“The Song of Roland” communicates the values of fealty to lord and land that are combined with duty, heroism, and trustworthiness. The struggle that dominates the core of the poem, the battle between King Marsile and Roland, is not just a battle between Christianity and paganism—it is a battle for the soul of fealty [...]
We cannot interpret our past or approach the future based upon the assumption that individuals and groups are mere passive chess pieces. We must more appreciate the constraints of the earth, without capitulating to them with aggression or inertia. In 1440, at the heart of the Rhine Valley, Johannes Gutenberg perfected the first European [...]
The memory of General Charles de Gaulle has largely faded away, like a fleeting dream, from the soul of the French nation. Nonetheless, his example serves as a testament to those men and women in uniform of the endless grace that flows from the Catholic faith, and which is required to continue the eternal [...]
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 [...]
It is now 75 years since the Allies freed the Netherlands from the clutches of the Nazis, yet my neighbor Christina (“Stien”) van Egmond remembers the events with amazing clarity. Ms. Stien was 16 at the time and, having graduated from high school several months previously, was working in her father’s greengrocery in Diemen, [...]
A journal is claiming that the Russian government was using the Covid-19 outbreak to strengthen anti-EU feelings, make propaganda gains, and gather intelligence at the heart of NATO. Although this report has gained traction, what is this statement really saying and who is saying it? According to a recent news report, Russia is using [...]
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 [...]
It may one day be said that the coronavirus delivered the deathblow to the New World Order, to a half-century of globalization, and to the era of interdependence of the world’s great nations. Which rings truer today? We are all part of mankind, all citizens of the world. Or that it’s time to put America [...]
Now the peoples of the new nations, dissatisfied with what their liberated lands and rulers have produced, have decided to come to Europe to enjoy in the West what they cannot replicate at home. And liberalism, the ideology of Western suicide, dictates to Europe that it take them in — for decades to come. "Fortress [...]
“Imperial Legacies” is a spirited polemic that exposes the misunderstandings, cynical disregard, and hypocrisy surrounding the history of the British Empire. Jeremy Black systematically debunks the ideologies of “decolonization” and postcolonial resentment and shows the harm of dismissing British history as a story of monolithic oppression. Imperial Legacies: The British Empire Around the World, [...]
Since nations are first and foremost cultural realities, the long-term viability and sustainability of nation states depends on the existence of healthy and living national cultures. If the culture withers and decays, the nation state will wither and decay in the culture’s wake. There are good practical and pragmatic political reasons for retaining the presence [...]
In mid-December, I had the pleasure and honour of taking part in a public debate in Hungary on Christian Democracy and its role in contemporary European politics. I was one of a panel of five “experts,” which included a German, a Pole, a Hungarian, and, last but not least, a fellow Englishman, Theodore Dalrymple, [...]
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of Hungary links the persecution of Christians in other parts of the globe to the increasing hostility towards mainstream Christianity in Europe. A “mysterious force seals the lips,” he asserts, not only of politicians in the West to this persecution, but also of most of those in the media. Is [...]
Only a fool would be blithely optimistic about the New Year. Those of us who have been seasoned by many seasons have seen enough old New Years to be cautious of their promises. Experience teaches us that each New Year does not ring out the old in order to ring in the new; it [...]