The West's primary threat still lies in the East. And yet, like the late Romans and Byzantines—and the Roman captives whom Saint Patrick encountered—we are poised to surrender people, churches, monuments, and lands rather than stand our ground. Last Spring, I read a biographical novel about Saint Patrick. We do not have much firsthand information [...]
Thales was the first Greek to ask himself what are the origin and principle from which all things come. By looking for these, he destroyed the very foundation of the ancient belief in an intrinsically chaotic universe. And for that, he deserves to be remembered, especially by us, the inhabitants of the post-philosophical world. Why [...]
If all men truly desire by nature to know, as Aristotle claims, then a human society in which evidence is ignored or quashed or in which truth is a commodity cannot but destroy men—and itself. Those ideologies that are plaguing us are fruits of the refusal to heed the natural desire to know. The basics [...]
Confusion is being sown in all corners of the globe. We cannot and must not lose sight of what is, of truth. Rather than stalking the internet, we must calm down, ask ourselves what is real and what is not, and relearn the art of distinguishing what is from what is being broadcast. How do [...]
In America today, the bewildering “what I want” faction topples statues, rewrites history, decolonizes curricula, detaches identities from ontological realities, indoctrinates our youth, and tries to impose its utopian totalitarianism. What we see unfolding in the world and in our country is war. It is the war that began for us when a woman listened [...]
The present bombing of Armenia and Artsakh is meant to fulfill the Young Turk dream of building an Empire. That dream is alive and well in Turkey’s government today. By honoring and listening to historian Bernard Lewis, we have become accomplices of that dream, that nightmare. It is time to wake up and hold fast [...]
If the universe were a swarm, there would be no universe. That swarm, that self-caused changing unit, that Godless movable infinite thing would destroy the necessary condition of its own existence and persistence: the individuals that constitute it. Why, then, does modern man insist on not seeing this? Why does he choose rage over reality? I [...]
One hundred and forty-two years after the Congress of Berlin, the same nightmarish scenario is playing out again: Turkish forces are killing Armenians. And like the Europeans of times past, we just don’t seem to get it. How many Armenians have to die before we understand that life and culture are precious and must be [...]
The most effective way to show that God exists is to expose our false deep-seated illusion that the world around us, our networks, are all there is and ever was, in the eternity of the world. It is our prejudices, our pride, our fear that keep us from seeing that the Prime Mover is not [...]
How does one find the obstinacy, the calm, the strength to glow with the Beautiful and the True in the midst of a raging storm? I think about a small argument in chapter 13 of the “Summa Contra Gentiles,” the work which, when my heart slows its hammering, gives my mind peace. I am at [...]
At the end of the film, Farinelli’s smile meant peace. It was the peace of a man who loved, of a man who had accepted his fate, of a man who had a future, of a man who was no longer the judge and standard—despite having suffered unjustly. It was the peace of a man [...]
The natural laws that the academics and intellectuals have for centuries been trying to think and feel out of existence, the laws undergirding all of reality, do not kowtow to the thoughts and actions of mere human beings. They continue to inform reality and will overwhelm anyone who does not bow to them, as all [...]
Far from calling for microscopic views of reality and fishbowls, tragedies call for us to shatter the fishbowls and throw out the microscopes, to stop obsessing about our vulnerabilities and on how to overcome them, to stop thinking of ourselves as helpless victims of wicked forces. It is a grey day today. The sun was [...]
Living in isolation flattens days, homogenizes them. Gone are the trains, the colleagues, the students. Gone the friends, the flights, the lectures. Gone the plans, the urgency, the team. I am no longer flummoxed by the mere thought of Descartes’s mad flight. So here I am back at my desk. It is another day, a [...]