The most important element in European foreign relations throughout the 1920s and during the early 1930s was the desire at all costs to avoid another war. There was among European statesmen a widespread conviction that another war would be infinitely more destructive than the Great War had been, and any alternative seemed preferable. 1. Hitler's [...]
The labors of Saint Patrick are among the greatest of those who have traveled far and wide for the discipleship of Christ. Although it is undoubtedly true that each and every one of the Church’s saints display a faith and virtue which is for all the ages of the world, I would especially believe that [...]
Evangeline is the spirit of those millions of people in multifarious cultures who have been expelled from their homes through ethnic cleansing or other acts of tyranny. She is the spirit of hope that endures and is patient. She haunts those who believe in ghosts. I believe in ghosts. It’s not that I have any [...]
One looks forward to the completion of Pat Buchanan's memoirs, especially the insider tales of the Nixon and Reagan years. He has always been courageous and compelling in debate and unflappable in his commitment to conservative populist principles. He, perhaps more than any public figure, waged the culture wars with grit, determination, and eloquence. Patrick [...]
The story of the Indian Wars for the American West in Peter Cozzens’s “The Earth Is Weeping” contains the tragic patterns of all human history. This history, like all real history, lives once we awaken memory and see the real contours of what lies before us. One of the compensations for long hours in the [...]
The truth of Pope Innocent III’s world is naturally dependent on a move out of nature and into faith. The political was a fundamental aspect of the pastoral. The movement of ascent to God passed always through the carnal, through the law, and on to liberty through grace. We are trapped within the historical, but [...]
Any attempt to interpret history as a whole, if it is not to succumb to gnostic myth, must posit some subject which works in and reveals itself in the whole of history and which is at the same time [the belief in] a being capable of providing general norms. —Fr. Hans Urs von Balthasar, A [...]
The Catholic people of the Vendée, aware of the horrors being unleashed by the stormtroopers of the French Revolution, responded courageously to the threat to their Faith and their way of life. Many people will have heard of the French Resistance, the name given to the various underground organizations that fought against the Nazis during [...]
To the various branches of the Army the General takes this last and solemn opportunity of professing his inviolable attachment and friendship. He wishes to bid a final adieu to the Armies he has so long had the honor to Command, he can only again offer in their behalf his recommendations to their grateful country, [...]
There remain few attempts in the world of cinema so daring as French director Abel Gance’s magnificent silent film “Napoleon.” Nearly a century after its stillbirth on the screens of the late 1920s, it appears to have at last found its audience on the wide-screens of another millennium. It was, and it remains, a unique experience [...]
With his bold pronouncement in the Dred Scott decision that Congress had no jurisdiction over the territories, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney hoped to preempt all political discussion and debate. But he was sadly disappointed, for his majority opinion itself became the focus of a new, and ever more vicious, round of political battles as [...]
The fame of the saints is not only good but should be proclaimed from the hilltops. The fortunes of the rich, if used charitably, are goods that can do a lot of good in alleviating suffering and edifying souls. It is not fame or fortune that is the problem but the prideful pursuit of fame [...]
“The book that explains Trump’s dominance may well have been published in 1962.” Or so contend the editors of the Atlantic Monthly. Amazon apparently agrees, since its blurb to promote current sales of Daniel Boorstin’s The Image borrows directly from the editors of the Atlantic and their leap into an increasingly distant past. But is [...]
Ronald Reagan did not read his way to conservatism, as some people do. He experienced his way. The concerns and travails of middle Americans taught him that unaccountable government could be a grave obstacle to the pursuit of happiness, and the experience of dealing with Communists and bureaucrats strengthened his lifelong distrust of overbearing elites. [...]