“Extreme religious and quasi-religious beliefs and practices, Christian and New Age and otherwise, didn’t subside but grew and thrived—and came to seem… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share Image
“As we let a hundred dogmatic iterations of reality bloom, the eventual result was an anything-goes relativism that extends beyond religion to… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share Image
“major argument of this book is that Americans are not just exceptionally religious but that our dominant religion has become exceptionally literal… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share Image
“the stories of the supremely successful entrepreneurs obscure the forgotten millions of losers and nincompoops. The fabulous successes seem like proof of… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share Image
“Since the turn of the century, American fundamentalists had reveled in their sense of persecution by an infidel elite, but in the 1960s the… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share Image
“If I think it’s true, no matter why or how I think it’s true, then it’s true, and nobody can tell me otherwise.” — Kurt Andersen Copy Share Image
“Libertarianism used to have a robust left wing as well. Both disliked government. Both were driven by a fantastically nostalgic conviction that a country… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share Image
“But what other place on Earth has been more congenial to believers and promoters of mad dreams and schemes of so many kinds? California… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share Image
“The antisharia movement lobbied states to pass statutes and constitutional amendments banning the use of sharia in their courts and legal systems, a fantasy… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share Image
I'm comparing Americans to international peers in terms of GDP, educational system - the sort of benchmarks we used to designate a so-called developed… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share Image
TED was simply wonderful, an intellectual spa, a 21st-century Chataqua, superb and singular. — Kurt Andersen Copy Share Image
“The early advocates of universal literacy and a free press…did not foresee…the development of a vast mass communications industry, concerned in the main neither… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share Image
“EVEN PAUL GOODMAN, beloved by young leftists in the 1960s, was flabbergasted by his students in 1969. “There was no knowledge,” he wrote, “only… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share Image
“IN ADDITION TO having become a distinctly Christian party, the GOP is more than ever America’s self-consciously white party. The nationalization of its Southern… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share Image
“Sixteen hundred years ago Saint Augustine instructed, basically, Don’t be stupid. “Shall we say, then,” he wrote about Genesis, “there was such a sense… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share Image
“After more than three decades and many hundreds of studies, the overwhelming scientific consensus is that GMO foods are safe to eat. The National… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share Image
