From the New York Times columnist and bestselling author of Bad Religion, a powerful portrait of how our wealthy, successful society has passed into an age of gridlock, stalemate, public failure and private despair. The era of the coronavirus has tested America, and our leaders and institutions have conspicuously failed. That failure shouldn't be surprising: Beneath social-media frenzy and reality-television politics, our era's deep truths are elite incompetence, cultural exhaustion, and the flight from reality into fantasy. Casting a cold eye on these trends, The Decadent Society explains what happens when a powerful society ceases advancing-how the combination of wealth and technological proficiency with economic stagnation, political stalemate, and demographic decline creates a unique civilizational crisis. Ranging from the futility of our ideological debates to the repetitions of our pop culture, from the decline of sex and childbearing to the escapism of drug use, Ross Douthat argues that our age is defined by disappointment-by the feeling that all the frontiers are closed, that the paths forward lead only to the grave. Correcting both optimism and despair, Douthat provides an enlightening explanation of how we got here, how long our frustrations might last, and how, in renaissance or catastrophe, our decadence might ultimately end.

Whose lives count as fully human? The answer matters for everyone, disabled or not. The ancient Greek ideal linked physical wholeness to moral wholeness - the virtuous citizen was "beautiful and good." It's an ideal that has all too often turned deadly, casting those who do not measure up as less than human. In the pre-Christian era, infants with disabilities were left on the rocks; in modern times, they have been targeted by eugenics. Much has changed, thanks to the tenacious advocacy of the disability rights movement. Yesteryear's hellish institutions have given way to customized educational programs and assisted living centers. Public spaces have been reconfigured to improve access. Therapies and medical technology have advanced rapidly in sophistication and effectiveness. Protections for people with disabilities have been enshrined in many countries' antidiscrimination laws. But these victories, impressive as they are, mask other realities that collide awkwardly with society's avowals of equality. Why are parents choosing to abort a baby likely to have a disability? Why does Belgian law allow for euthanasia in cases of disability, even absent a terminal diagnosis or physical pain? Why, when ventilators were in short supply during the first Covid wave, did some states list disability as a reason to deny care? On this theme: - Heonju Lee tells how his son with Down syndrome saved another child's life. - Molly McCully Brown and Victoria Reynolds Farmer recount their personal experiences with disability. - Amy Julia Becker says meritocracies fail because they value the wrong things. - Maureen Swinger asks six mothers around the world about raising a child with disabilities. - Joe Keiderling documents the unfinished struggle for disability rights. - Isaac T. Soon wonders if Saint Paul's "thorn in the flesh" was a disability. - Leah Libresco Sargeant reviews What Can a Body Do? and Making Disability Modern. - Sarah C. Williams says testing for fetal abnormalities is not a neutral practice. Also in the issue: - Ross Douthat is brought low by intractable Lyme disease. - Edwidge Danticat flees an active shooter in a packed mall. - Eugene Vodolazkin finds comic relief at funerals, including his own father's. - Kelsey Osgood discovers that being an Orthodox Jew is strange, even in Brooklyn. - Christian Wiman pens three new poems. - Susannah Black profiles Flannery O'Conner. - Our writers review Eyal Press's Dirty Work, Steve Coll's Directorate S, and Millennial Nuns by the Daughters of Saint Paul. Plough Quarterly features stories, ideas, and culture for people eager to apply their faith to the challenges we face. Each issue includes in-depth articles, interviews, poetry, book reviews, and art.

In this vulnerable, insightful memoir, the New York Times columnist tells the story of his five-year struggle with a disease that officially doesn't exist, exploring the limits of modern medicine and the narratives we tell ourselves in order to live. In the summer of 2015, Ross Douthat was moving his family from Washington, D.C., to the picturesque town of Ridgefield, Connecticut, when he acquired a mysterious, devastating sickness that left him sleepless, crippled, wracked with pain--a shell of himself. After months of seeing doctors without result and descending ever deeper into a physical inferno, he discovered that he had a disease that according to existing CDC definitions does not actually exist: the chronic, persistent form of Lyme disease, a hotly contested condition that devastates the lives of ten of thousands of people but has no official recognition, and no medically approved cure. Douthat's search for a cure took him off the map of official medicine, into territory where miracle cures and conspiracies abound, and patients are forced to take control of their own treatment. Slowly, reluctantly, against all his instincts and assumptions, he realizes that the 'weirdos' searching for a cure are right and the 'hypochondriacs' are victims of terrible medical malpractice. 'In a Dark Wood' is a story about what happens when you are terribly sick and realize that even the doctors who are willing to treat you can only do so much. Along the way, Douthat describes his struggle to survive with wit and candor, portraying sickness as the most terrible of gifts. It teaches you to appreciate the grace of ordinary life by taking that life away from you. It reveals the deep strangeness of the world, the possibility that the reasonable people might be wrong, and the necessity of figuring out things for yourself. And it proves, day by dreadful day, that you are stronger than you ever imagined, and that even in the darkest wilderness there is still hope.

What is a family and what is it good for? Story 1: Families are in crisis, and the cause is moral breakdown. We urgently need a deep renewal of our family culture, supported by public policies that strengthen traditional marriage and encourage childbearing. Story 2: Families are in crisis, and the cause is capitalism. We need structural changes in society so that all families can flourish: parental leave, guaranteed healthcare, flexible work hours for parents, restorative justice. What if both these stories are true? This issue of Plough reflects on what a family is and what it is for, so that the transformations needed to solve the crisis of the family start from a firm basis, not a nostalgic ideal or progressive theorizing. As always, we take as a starting point the teachings of Jesus. It turns out his idea of family values might not be what people think. He calls us to extend our natural love for our biological family to a vast new throng of siblings - a family of many ethnicities and cultures that includes the widowed, the unmarried, the outsider, and the stranger. In this issue: - Ross Douthat asks what is stopping people from having the one more child they desire. - Edwidge Danticat says families are not nuclear. - Gina Dalfonzo reveals what singles know best about the church as family. - Norann Voll remembers a Jewish woman who escaped the Holocaust and married a German. - W. Bradford Wilcox and Alysse ElHage report on how the Covid pandemic has impacted the family. - Noah Van Niel asks whether masculinity is OK anymore. - Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn reflects the burden of family history, celibacy, and monument toppling. - Sarah C. Williams pinpoints the source of feminist pioneer Josephine Butler's daring. - Rabbi Jonathan Sacks begins the story of marriage 385 million years ago in a lake in Scotland. - Zito Madu recalls how his father's amazing storytelling saved the past from oblivion. You'll also find: - M. M. Townsend on what Louisa May Alcott and Simone de Beauvoir had in common - A special announcement about Plough's new poetry contest: the Rhina Espaillat Poetry Award - A reading from G. K. Chesterton - Two new poems by Rachel Hadas - Reviews of Eric Edstrom's Un-American, Maya Schenwar and Victoria Law's Prison by Any Other Name, Brian Doyle's One Long River of Song, and Martin Caparros's Hunger Plough Quarterly features stories, ideas, and culture for people eager to put their faith into action. Each issue brings you in-depth articles, interviews, poetry, book reviews, and art to help you put Jesus' message into practice and find common cause with others.

In an age of distraction, this issue of Plough Quarterly looks at inwardness – how sustainable human community and social activism must be rooted in the spiritual life. How much of your day is spent in reality, and how much in a fake world? We’ve learned that screen time is bad for you, too much media consumption damages your heart, and Facebook can make you mentally ill. We’re aware of the mind-altering power of advertising, the dehumanizing passions of our polarized politics, and the fact that millions of us have learned to multitask while watching footage of refugees drowning. But what are we to do about it? If this fake world is invading our souls, it’s in our souls that we must find the cure. Only a return to inwardness can bring distracted moderns back to Jesus and to constructive work for his kingdom. Here activists may object: Isn’t it the height of selfishness to retreat into our interior life when we ought to be out saving starving children? Yet Christians through the ages have insisted that inwardness is crucial to the life of discipleship. It’s what keeps us from falling for demagogues and false gospels, from wasting life on superficialities, and from ignoring our neighbor. In fact, throughout history it has often been the mystics who were most active in serving others. In true Plough fashion, this issue brings together a colorful cast of examples: from medieval Beguines and Benedictines to Gerard Manley Hopkins, Simone Weil, and Fannie Lou Hamer, to contemporary voices like Robert Cardinal Sarah, Johann Christoph Arnold, and three persecuted Syrian priests. These lives offer us glimpses of the real world from which our fake world seeks to distract us, and can guide us in our own refusal to conform. Also in this issue: • Poetry from Gerard Manley Hopkins and Malcolm Guite • Insights on inwardness from Meister Eckhart, Eberhard Arnold, Marguerite Porete, Simone Weil, and Isaac Penington • A forum on the Benedict Option with Rod Dreher, Ross Douthat, Jacqueline C. Rivers, and Randall Gauger • Artwork by Jason Landsel, Bruce Herman, Jane Chapin, Graham Berry, Fra Angelico, Francisco de Zurbarán, Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale, Matthew J. Cutter, John August Swanson, Vittorio Matteo Corcos, and Leon Dabo Plough Quarterly features stories, ideas, and culture for people eager to put their faith into action. Each issue brings you in-depth articles, interviews, poetry, book reviews, and art to help you put Jesus’ message into practice and find common cause with others.

In a provocative challenge to Republican conventional wisdom, two of the Right's rising young thinkers call upon the GOP to focus on the interests and needs of working-class voters.
Grand New Party lays bare the failures of the conservative revolution and presents a detailed blueprint for building the next Republican majority. Blending history, analysis, and fresh, often controversial recommendations, Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam argue that it is time to move beyond the Reagan legacy and the current Republican power structure. With specific proposals covering such hot-button topics as immigration, health care, and taxes, Grand New Party shakes up the Right, challenges the Left, and confronts the changing political landscape.