It is only his love given in contemplation that can suffuse and surcharge our impoverished love with the only love that can lead us back from Paradise lost to Paradise regained. The very reason why Christ sent out his love on the first Pentecost day was so that it could enter into all who would [...]
I started out for Florence in the morning in a state of feverish excitement, and the recollection of the sights of that day makes it difficult to write even now. We drove down the hill from San Casciano to the Greve valley with a sense of overwhelming tragedy. The destruction of Florence seemed the end [...]
The idea of kingship, which the ancient cultures understood, is necessary for us to own as well. It is a necessary part of the Christian imagination, not to be cast aside simply because literal kings form little or no part of our experience. Eschatological questions have been on my mind lately, as it seems to [...]
This spring, two emeritus philosophers at the University of Notre Dame—Alasdair MacIntyre and David Solomon—died. No doubt the advocates of progressive “diversity” would say that these two were symptomatic of the lack of that magical quality. But what made for their diversity was a different set of gifts that enriched the University of Notre Dame, [...]
Hilaire Belloc’s final words of wisdom might enable us to become truly oriented, taking the right path at the right pace to the right place. How do we get to heaven? The answer, it seems, is on foot. Hilaire Belloc was a man of many talents and a man of many parts. He wrote poetry [...]
Today, people commonly turn a blind eye and a blind mind to the plagues that threaten to destroy Western culture and human identity, and that move silently beneath the face of placid waters. Fifty years ago today, Steven Spielberg’s suspense thriller, Jaws, took the world by surprise as the pulsing two-note theme and the invisible [...]
In Beyond Good and Evil, with a brilliance that terrifies, Nietzsche slashes his way through philosophers, intellectuals, religious and political leaders, not so much to refute them as to dismiss and disparage them. Why slow down to make a tightly reasoned case when withering sarcasm delivered presto can demolish them instead? Disdain drips from Nietzsche’s [...]
Like Mr. Chesterton, it would never have occurred to St. Augustine to assign blame for the world’s problems to anyone other than himself. Around the turn of the last century, a prominent London newspaper called The World put the following question to its readers, offering a prize for the best possible answer: “What’s wrong with the world?” Not [...]
Mercantilism was an attempt to fashion a national economy at the same time that the so-called New Monarchs throughout parts of Western Europe were attempting to construct the institutions of the modern national state. I. The Historical Background Designed to effect a favorable balance of trade, Donald Trump’s economic policies constitute the revival of mercantilism.[i] [...]
So, is Christianity nationalist? The Church clearly thinks the nation is essential and worthy of defense, but what is it? To answer this, we must explore the historical genesis of the modern “nation” itself. John Paul II asserted with confidence that the two natural societies recognized by the Church’s social teaching are the family and [...]
HPIM0645.JPG Tacitus was one of the most cited of all historians in Colonial North America. The colonists thought the world of him, preferring Locke only slightly more.[1] For example, “Josiah Quincy, Sr., was an omnivorous reader of historical literature that praised liberty, and he bequeathed to his son, ‘Algernon Sidney’s works, --John Locke’s [...]
Hope, in reality, is the worst of all evils because it prolongs man’s torment. —Friedrich Nietzsche Both intuition and common wisdom—for we are frequently told to never give up hope—tell us that this statement from Nietzsche is simply wrong. Of course, what Nietzsche especially had in mind was the hope of an afterlife. Disbelieving in [...]
The American people have endured a dark age. But today they are choosing courage over comfort. Order over anarchy. Truth over technocracy. And in doing so, they are giving birth to a new moment: A chance to rebuild a republic where men are strong, women are cherished, children are protected, and God is honored. We [...]
"Into the tempests of the nineteenth century, Juan Donoso Cortes rode as knight-errant, prophet, and Man of the West.” Such is the picture that historian Christopher Olaf Blum paints of one of the most important thinkers of the past two hundred years. Yet the romantic image of Donoso Cortes as a latter-day Don Quixote will [...]