Can't wait to listen.  I almost overlooked it.  It needs to be listed on the sidebar with the rest of the podcasts!

Looking forward to this! 

Check out

• G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy (free e-text) made this agnostic a Catholic.
• Edward Feser's The Last Superstition is a philosophical tour-de-force vindicating Thomism--Catholic philosophy and morality

He wrote "have always looked", which I take as a generalization of a historical trend, not a statement about individual atheists. 

There are tons of explicit condemnations of socialism within papal encyclicals, such as this one: "If Socialism, like all errors, contains some truth (which, moreover, the Supreme Pontiffs have never denied), it is based nevertheless on a theory of human society peculiar to itself and irreconcilable with true Christianity. Religious socialism, Christian socialism, are contradictory terms; no one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true socialist."- Pope Pius XI, On Reconstruction of the Social Order

"Socialism is not merely the labour question, it is before all things the atheistic question, the question of the form taken by atheism to-day, the question of the tower of Babel built without God, not to mount to heaven from earth but to set up heaven on earth." --Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Heck, the nation is kowtowed by liberalism. If you disagree with the zeitgeist you're a racist homophobic fundamentalist. Christie just blows through all that crap and it seems the left just doesn't know what to do...and the people in general are loving him for it. Just the man we need in times like this!

Personally, I regard sagging pants as a cry for help, i.e. discipline, i.e. a spanking. After all, it is a trend started by the fatherless. When I pass a boy with sagging pants, I remark to my young children, "That boy is telling us he needs help."

Joe,

I'm with you on the saints. And I'll add that the saints were able to achieve what they did largely because the Catholic Church's infallible teaching pointed them in the right direction--gave them a good map in which "all the blind alleys and bad roads are clearly marked", as Chesterton said.

I'm curious as to what exactly is the "Shi'ite wing of the Catholic Church". I'm a convert to the Catholic Church myself, and largely because of intellects like Spitzer's (and Chesterton's and Knox's and Sheed's...not to mention Aquinas, Augustine....)

I am always baffled by all the thirty-somethings I work with who believe they have a right to free music and movies. It never seems to occur to them that artists have a right to be compensated for their investment of time and money. What is the principle at the root of this social attitude? I guess I would chalk it up as the infantlization of America wrought by liberal ideas and policies.

Historically, though, entitlements don't go away. That's my fear with Obamacare. It will take a massive amount of political will and power to roll that thing back all the way. The odds are against it going away; and as people get used to it and can no longer remember life without it, won't it pull them further into the Entitlement State? And then there's those progressive Supreme Court nominees. One more of those and...

For the Left, tolerance is not enough; you must approve. Civil unions is a matter of tolerance. Gay 'marriage' is the Left using the state to force their ideas and values on everybody.

My 14 y/o daughter read me those lyrics the other day. We concurred that we like much better the world into which that Taylor Swift's music invites a person. Like you, we're at a loss as to the reasons behind the wholesale turn of direction and change of personality in Miley. I guess it's money and marketing...banking on that same ol' formula you mentioned. She used to be a neat kid, with a bright personality, and with an air of rebellious virtue against that formula. So I thought. How sad.

2nding Ursula. My tween daughter read the Chronicles of Narnia a couple of times on her own before devouring the Harry Potter series multiple times. She loves both, and readily admits that Narnia is better written and has more depth; but Potter is more fun. It's just an easy, rollicking good time. I wouldn't set up an artificial competition between the series (like some parents do between books and television) so that Narnia and LOTR come to be viewed in their minds as the un-Harry Potter. When they're older, bored of Potter, they'll be more inclined to pick up better literature in general, including Narnia or LOTR. I think John's idea of listening to the audio books on a roadtrip is a great idea. That...or just read them aloud to the family. Either way, the collective enthusiasm will help draw them in.

"The left...refuses to examine whether or not socialism in itself is fundamentally a sound concept, fearing that such an inquiry will reveal that the essence of socialism is totalitarian—and that it will be forced to concede this reality. Socialist parties in free countries are democratic in inverse proportion to their degree of socialism. In trying to block any effort to evaluate its past errors—which might result in squelching the stealthy, hypocritical perpetuation of those errors in new dress—the left deploys various strategies... One of these strategies is to inundate the public square with virtually nonstop denunciations of Fascism and Nazism. We have seen that the left's assimilation of Italian Fascism to the Nazi phenomenon has functioned as camouflage for the latter's essential kinship with Communism. But however much this assimilation might be justified, the denunciations concern two political systems that were defeated, eliminated, judged and condemned more than a half a century ago. So the constant, deafening refrain about the "duty to remember" a past that is already well behind us seems at least partly like an effort to enforce a "duty to forget" when it comes to Communism."

—Jean-Francois Revel, Last Exit to Utopia

I believe no one really outgrows good fairy tales...they just become too jaded for them. In healthy souls they foster wonder. As G.K. Chesterton said, "These tales say that apples were golden only to refresh the forgotten moment when we found that they were green. They make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water." Andrew Lang's Coloured Fairy Books are the way to go. Jack Zipes has a nice collection of Brothers Grimm. And speaking of Chesterton, how about Father Brown--a priest whose knack for solving crimes is due to his insight into human nature gained by his experience as a confessor? And I second the recommendation of Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia which is full of wise little bits like this.