America is turning more into a secular society. But this post-Christian nation has not turned into a kinder, more tolerant place to live.

Peter Beinart, writing in The Atlantic, reminds us that a vast majority of Americans still believe in God, but they are fleeing organized religion in increasing numbers. The percentage of people with no religious affiliation jumped from 6 percent in 1992 to 22 percent in 2014. Among Millennials, the figure is 35 percent.

Many secular people would have predicted that this trend would end the culture wars and lead to greater harmony in society. Just the opposite has happened. “Secularism is indeed correlated with greater tolerance of gay marriage and pot legalization. But it’s also making America’s partisan clashes more brutal.”

Non-church goers have adopted a bleak view of America, more so than their churchgoing peers. He wonders: “Has the absence of church made their lives worse? Or are people with troubled lives more likely to stop attending services in the first place? Establishing causation is difficult, but we know that culturally conservative white Americans who are disengaged from church, experience less economic success and more family breakdown than those who remain connected, and they grow more pessimistic and resentful.”

I think you could make the case that without the peaceful influence of the Christian faith, Americans gravitate to a darker view of the country and of other citizens. Trust and civility decline, while anger and animosity increase.

We should not be surprised that as many Americans leave the church and organized religion that the conflicts in society are intensifying rather than diminishing.

Political correctness and the demand for tolerance can actually be harmful to many people, especially to women. Jennifer Hartline laments that female-only public places are vanishing as the promotion of “gender identity” and “transgenderism” are being promoted in our society.

She recounts a story from a self-described progressive mother who wrote about a man who walked into a crowded women’s restroom at Disneyland. “He just stood off to the side and leaned against the wall.” Many of the women were disturbed, but none of them felt like they could say anything.

The liberal, progressive mother concluded that, “we had been culturally bullied into silence.” She suspects that all of the women were thinking, what if “he identifies as a woman,” then anyone who said anything to him would “come off as the intolerant [blank] at the happiest place on earth?”

She was angry that women today have been culturally bullied into silence. They are told not to say anything, even when a strange man walks into a women’s restroom and leans against the wall. In fact, the bullying has become so effective that he doesn’t even need to say he thinks he is a woman. Nobody will question him.

The liberal, progressive mother said she felt they were being shamed into silence because they might offend someone. That is why no woman said anything. She concluded that, “the only thing stopping us, was our fear of political correctness and the media has told us we don’t know what gender is anymore.” She said she never wanted to be in the position again and wants society to say that it is acceptable to tell a man who looks like a man to get out of the restroom.

When a liberal, progressive woman sees the insanity of political correctness applied to the transgender debate, perhaps we have a chance for common sense to break out once again in society.

Are we winning or losing the war with ISIS? That is a question Joel Rosenberg asks in a Fox News op-ed. He was on my radio program recently to talk about his latest fiction book, Without Warning.

The previous president always seemed to minimize the threat of ISIS. He assured us early on that it was merely a “JV squad.” Even as he left office, he insisted that the tide had turned and that the U.S. was winning the war against ISIS.

That is not how the American people view the current conflict. Joel Rosenberg asked McLaughlin & Association to survey 1,000 likely voters about their view of the war with the Islamic State. What they found was sobering.

Only one-in-three Americans believe “the U.S. and our allies are winning the war against the Islamic State.” A remarkable 41 percent believe “the U.S. and our allies are losing the war against the Islamic State.” They also found that almost seven-in-ten (68%) said they “fear catastrophic terrorist attacks by ISIS are coming to the U.S. homeland, possibly involving chemical or biological weapons.”

These findings reinforce the warning of Rosenberg’s newest political thriller that speculates on how the government might respond to an ISIS attack on the capitol. And it raises questions of whether ISIS has access to WMDs and how they might use them against Israel and the United States.

While the book is fiction, the reality on the ground illustrates why we should pay attention to this potential threat. ISIS has built a global terrorist network and drawn recruits from 120 countries. Since 2014, 117 people have been arrested in the U.S. for connection to ISIS terrorist plots.

Joel Rosenberg’s book and his latest survey remind us of the need for our country to focus on the threat from ISIS.

Planned Parenthood is the nation’s largest abortion provider. It is also facing the real possibility that it will lose it annual taxpayer funding of a half of billion dollars each year.

Students for Life have come up with a creative campaign to focus attention on the destruction that Planned Parenthood leaves in its wake. They want to collect 329,999 baby socks to illustrate the number of abortions Planned Parenthood performed in 2015.

Recently I had Kristan Hawkins on my radio program to talk about their new campaign called #SockIt2PP. They are asking pro-life people from around the country to buy a pair of baby socks. They want you to send in one baby sock and pin the other baby sock to your clothes. She said that many pro-life students have been pinning a sock to their backpacks in order to start more conversations about the pro-life issue.

Planned Parenthood is already dealing with lots of negative publicity. They are facing a dozen criminal referrals by committees in the U.S. House and Senate. Much of this is due to the many videos that have been released showing people selling baby body parts. And there are other videos showing how some have been covering up child rape and abuse.

Although the Hyde Amendment prohibits federal funds from paying for most abortions, it doesn’t prevent federal funds for paying for abortionist salaries for non-abortion work, medical equipment, advertising, and other staff salaries. Funds may not be going directly for abortions, but they are paying for just about everything else in a Planned Parenthood clinic.

Students for Life plan to collect the 329,999 baby socks and then take them to Washington and display them. I encourage you to help them use this visual reminder to members of Congress.

The popularity of the latest Disney movie, Beauty and the Beast, has once again caused Christians to reconsider whether they want to watch and support the cinematic features of the Walt Disney Company. Even critics acknowledge there are positive elements in every one of the Disney films, but many of them have one or more scenes that are troubling.

Some have called for a boycott of the latest Disney film. Others have asked, “Is it Time to Kiss Disney Goodbye?” Christians have come to different decisions concerning the content and message of the films. But I find it very encouraging that other social commentators also have some concerns.

Attorney Joseph R. Murray calls himself “a proud member of the LGBT community.” But in an op-ed in the Orlando Sentinel he disagrees with Disney’s decision to promote homosexuality in films designed for children.

Murray observed that Walt Disney’s vision was clear: “Entertain children. Disney characters were about hope, optimism and, above all else, making sure children were able to enjoy their innocence for as long as the outside world would permit.”

He says: “Somewhere along the line, Disney went off course. No longer did it see itself as a defender of children’s innocence. Instead, it saw itself as a conduit to social change. Walt Disney became Harvey Milk.” (Harvey Milk was the first openly homosexual person to be elected to public office in California and was later assassinated.)

He spends some time in his op-ed reminding us of Disney’s promoting of “Gay Days” at the children’s theme park and the attempt by Disney executives “to infuse its brand with political activism” towards the gay agenda. He even rejects the idea that homosexual kids need reaffirmation. He says: “I was gay and grew up without gay Disney and made it just fine.”

Disney went off course when it decided to put a social and political agenda in children’s entertainment.

Anyone listening to the confirmation hearings for the Secretary of Education would think that America’s public school system was in great shape. In fact, the Chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus even warned that the new secretary “will have an incredibly harmful impact on public education and on black communities nationwide.”

Most people don’t agree with that assessment. The editorial board of the Chicago Tribune criticized the secretary’s critics. “Instead of lauding DeVos for trying to break a failing status quo in places like Detroit, a handful of U.S. senators tried their best to depict her as an out-of-touch nincompoop whose goal was to destroy public schools. Yet half of the Democrats on the committee either went to private school themselves or had children or grandchildren attending private schools.”

Let’s look at the status quo. According to the Nation’s Report Card, only a third (37%) of high school seniors were proficient in reading, and only one fourth (25%) were proficient in math. That is a disgrace, but the percentages are even worse for minority students. Only 17 percent of black students scored proficient in reading, and only 7 percent of them were proficient in math.

Here’s the dirty secret that is often ignored. These underperforming students are graduating in record numbers. The nation’s high school graduation rate increases a percentage or more every year. That means we are giving them a diploma even though they are not performing to high school standards.

That is why the editorial board of the Chicago Tribune lamented that it was so “disturbing that so many politicians can choose the best educational opportunities for their kids but refuse to allow underprivileged families the same benefit.”

Obviously the status quo is not working and it’s past time to consider alternatives that will improve student proficiency.

Our nation’s intelligence gathering is in the news, so I read with interest a transcript of a speech Herbert Meyer did for a Hillsdale College leadership seminar. He served as a special assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence and was the Vice Chairman of the CIA’s National Intelligence Council.

Meyer reminds us that: “From the end of World War II until 1982, every president’s objective had been not to lose the Cold War.” When President Ronald Reagan came into office, he wanted to change that mindset. He switched from playing defense to playing offense.

“So Reagan’s director of Central Intelligence, William Casey, asked the CIA’s Soviet Division two obvious questions: Where is the Soviet Union weak? and Where is it most vulnerable?” The surprising answer they received was “We don’t know. No one’s ever asked this before.”

Over the years, the CIA and other intelligence gathering agencies were able to gather lots of information about Soviet strengths (infantry divisions, nuclear missiles, tanks, submarines) but never collected information on Soviet weaknesses.

Meyer says that under Casey’s leadership, they refocused collection efforts and found all sorts of Soviet vulnerabilities. President Reagan used these weaknesses and vulnerabilities to put more pressure on the Kremlin. “Eight years later the Berlin Wall came down, and two years after that the Soviet Union ceased to exist.”

There is a lesson to be learned here. Sometimes the important information is out there but never collected because it doesn’t seem relevant to the intelligence gathering mindset the president or the bureaucracy might have.

Meyer says that intelligence work is like science. You don’t collect random information and hope that something will pop up. You need an informed view of the world and know what you want to accomplish.

What is driving the protests by the millennial generation both on campus and in the streets? There are a number of theories. Evan Morrison has this observation: “If you were to come across someone who cried in the streets, who saw the world in terms of black and white and made death threats against strangers, who cowered in a special room and made public displays of naked self-harm and blood letting, you might conclude that they were suffering from a personality disorder.”

These are the symptoms of what is called “High Conflict Personality Disorder.” He isn’t suggesting that all millennials have this but he does see a striking similarity to the everyday behaviors of the modern Social Justice Warrior. Michael Brown reminds us that many of them grew up in a “culture of indulgence, a culture of narcissism, a culture of radical, leftist campus ideology.”

For a millennial Social Justice Warrior, everyday speech contains a number of “micro-aggressions” that conceal oppression that must be condemned. They need to retreat to “safe spaces” to flee from their victimhood. They claim to fight for freedom but are opposed to true freedom of speech. They believe in a world without boundaries but are obsessed with creating segregated spaces.

Nick Pitts reminds us the millennials mistrust institutions. Poling by Harvard University’s Institute of Politics found they distrust the press (88%), Wall Street (86%), public school (74%), and the federal government (74%). Only 19 percent of millennials believe other people can be trusted.

He also reminds us that: “Millennials may be the most educated generation in the American experiment, but education does not equate to understanding.” A small percentage is proficient in U.S. history and fall short in various other categories. He concludes that: “Without an understanding of history, and the context implicit within it, everyone turns into Hitler and everything is a civil rights issue.”

That is why I believe these millennial protests will be with us for a long time.