Unlike reality—which is infinitely and ultimately unknowable—Marxism as ideology pretends to understand the world, but, in reality, it offers only the merest shadow of true complexities. Though responsible—directly and indirectly—for the murder of nearly 150 million innocent children, women, and men in the previous century, Marxism is making a comeback in Western civilization. Not only [...]
No work of Christian theology has left such an impact on the world and biblical interpretation and understanding as St. Augustine’s “City of God.” We who read the Bible do so, often unknowingly, through the eyes of the bishop of Hippo. In 410 A.D., the city of Rome was sacked by the Visigoths. Rome was [...]
The HBO series “Chernobyl” serves to warn us about the danger of persistent lies in a society that refuses to acknowledge truth. It would be a grave error not to take stock of our own tendencies toward deceit, as if our lies are radically different from those that underpinned the Soviet Union. Over several long [...]
According to Friedrich-Georg Jünger, modern man’s veneration of technology reveals his distant kinship to the Titans of myth. This ‘titanic’ impulse to dominate and consume expresses itself through our technology-driven industrial economy, which now determines every aspect of life from the air we breathe to the food we eat. Ongoing debates concerning the growing power [...]
We have no way of knowing whether the twenty-first-century collapse is yet another momentary stumble or finally the Dark Age. Like good Carolingians, however, we keep looking backwards for our recovery, trying to rebuild what we once had. Christopher Dawson’s prophetic The Making of Europe (1932) ends where the Gentle Reader might expect such a book to [...]
Christ gave His disciples the Divine Commission to go and teach all nations, baptizing them. Christians are called to change society—all society, every society. They pursue this goal with charity and zeal, respecting the free will of individuals. Wherever Christianity has gone, its charity has transformed nations and peoples. Whenever the extreme left is in [...]
As for human institutions that have gone astray, my view is that they are only dead branches hanging on to the trees of education, religion, and society to which my real loyalty lies. I would rather the dead wood of such institutions be pruned away so that the true wood can grow. I am nothing [...]
What we need in American society are more imaginative resources for thinking about marriage and the great slog of parenthood. We need stories, plays, movies, and shows about the sort of heroism that requires long-haul fortitude and not just courage in the moment. A long-held but somewhat flexible fantasy I have engaged in periodically since [...]
A culture that fails to represent, or that misrepresents its wars in all their glory, gravity, and tragedy, is a weaker polity. Epic poetry, with its stark recording of the facts and feelings of war, can give cultures and communities access to the reality of warfare and inscribe its memory on the collective consciousness and [...]
How on earth did we stray so far from the paths of wisdom that we find ourselves in this God-forsaken place that is our modern world? I am fond of telling the story of an American tourist who gets himself hopelessly lost somewhere in the wilds of the west of Ireland. In desperation, he stops [...]
Propelled by delusions and united by hatred, growing numbers of Americans believe that political violence is justified, necessary, and even at times desirable. If we no longer can, or care to, adhere to the dictates of civility and reason, then we will have surrendered control of our destiny and will become the authors of our [...]
Success in writing requires the virtue of temperance, self-mastery, which refers to an internal action less dreary and passive than mere abstinence. Temperance means disciplining oneself in order to realize one’s greatest potential. Writing is a moral act, I often tell my undergraduate students. At first, naturally enough, they are puzzled by this claim. Not [...]
Eating together, as a social event, is meant to be time-consuming because it is meant to be an intimate experience where friendship—true friendship—is experienced, rekindled, and love stands at the center of the dinner table. It is, in its own way, a call to sacrifice. Aristotle identified man’s eating habits as one of the cornerstones of civilization—one [...]
In our world of recriminating hatreds—in which we desire more to label those we don’t like as sexist, imperialist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, and, simultaneously, mark ourselves as victims—we often forget some important historical truths. Here’s one we conveniently ignore, dismiss, or mock: Nothing in the world has brought about more equality and justice than has [...]