Ross Douthat, 40, has for 11 years been a rarity: a conservative and pro-life New York Times columnist. On Feb. 14, before the coronavirus became a major preoccupation, I asked him about ideas in his new book, The Decadent Society. Here are some edited and tightened excerpts.

Parental advisory: This article includes vivid descriptions of aborted babies

Edward Larson mentions Donald Trump once in his clear and thoughtful new book, Franklin & Washington: The Founding Partnership (William Morrow, 2020): “Objecting to the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, Virginia, President Donald Trump sharply asked, ‘I wonder, is it George Washington next week?’” Larson seems on Trump’s side in pushing back against revisionist history: “Despite their flaws, Franklin and Washington have held up better under examination than most leaders of any age.”

The Houston-based Terry Foundation is the largest private scholarship provider in the state of Texas. Here’s a history talk with current applications I gave at the 1997 celebration of Terry scholars at the University of Texas at Austin. See last month’s “stump speech” about how concerns over corrupt Anglicanism helped spur American colonists to revolt.

I’ve been reading “progressive” looks at our national divisions so as to understand the intellectual winds that will blow more intensively if we have a Biden presidency.

Mollie Hemingway in her mid-40s has emerged as a leading defender of Donald Trump on Fox News and a thoughtful analyst in her role as senior editor of The Federalist, a well-read online magazine. She earned a degree in economics at the University of Colorado and is a member of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod. Here are edited excerpts of our Q&A in Washington, D.C., on the morning after January’s March for Life.

Parental advisory: This column quotes some graphic descriptions of Holocaust atrocities.

Amid stories of how the coronavirus focuses our attention, I recalled a Russian short story about an officer marching idealistic political prisoners on a muddy road to where a firing squad waits. He carefully avoids puddles, keeping his boots shiny. Watching these noncriminal criminals die sickens him. On the way back he does not avoid puddles: What does it matter if mud cakes his boots?