Julia Keller looks around at an increasingly frightening world full of violence and political grandstanding, and misses the old familiar outrage of playwright Arthur Miller. “We need a writer whose ferocity won’t be diminished by concerns for balance or propriety, who won’t get sidetracked by niceties. We need someone who will write with unapologetic rage. Yet moral certainty is in bad odor these days. Many see it as the cause of most of the world’s problems, from terrorism to less lethal forms of intolerance — and it’s true that a powerful cadre of holier-than-thou politicians is a special menace in America just now. Moral certainty indeed makes for bad public policy. But it makes for great art.”