Our sense of time is actively shifting in this virus-ridden world. The quickness and ease of getting what we want—information, groceries, entertainment, medicine—is in constant flux. Forget wanting. What is it we really need for ourselves and our families? […]
The massive impact of the coronavirus has led to more than half of U.S. states imposing lockdown restrictions on social contact and gathering. Many states have also ordered closure of all “nonessential businesses.” The problem of course, is what defines an “essential worker.” The massive impact of the coronavirus has led to more than half [...]
The stakes of our current drama are high. They require our full attention and clear-sightedness. They call for heroic actions. And in short, they demand greatness of soul. Will the real human nature please stand up? We need it now more than ever. “Is man no more than this,” King Lear famously asks as he [...]
When nations under the European Union close their borders to protect their people from the coronavirus, the pomposity of the EU is exposed. This is a telling sign that its serpentine grip on its empire is slipping. On April 2, the Court of Justice of the European Union, the EU’s “supreme court,” ruled that its [...]
Will our own age of decadence collapse with this novel coronavirus? Ross Douthat, in “The Decadent Society,” foreshadows rather prophetically, not knowing at the time of its printing, that this possibility could arise. As I approach the second week of my 14-day quarantine, due to possible COVID-19 infection upon detachment from my previous military command [...]
Many Americans agree that something hasn’t smelled right about this pandemic from the beginning, something in the air that smacks of calculated panic and political engineering. The coronavirus will pass, God willing, but perhaps in its place will come another disease—the relentless leftwing virus. Donald J. Trump has been criticized and condemned for calling COVID-19 [...]
The coronavirus crisis seems to be one of those epochal events that alter the character of the country and the course of the republic. You can't go home again. The shattering events of March, followed by what is coming in April and May, will have lasting impacts on the hearts and minds of this generation. [...]
No one knows what will happen with COVID-19—whether it will spread and peak and go away, or whether it will stay around for years, even centuries, as the plague did in Europe. It is good nonetheless to remember that true culture arises out of the joy and beauty we find anyway in the midst of [...]
When this pandemic is over, I’m not so sure that we will go back to life as it was before. There is no going back. Overall, I predict the sobering of America and a new seriousness in our approach to life. Most of all, I expect there to be a religious re-awakening. When the coronavirus [...]
Everything is going well, until it isn’t. Then it is the end of the world, until it isn’t. Unbridled confidence and unfounded panic are the poles we traverse, A jagged, looping path along which we cry beseechingly and grasp breathlessly. […]
How does a basement-bound Biden compete with Trump in the Oval Office, Cabinet Room, East Room and Rose Garden? Whom does Biden call upon to rival Trump's instant access to respected leaders eager to come and stand beside the president in the most serious crisis since World War II? "This is the question that is [...]
In our age of clickbait and hyperbole, people call things “unprecedented” that are not unprecedented at all. Public officials shamelessly brag that the nation’s recent economic growth is unequaled. (It’s not.) Broadcasters breathlessly report that today’s anxiety over the stock market is unheard of. (Actually the number of suicides after the Crash of 1929 was [...]
When set in motion, panic does not care what is in the way of its mad flight. All must be sacrificed—economy, society, and even worship—in the name of irrational fear. Moreover, it proves difficult to stop. What is missing in our reaction to the coronavirus pandemic is wisdom. In the face of the coronavirus crisis [...]
Who’s right, the public health officials or the economists? That’s the question we are tempted to ask. But in this pandemic, it’s the wrong question. Both sides are right. Franklin D. Roosevelt had his Great Depression. George W. Bush had his Great Recession. And Donald J. Trump has his Great Pandemic. Over the past weeks, [...]