The neoliberal and neoconservative consensus – indeed, two wings on the same bird of prey feasting away at what’s left of the health and prosperity of America – have pushed a false ideology upon us. This ideology rewards rampant consumerism instead of thrift. It rewards selfishness at the expense of the greater good. It has caused free-falling birth rates, widespread cultural degeneracy, a fractured and atomized populous, the dumbing down of society, and now jeopardizes the future of Western Civilization as we know it.

I believe these things, but what do I really know? Very little, I’m willing to admit. There are simply too many variables, too many unknowns. What I can’t have is certainty. So perhaps I — we — should calm down a bit.

The fact is that belief, like all of the other abstractions with which we describe the workings of the human mind, is ultimately unmeasurable. We hardly know ourselves what we really think, a fact that has given rise to truisms (“no atheists in foxholes”; “a conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged”) of startling durability.

Our uncertainty might make us humbler … if we let it.

It was George Orwell who pointed out, in an analysis of the goose-step, that it could only flourish in countries where people were afraid enough not to laugh at its silliness. Indeed, it’s very absurdity was a demonstration of power: ‘Yes, I am ugly, and you daren’t laugh at me.’