The West finds itself materially prosperous but culturally adrift and fearful. What will it take for the West to redeem itself? Civilizations come and civilizations go. While some prove capable of inner renewal, there’s no guarantee that any given culture will maintain itself over long periods of time. Today, we continue to admire the achievements [...]
Few things reveal the degraded state of “conservatism” in America more than the recent, seven-minute exchange between Bill O’Reilly and George Will. What the two fought about really matters very little. To set the context, suffice it to state the debate had to do with the attempt on Ronald Reagan’s life and how well Mr. [...]
While my memories might verge on the edge of fuzzy nostalgia from time to time, I remember quite clearly what the women and men of the 1970s did, said, and believed in small-town American neighborhoods. In those years, I absolutely loved reading (and researching and writing), but I also loved running, biking, and exploring. I [...]
(Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords our readers the opportunity to join Mark Malvasi as he examines corruption and The Godfather trilogy. —W. Winston Elliott III, Publisher) America, that bright, shining land of freedom, opportunity, and progress, is irredeemably corrupt. It is in the hands of debased and hypocritical politicians, judges, businessmen, and their [...]
From Adam and Eve to Eddie Cochrane, from earning your daily bread by the sweat of your brow to the summertime blues and beyond, work has always been the scourge of existence. A recent essay in The Atlantic suggests that Genesis is about to be reversed and the curse lifted. According to Derek Thompson, humanity, [...]
Is dating on the verge of extinction? In an article featured in their latest September magazine, Vanity Fair addresses* the fearful world of Tinder—and the toll it’s taking on traditional sorts of courtship: Hookup culture, which has been percolating for about a hundred years, has collided with dating apps, which have acted like a wayward [...]
Theologically we have passed from Christian orthodoxy, via heresy, to hedonism. Such “change” is merely the falling into error. As such, Geoffrey Chaucer sees reality whereas most of our contemporaries do not. Reality has not changed, nor is it subject to so-called “democracy” any more than it is subject to time. Plus ça change, plus [...]
I am going to lecture on a work largely autobiographical, whose hero is a charlatan and whose author is therefore the same. This is not my own but the author’s opinion of himself. My lecture will therefore be an inquiry into the nature of the essential charlatan—an enterprise in the spirit and tradition of Plato’s Ion. [...]
Much has been written in the past century about the state of American constitutionalism and the political culture that serves as its animating force. Some scholars have argued that American constitutionalism has evolved so far from its founding principles that political practice today would be unrecognizable by the eighteenth-century Framers. These critics submit that the [...]
Let’s get straight to the point. We no longer live in a culturally Christian state. We do not live in a robust pagan state, such as Rome was during the Pax Romana. We live in a sickly sub-pagan state, or metastate, a monstrous thing, all-meddlesome, all-ambitious. The natural virtues are scorned. Temperance is for prigs, [...]
In a recent editorial, demographer Joel Kotkin laments both the practical and the normative consequences of the rejection of family ties among members of modern societies: Although sensible for many individuals, the decision to detach from familialism augurs poorly for societies, which will be forced to place enormous burdens on a smaller young generation to [...]
It shouldn’t surprise up that orchestras are distancing themselves from the idea of luxury. We generally, and perhaps rightly, sense that there is something wrong with it. The most obvious reason is the uncomfortable fact that luxury represents a category that might necessarily exclude us—or indeed anybody. That, of course, does not describe classical music, and [...]
From American Atheistic Materialism…Good Lord Deliver Us. And the plea is appropriate because prayers for deliverance are a kind of exorcism, and if any society needs exorcism it is the American Atheistic Materialistic society. Pope St. John Paul II said there were two atheistic materialistic societies: Communist Russia and the Unrestrained Capitalism of America. The [...]
Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rope” is ultimately an allegory for the modern world: Clean, shiny, polished, and deadly. I am not exaggerating when I claim this movie to be one of the greatest works of art ever to emerge out of Hollywood. Each person has “the right to live, to work, and to think as an individual, [...]