In the Land of the Lotus-Eaters

By |2022-09-01T12:13:31-05:00August 31st, 2022|Categories: Culture, Homer, Odyssey, Timeless Essays, Western Civilization, Western Tradition|

Much like the weary Greek scouts who succumbed to the effects of the alluring lotus fruit in the “Odyssey,” we have lost sight of the higher ends for which we are designed. The Western world no longer possesses a firm sense of purpose or understanding of itself. But what has led to such a general [...]

Don’t Wait for the Teachers

By |2022-08-29T10:17:50-05:00August 20th, 2022|Categories: Catholicism, Classical Education, Family, Western Tradition|

Ultimately, the two catecheses—of our Faith and our civilization—should go hand-in-hand. That’s the way it’s always been: the West informed our Faith, and our Faith has indelibly formed the West. If we want both to survive, and perhaps flourish in America, our children will need the intellectual and cultural tools and imagination that a true [...]

Social Media *Is* Hate Speech: A Platonic Reflection on Contemporary Misology

By |2023-08-19T09:00:56-05:00July 21st, 2022|Categories: Civilization, Communio, Humanum, Plato, Social Media, Western Tradition|

The evident chaos of the contemporary “cancel culture”—which is coming to resemble something like a cyber version of The Terror in late 18th-century France during which the revolutionaries began cutting off even their own heads—is due to an abuse of language. There is a profound sort of cultural suicide occurring in this phenomenon. We are [...]

The Joke’s on Woke: Playing the Joker in the Pack of Lies

By |2022-06-29T14:44:45-05:00June 29th, 2022|Categories: Culture, Joseph Pearce, Senior Contributors, Western Civilization, Western Tradition, Wokeism|

“What have the Romans ever done for us?” A famous Monty Python sketch begins with this question. Let’s rephrase it in the Age of Woke: What has Western civilization ever done for us? And let’s allow the woke spokesperson to respond. “What have the Romans ever done for us?” Those of my generation will probably [...]

The Gregorian Revolution and its Consequences

By |2022-05-05T16:04:51-05:00May 5th, 2022|Categories: Catholicism, Christendom, History, Western Civilization, Western Tradition|

Might the “big R” Reformation of the sixteenth century and the “big R” Revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth owe something to the first great revolution that made Old Europe in the first place? It has been noted that historians are creatures professionally invested in change. We should therefore suspect them when they speak of [...]

Revolutions and the Abolition of Man

By |2022-02-19T14:14:22-06:00February 19th, 2022|Categories: Christianity, Civilization, Dwight Longenecker, Protestant Reformation, Senior Contributors, Western Civilization, Western Tradition|

C.S. Lewis wrote prophetically about the Abolition of Man. We are witnessing its literal fulfillment. If history unfolds in 500-year epochs, then we are on the cusp of a new epoch. What does it hold for humanity? I have not been the only one to recognize that the last five hundred years have been an [...]

Transition and Tradition

By |2022-02-17T13:07:13-06:00February 18th, 2022|Categories: Christianity, Glenn Arbery, Senior Contributors, Western Civilization, Western Tradition|

Belief in the objective existence of the world outside ourselves, the world to which we submit our thought, is our deepest inheritance. Last Thursday, Bishop Steven Biegler of the Diocese of Cheyenne came to Wyoming Catholic College to bless our new Immaculate Conception Oratory—“new,” at least, in our use of it. As I have mentioned [...]

The Essence of Freedom & the Beginnings of Western Civilization

By |2021-10-27T15:01:39-05:00October 27th, 2021|Categories: American Republic, Bradley J. Birzer, Senior Contributors, Western Civilization, Western Tradition|

As we ponder the meaning of history and ethics, we must ask: How do we reach unity without conformity? What should be conserved? And exactly what is freedom for? Our beginnings are quite noble and quite heroic. When the Persian god kings looked at the decentralized, myriad Greek City States, they were filled with pride [...]

Liberty and Liberal Education

By |2021-07-22T23:26:12-05:00July 22nd, 2021|Categories: American Republic, Civil Society, Classical Education, Education, Great Books, Liberal Arts, Liberal Learning, Western Tradition, Wyoming Catholic College|

Free citizens are necessarily invited to follow the Delphic injunction, “know thyself,” that is addressed to all mankind; and their success or failure in responding to this invitation is crucial for the preservation or loss of their liberty. Liberal education is the distinctive educational tradition of the West; so, too, is liberty our distinctive political [...]

Ten (Short) Great Books for Summer Reading

By |2021-05-25T08:44:01-05:00May 24th, 2021|Categories: Books, Great Books, Western Tradition|

The Western canon is not known for its brevity. Herodotus’s Histories clocks in around 190,000 words. Ovid’s Metamorphoses recounts the myths of the Greco-Roman gods and heroes for 130,000 words. Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov concludes in about 360,000 words. And Thomas Aquinas stares down at them all from his summit of 1.8 million. While [...]

Russell Kirk Reconsidered

By |2021-04-28T15:49:35-05:00April 28th, 2021|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Conservatism, Russell Kirk, Senior Contributors, The Conservative Mind, Timeless Essays, Western Civilization, Western Tradition|

Russell Kirk gave voice to a myriad of persons, personalities, and ideas circulating in the decade after the Second World War, just as the West was trying to understand what it stood for, rather than what it stood against. The latter was easy. Communism and fascism were evil. But, what exactly did the West stand [...]

Learning Latin the Medieval Way

By |2021-01-02T11:52:09-06:00January 2nd, 2021|Categories: Classical Education, Culture, Education, Language, Timeless Essays, Western Tradition|

Latin, as the primary historical language of erudition and learning in the West, is the sole gateway into the halls of Western thought and humanistic learning. Without the use of this language, we can hardly know ourselves, and certainly not the road that brought us to the modern day. As the old year ends and [...]

Conservatism: Born Against Simplicity

By |2020-12-29T15:12:29-06:00December 27th, 2020|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Conservatism, Senior Contributors, Western Civilization, Western Tradition|

The philosophy and way of conservatism arose sometime in the 1880s or 1890s. This is not to suggest that conservative acts had not occurred previously in Western civilization. Indeed, some of the finest and most important moments in Western civilization occurred upon and with the act of conserving something good. From Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and [...]

Counterpoint and Why It Matters

By |2020-11-30T15:36:07-06:00November 30th, 2020|Categories: Beauty, Culture, Modernity, Music, Roger Scruton, Timeless Essays, Western Tradition|

In music, there has arisen in recent times the illusion that knowledge is not necessary, that the old forms of discipline are merely obstacles to the true creative process, and that real originality means doing your own thing, free from traditional constraint. I recently acquired a CD of music for piano duo by Jeremy Menuhin, [...]

Go to Top