I don’t like the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Hobby Lobby. I don’t like the fact that Japan’s prime minister has not learned anything from history about the dangers of a heavily militarized Japan. And I don’t like the idea of a caliphate being created in Syria and Iraq.

Am I just getting old and crotchety, or are there some seriously bad things happening in the world right now? I mean, bad things are always happening, but these three things seem particularly ominous because they all point to a regression in our collective intelligence as humans.

Why are we going backwards?