Interactivity has the virtue of democracy, conferring upon everyone with access to a computer the right and opportunity to be heard, but it’s also saddled with democracy’s vice – a tendency to assume that everyone who has a right to be heard has something to say that’s worth hearing.

If all issues are personalized, we lose our capacity to entertain ideas, to generalize from our own or someone else’s experiences, to think abstractly. We substitute sentimentality for thought.

Give the FBI unchecked domestic spying powers and instead of focusing on preventing terrorism, it will revert to doing what it does best – monitoring, harassing, and intimidating political dissidents and thousands of harmless immigrants.

In this climate – with belief in guardian angels and creationism becoming commonplace – making fun of religion is as risky as burning a flag in an American Legion hall.

The dissemination of pseudoscience, including such things as the fascination with near-death experiences and the growing belief by Americans – 34 percent of them – in reincarnation are dangerous. They help to break down the standards of reason.

We don’t cut off the hands of thieves or castrate rapists. Why must we murder murderers?

Tolerance is thin gruel compared to the rapture of absolute truths. It’s not surprising that religious people are often better protected by atheists and agnostics than each other.

The phenomenal success of the recovery movement reflects two simple truths that emerge in adolescence: all people love to talk about themselves, and most people are mad at their parents. You don’t have to be in denial to doubt that truths like these will set us free.

As Camille Paglia’s success has demonstrated, what is most marketable is absolutism and attitude undiluted by thought.

I don’t spend much time thinking about whether God exists. I don’t consider that a relevant question. It’s unanswerable and irrelevant to my life, so I put it in the category of things I can’t worry about.