FYI, here's the agenda of these people: https://www.firstthings.com/about/ First Things is published by the Institute on Religion and Public Life, an interreligious, nonpartisan research and educational 501(c)(3) organization. The Institute was founded in 1989 by Richard John Neuhaus and his colleagues to confront the ideology of secularism, which insists that the public square must be “naked,” and that faith has no…
Agendas are like you-know-whats... everyone's got one. I wouldn't say I agree with them on everything but this is definitely on the sane side as agendas go, especially these days when vast numbers of people seem to have eaten the brown acid. They also deserve a bit of credit for being pretty up front with it.
+1 to this. It's impossible to write about anything without a basis of reasoning and accepted truths to start from, and to see it laid out offers a level of transparency rarely found.
It also allows the reader to examine and critique the piece better. If I argued that we should do 'x' because it's better for humanity long-term, and you argued that we should do 'y' instead because it will create more happiness in the world, then our argument will devolve into which of our fundamental ideologies/metrics is "better," (humanity vs happiness), rather than whether 'x' or 'y' makes more sense from the agreed-upon agenda/ideology/metric.
