There are none so blind as those who can only see themselves. This is the tragedy of narcissism or what the psychologist Paul Vitz has called selfism. The modern narcissist no longer looks at himself in a pool of water, or even in the mirror; he sees himself in countless selfies, the icons of his [...]
Released 50 years ago this year, the subject matter of the now-classic Salesman (1969), at first glance at least, seems unlikely to make great cinema. […]
Can it really be the case that Western music’s deep reservoir of creativity had, by the middle of the 20th century, almost entirely run dry? This somewhat implausible view is often implicit in conservative-leaning cultural commentary when it touches on the subject of rock music. There is, to be sure, much to despise—the peculiar rock [...]
The Invention of Science by David Wootton is a dense, thought-provoking, and encyclopedic account of the Scientific Revolution. The book is an intellectual history, focusing mainly on the mental paradigm shift that the Revolution brought to Western Civilization. How man thinks about the natural world post-Revolution is not the same as how man thought before it, [...]
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 [...]
Are we a less free people, maybe even a far less free people, than we were in 1963? Partial punch-puller that he is content to be, Christopher Caldwell is not about to offer either a tentative or final answer to such questions. But the evidence that he presents strongly suggests that we are certainly a [...]
To the Christian struggling with the uncontrollable urge to engage in social media and internet searches, books like Nir Eyal’s “Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life” might appear to be a godsend. However, such instructions are bound to be frustrating and disappointing to those seeking lasting spiritual progress. Technology’s invasion into [...]
We live in an era replete with articles, podcasts, and opinion pieces. Public and private conversation often center on the latest unbelievable event. Wherever we find ourselves, we are surrounded by opinions and commentary. In such a sea of commentary, one wonders what the purpose of it all is. […]
We owe it to ourselves to get to know Harold Shapero, who showed that strikingly inventive things still could be done with the perennial tools of tonal music. His works crackle with intelligence and sing with rare melodic beauty. They are both timeless and of their time. For despite its classic foundations, Shapero’s music also [...]
“Man is in no sense perfect, but a wretched creature who can yet apprehend perfection.”—T.E. Hulme The mediocrity and driftless purposelessness of liberalism had permeated and shattered true humanist culture at the turn of the nineteenth-to-the-twentieth century, the great historian and man of letters Christopher Dawson feared. Too many unthinking liberals had tried to do [...]
Forming good manners and helping to make our country beautiful—not cynically undercutting our institutions—is part of the task of education. Our students must know that we can never concede the fight to those who would plunge our institutions into the abyss of ideological slavery, and who wish to undercut the understanding of shared responsibility and [...]
Modern conservative fondness for the age of the suit is rooted in a sense of order, decency, and the natural. There is a profound irony in this, however: the conservative heroes who lived through that age were decidedly less enthusiastic about its fashions. Since at least the publication of The Young Fogey Handbook in 1985, [...]
The Christian Church’s ongoing struggle with modernity is unavoidable. How does a two-thousand-year-old religion, with roots even further into antiquity, adapt to a world not only technologically astonishing, but philosophically post-Christian, totally materialistic, and indifferent towards God? George Weigel answers this question in “The Irony of Modern Catholic History.” The Irony of Modern Catholic History: [...]
For many First World countries, the most compelling concerns do not involve climate change but population decline. The tribes of Europe, the peoples of almost every country of the Old Continent, are visibly aging, shrinking, and dying. If birth rates do not rise we are talking here about what historians, a century hence, will call [...]