a time of supreme scruple. Pusillanimous. Tentative. Hesitant. Uncertain. Weak. Fearful. Cringing.