In Virgil’s Roman epic poem, The Aeneid, there is a famous scene when a terrible storm washes up the protagonist Aeneas and his men on the shores of Carthage. The crew is bruised, battered and discouraged by its misfortunes. The men are tempted to give up. Aeneas encourages them, concluding with one of the epic’s … Read more
Ryszard Legutko knows about freedom. He experienced a lack of freedom when his native Poland was under communism, and the State controlled everything. He felt the exhilaration of liberation when the captive nation was freed in 1989. And now he senses the suffocating climate of freedom’s suppression by ideologues that proclaim freedom yet deliver … Read more
Bob Dylan has just sold his entire 600-song catalog to Universal Music Publishing Group for an estimated $300 million. The move is highly symbolic yet hardly surprising. The 79-year-old artist has always been a paradoxical and symbolic character on the American music scene. The sixties folk singer became a rebel of the counterculture that rejected … Read more
We live in a time dominated by lies. The media and culture peddle so many things that deny the truth. We are told that some men are really women and some women are really men. Unborn babies are not human. The family is whatever we want it to be. Fake news is everywhere. Lies have … Read more
“If you were to examine any speech made by a university president fifty years ago, you would find that the word ‘excellence’ occurs with great frequency…. If you made the same examination now, you’d find that ‘diversity’ has taken its place.” This quote summarizes the main idea behind the book, The Breakdown of Higher Education: … Read more
There is an order of the universe. How refreshing are these words! They cause a certain joy, especially in our days of chaos. If an order exists, then God exists Who is its Creator and source. We might then exclaim with the Psalmist how all creation gives glory to God and elevates our souls towards … Read more
The modern mania for tolerance is an insidious tool of the Great Deceiver. It goes by other names as well – acceptance, accompaniment, and being non-judgmental. The modern world and media praise behavior that displays these attributes. Many people believe that the only necessary virtue is tolerance. Proclaiming the truth is an aggressive act. Libertarians, … Read more
A recent study conducted by a British organization called OnePoll finds that one-third of Americans cannot even name all four of their grandparents. If this is accurate, far fewer know where their grandparents were born, the nature of the work that they did, or the things that they found interesting. Reflecting on this poll brings … Read more
The late-nineteenth-century conversion story, En Route, by J. K. Huysmans is a book that penetrates deeply into the mind of the reader. It is an autobiographical yet fictional account of the return journey to the Church of a famous French art critic and novelist in decadent Paris. The book has weathered well the ravages of … Read more
