‘We’ve moved from lectures to conversations’ — Nick Kristof

Jackie in Missouri on “We’re Less and Less a Christian Nation, and I Blame Some Blowhards” (Oct. 26):

Both of my daughters, a Gen-Xer and a Millennial, consider themselves pagan and think that Christianity is too hate-filled and bigoted. The Wiccan Rede, “And it harm none, do what you will,” is very similar in concept to the Golden Rule. I think that God, in whatever form one perceives Him or Her, would approve.

Nick: Opinion-writing used to be a one-way lecture, with columnists tossing off thoughts to an audience that was largely mute. Now we’ve moved from lectures to conversations. This comment struck me because I think it reflects the views of many young Americans and Europeans who have drifted away from organized religion. Most young people aren’t calling themselves pagan, but many are deeply wary of the organized church and don’t see it as a moral authority. How can they, when so many of the most prominent church leaders have been on the wrong side of history on so many issues?

Yet I think this is sad, because at times in our history, the church has been an extraordinarily important moral voice for progressive causes. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was an evangelical Christian, after all, and the civil rights movement involved a close alliance of Christian and Jewish leaders. There are still religious missionaries doing heroic work around the world — but the church leaders in America who have the microphones are often the blowhards who ally themselves with President Trump’s politics and tarnish their entire faith community.

‘A comment that makes me smile is a good one by any measure’ — Linda Greenhouse

Kitty P in the U.S. on “A Call to Arms at the Supreme Court” (Jan. 3):

Why aren’t guns allowed in the U.S. Supreme Court building? Asking for a nation seeking common sense gun regulation.

Linda: I write with some regularity about the Second Amendment because it looms so large in people’s thinking about the Supreme Court. These columns predictably attract passionate, even scholarly responses on one side or the other. Frankly, I’ve heard all the arguments by now, but this brief comment stood out for its wry humor and sense of irony — a lost art. A comment that makes me smile is a good one by any measure.

‘Reading your comment gives me hope’ — Bret Stephens

Louise in New York on “Run, Mike, Run!” (Nov. 8):

Enough with the rich hating! The man was a public servant and proved his mettle as a respectable, intelligent, civic-minded individual who left our city better than he found it. He deserves a chance to be heard as a candidate if he can draw national support. I disagreed with many of his policies, but I say, run, Mike, run!

Bret: Thanks, Louise, and right on every count. Getting rich is not a crime, and Democrats will lose if they treat it as one. They’ll also lose if they treat a record of success in business and government as some sort of disqualification for high office, or if they become so ideologically rigid that they can’t endorse a candidate with whom they sometimes disagree. Reading your comment gives me hope that 2020 won’t be as depressing as 2019.

‘I got the message’ — Kara Swisher

Steve Chaney in Kingsbury, Tex., on “Owning a Car Will Soon Be as Quaint as Owning a Horse” (March 22):

I live in rural Texas, and our transportation needs could not be more different from urban or suburban folk. The shiny monster pickup truck may disappear from the suburban driveway, but its mud-encrusted cousin won’t be leaving the red dirt roads of Guadalupe County any time soon.

Kara: Dear Steve, and the bajillion other people from rural areas who wrote that they were not going to give up their cars (trucks, actually), I got the message. Keep all your gasoline-guzzling and climate-killing motor vehicles manned by humans. You don’t have to switch anytime soon, and you won’t since the technical innovations needed to widely deploy autonomous cars are a long time in coming and will come to the big cities first.

But like demographic change that is transforming our country annually, there will come a day when you, too, will use these methods of transportation, much as you switched from land lines to cellphones. Remember land lines? They are next to that manual thresher and butter churn and so much more back in the very back of the nation’s metaphorical barn.

‘I obviously disagree, Jason, but that’s what makes this a good comment’ — Paul Krugman

Jason in Seattle on “The Economics of Soaking the Rich” (Jan. 5):

I own a business. Tax me at 73 percent and watch me take it to Canada, Ireland, or any other locale where I don’t get “soaked.” Why is the answer from the left that we always need more money from someone? As if the “rich” have done something wrong? Why not take the existing bloated budget, apply some creativity and critical thinking (you know, the kind that happens in the private sector) and solve problems with the current tax rates?

Paul: I obviously disagree, Jason, but that's what makes this a good comment. I have a feeling a lot of people share your misconceptions.