Many scholars, heroes, and even martyrs among great Christian figures have either been forgotten or “sanitized” to meet modern standards. Others, like G.K. Chesterton, have simply become “deplorable”—i.e., utterly unacceptable to contemporary sensibilities. Is Mr. Ahlquist correct in deeming Chesterton a saint whom we might pray to rather than for? I leave that question up to [...]
Though counter-globalist, Cardinal Robert Sarah’s “The Day Is Now Far Spent” is not anti-Western, but is an emphatic rejection of liberal anthropology—which strikes him as blasphemous, positing a decontextualized individual, one who needs neither family nor neighbor nor even God Almighty. The Day Is Now Far Spent, by Cardinal Robert Sarah (385 pages, Ignatius Press, [...]
Those who object to globalism find themselves in a frustrating, even infuriating position, even now in the age of Brexit and Donald Trump. Three years after the 2016 votes were counted there is still no wall, Britain is still stuck in the EU, and an anonymous White House “adult in the room” has gotten away [...]
Under advanced liberalism there is an expectation that anybody who so much as dares to speak civilly to or about any figure associated with the Confederacy is to be deemed persona non grata. For Catholics as Catholics, such sweeping and absolutist expectations are simply unacceptable. Forth from its scabbard, high in the air Beneath Virginia’s [...]
Secular liberals can only celebrate Philip K. Dick’s writing by filtering and censoring it, for among other things, it includes an unambiguous, carefully argued, and strident attack upon the central liberal sacrament—abortion. Philip K. Dick From Amazon’s The Man In The High Castle to the Hollywood films like Blade Runner and Minority Report, [...]
Lord Acton believed that the wrong side won the American Civil War. Such a judgment could hardly be said to be a minor detail of someone’s historical worldview, yet this judgment has somehow been obscured. “Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Among Catholic students of political thought, few figures are more liable to [...]
Although somewhat overshadowed by the allegory of the Cave, the myth of the ring of Gyges, and other powerful images found in Plato’s Republic, the account of the ship of fools is still memorable and compelling. While Socrates—the Athenian philosopher and mentor of Plato—is discussing with his young friends the nature of justice and the ideal [...]
The danger today is not that too many are selectively and dishonestly quoting Thomas Aquinas to advance their own political agenda in ways that are unfaithful to his beliefs and intentions. The real point is that Christians have fallen into an appalling habit of censoring the very voices from the past that should be helping [...]
Compared to today’s decidedly pragmatic US President, the tradition-minded Cambridge medievalist proves to be more exclusive and more provincial, for it is the creator of the beloved Narnia series who would resist tenaciously any attempt to flood his country with Norwegians, however law-abiding and productive. So before preaching the Benedict Option or crusading for pro-life feminism, let the [...]
As Paul Gottfried explains in “Revisions and Dissents,” the real division between right and left cuts not between finance capitalists and welfare statists, but “between those who wish to preserve inherited communities and their sources of authority and those who wish to ‘reform’ or abolish these arrangements.” Complaints about Donald Trump’s “divisiveness” strike Paul Gottfried [...]
Any intelligent, substantive response to the Alt-Right must come from those who themselves stand cheerfully outside the bounds of respectable establishment discourse… Alain de Benoist Well before Hillary Clinton put a national spotlight on the Alt-Right with her “deplorables” speech, I was addressing the then-obscure movement and what it signifies for modern society. [...]
To discover Honoré de Balzac is to discover a new world, one comparable to that envisioned by Shakespeare. If there is any lesson the collected works of this counter-revolutionary author hold for us, it is that the human comedy is best illuminated not by politics alone, but by the ineffable light of the divine… Love [...]