The Secret Commonwealth (The Book of Dust #2)

by Philip Pullman

Our faith has in recent years been challenged and threatened as never before. Heresy is flourishing, blasphemy goes unpunished, the very doctrines that have led us through two thousand years are being openly mocked in every land. This is a time for people of faith to draw together and make our voices heard with unmistakable force.

Nazi Christian Republican theocratic fascists lifted from the news of the real world and dropped in to the novel. The Christianic and Islamic fascists of the world think that they are oppressed and suppressed just because their intellectual and moral superiors laugh at them and stop the cultists from killing normal people.

We have a chance to increase our influence and bring our power to bear on all those who have resisted and are still resisting the good influence of the Holy Magisterium.

More real world Christanic and Islamic republican fascism underscored in the novel. No wonder extremist Christians hate this novel, they see themselves displayed starkly as the bad guys.

The other side’s got an energy that our side en’t got. Comes from their certainty about being right. If you got that certainty, you’ll be willing to do anything to bring about the end you want. It’s the oldest human problem, Lyra, an’ it’s the difference between good and evil. Evil can be unscrupulous, and good can’t. Evil has nothing to stop it doing what it wants, while good has one hand tied behind its back. To do the things it needs to do to win, it’d have to become evil to do ’em.”

Sounds familiar

Instead, we should delicately and subtly undermine the idea that truth and facts are possible in the first place. Once the people have become doubtful about the truth of anything, all kinds of things will be open to us.”

The republican party

The sun has never seen a shadow.”

Is this true? Have To think about this. Planets can occlude other stars but the diameter of the Earth's Sun is wide enough that there should be no spot on the surface of the Sun where any star's light can be fully occluded by any planet. Some points on the Sun will fall in to the shadow of other stars being occluded by planets, but not all points on the Sun's surface can be at the same time.