Why Did the Berlin Wall Fall?

By |2023-11-09T19:19:47-06:00November 8th, 2023|Categories: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Barbara J. Elliott, Communism, Europe, Poland, Russia, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays|

The Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain seemed to be permanent fixtures of the political landscape of Europe after 1961. But to everyone’s surprise, the Berlin Wall opened on November 9, 1989. This stunning event triggered a chain reaction throughout Eastern Europe, accelerating a process that had begun a decade earlier. Using a little poetic [...]

St. Pius V and the Battle of Lepanto

By |2023-10-06T20:38:31-05:00October 6th, 2023|Categories: Books, Catholicism, Christendom, Europe, G.K. Chesterton, Islam, Joseph Pearce, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays, War|

Pope Pius, who had done more than anyone to make the Christian victory at Lepanto possible, is said to have burst into tears when news of it reached him. They have dared the white republics up the capes of Italy, They have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea, And the Pope has [...]

Poland: Europe’s Heroic Heart

By |2023-09-10T09:01:22-05:00August 24th, 2023|Categories: Catholicism, Europe, Joseph Pearce, Senior Contributors|

The Poles are an iron-forged people, shaped into a sword of faithful resilience in the heat of battle, caught between the anvil of warfare and the hammer of conquest. Furthermore, this faithful resilience has been shaped by the resilience of the Faith, the indomitable adherence of the Polish people to the Catholic Church which is [...]

The Kornilov Affair

By |2023-07-04T17:24:41-05:00July 4th, 2023|Categories: Europe, Foreign Affairs, History, Mark Malvasi, Russia, Senior Contributors, Ukraine|

Russian warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin, the the head of the Wagner Group, advanced on Moscow when the government refused to address his criticisms of the war effort in Ukraine. There is an obscure episode in Russian history that provides a revealing, albeit imperfect, analogue to this recent event: the so-called Kornilov Affair of 1917. For twenty-four [...]

The Ukraine War, the Pope, & the West

By |2023-05-10T18:32:52-05:00May 10th, 2023|Categories: Europe, Foreign Affairs, Pope Francis, Ukraine, Viktor Orbán|

We believe in a Europe of nations. The only remedy is to strengthen nations—not only Hungary, but nations in general. This is the basis of Western culture, this is the basis of Western competitive advantage, this—the nations—is what made the West great. On May 5, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was interviewed on the Kossuth Radio [...]

Why We Should Revere Spain

By |2023-07-16T22:52:40-05:00March 27th, 2023|Categories: Catholicism, Christianity, Europe, History, Joseph Pearce, StAR, Timeless Essays|

Throughout the centuries Spain has done more than any nation to fight the Long Defeat and, in her heroism, has shown us many fleeting glimpses of the Final Victory. The poet Roy Campbell declared that Spain was “a country to which I owe everything as having saved my soul.”[i]  Received into the Catholic Church in [...]

The Monroe Doctrine

By |2022-12-01T17:12:58-06:00December 1st, 2022|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Bradley J. Birzer, Europe, Foreign Affairs, History, John Quincy Adams, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays|

In his ideas regarding American foreign policy, James Monroe echoed both Washington and Jefferson, yet he had to worry about things neither of them did—in particular, European involvement in the affairs of the republics of the Western Hemisphere. His policy needed to follow the diplomatic thought of the previous administrations while also adapting to quickly [...]

The State as a Work of Art

By |2022-11-15T13:04:20-06:00November 15th, 2022|Categories: Europe, History, Marcia Christoff Reina, Timeless Essays|

It just may be the case that The Perfect State was not even a state. For, once upon a time there was a northern, medieval phenomenon as much the subject of universal myth and curiosity as that of the enchantress-republics flourishing down south: the Hanseatic League of the mid-13th to 16th centuries. Lorenzo ‘Il Magnifico‘, [...]

The Queen and the Principle of Subsidiarity

By |2022-09-08T13:53:48-05:00September 8th, 2022|Categories: Conservatism, England, Europe, Joseph Pearce, Politics, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays|

Insofar as the principle of subsidiarity enunciated by the late Queen Elizabeth represents a recognition of ancient wisdom and a “most neglected subject,” we can hope that the United Kingdom might move forward rooted in reinvigorated local government and local economies. This would indeed be a momentous move in the right direction. Any reference to [...]

Of Majesty and Anarchy

By |2022-07-29T08:25:57-05:00July 27th, 2022|Categories: Europe, Featured, History, Marcia Christoff Reina, Monarchy, Rome, Timeless Essays|

Today, wherever the intelligent among us may still be found, the idea of Monarchy shimmers and beckons along the periphery of our collective intellectual subconscious; we suspect it has something that will save us from the erosions of shabby egalitarianism, from our sordid democracies and their petulant, tiresome, subversive “rights.” “Then Perceval was told that [...]

Hail Columbia, Happy Land: An Evangelical Southerner in 19th-Century Europe

By |2022-07-24T15:39:42-05:00July 24th, 2022|Categories: Catholicism, Christendom, Europe, History, Timeless Essays|

Methodist minister Joseph Cross, a South Carolina native, traveled in Europe in the late 1850s, emerging as a nationalist committed to democracy, material progress, and enthusiastic Evangelical Protestantism. With the publication of I’ll Take My Stand in 1930 the southern conservative intellectual tradition definitively entered into consciousness of the American academy and the American literati. [...]

On Saint Benedict

By |2023-07-10T21:44:41-05:00July 10th, 2022|Categories: Catholicism, Christianity, Europe, History, Pope Benedict XVI, St. Benedict, Timeless Essays|

St. Benedict of Norcia, with his life and his work, had a fundamental influence on the development of European civilization and culture. The most important source on Benedict’s life is the second book of St. Gregory the Great’s “Dialogues,” in which he gives us a model for human life in the climb towards the summit [...]

A More Enlightened View of the Enlightenment

By |2023-02-25T13:52:42-06:00February 28th, 2022|Categories: Books, Europe, Faith, History, Michael De Sapio, Senior Contributors|

Joseph T. Stuart shows us that the relationship between the Enlightenment and Christianity was not strictly one of opposition and conflict. Rather, the Enlightenment was a general program and set of ideas that influenced all sectors of life, including religion itself. Rethinking the Enlightenment: Faith in the Age of Reason, by Joseph T. Stuart (351 [...]

Russia: Friend or Foe?

By |2022-03-21T14:19:07-05:00February 24th, 2022|Categories: Europe, Foreign Affairs, History, National Security, Politics, Russia|

Russia’s leaders are flawed, inclined toward violence, and covetous of power—but this doesn’t make them much different from the leaders of every other nation-state. On March 10, 2014, American ambassadors from across the globe descended on Washington for our annual conference: a few days to forget about the day-to-day hassles of running embassies and coping [...]

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