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. [...]
As happened with Henry Adams, a robust study of history is enough to prove the indispensable role that Christianity has played in true human progress, and it might just be enough to spark an interest in seeking an alternate, unified, form of meaning in our modern age, moving us back to God. Studies in the [...]
President William McKinley championed the American System: “We lead all nations in agriculture; we lead all nations in mining; we lead all nations in manufacturing. These are the trophies which we bring after twenty-nine years of a protective tariff.” A return to the American System would be a major step toward increasing prosperity and restoring [...]
The currently pervading approach to American history presents America in the worst possible light, distorting the full truth of our past and damaging our political health. Our K-12 schools need a restoration of temporal continuity, the key to revitalizing history and civics education that forms young people who both appreciate the gifts of the past [...]
Poland’s reforms and constitution, Edmund Burke thought, offered real meaning, much closer to the experience of the American Revolution than that of the French Revolution. In significant ways, the Polish king succeeded because he embraced the laws of nature and “the array of Justice” without forcing anything of his own will upon his people. Stanislaw [...]
Ridley Scott’s TV adaptation of Phillip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle came to Amazon in November, and bluntly put, it’s a horrifying ten hours. The premise says it all: What if the Allies had lost World War II? We see America divided between a Nazi regime in the east and a Japanese empire [...]