Culture and Politics on a ‘Fortress Island’
A people do not become a nation—however tiny and insignificant a nation—until they possess a literature; just as a man becomes a man only when he reveals his personality through speech.
A people do not become a nation—however tiny and insignificant a nation—until they possess a literature; just as a man becomes a man only when he reveals his personality through speech.
Whilst I’m reluctant to trivialise the many mental health illnesses and anxieties that modern people claim, I suspect that much of their emotional confusion is just what everyone normally feels. The difference being, however, that the young modern was told that such feelings had been—or would be with the next cultural revolution—banished by Progress.
Our age is defined not by conversationalists seeking truth together through meaningful debate and discussion. Rather, it is dominated by slurs, slogans, and political catchphrases.
It was with Kublai Khan that the Mongol experiment would find its highest expression. He neither replaced nor remained apart from Chinese culture; he made it the center of his political project and offered China a national state.
“The fact that the Holy See does not explain the sanction is deplorable,” a local priest described as a “staunch traditionalist” said. “But to say that it comes from nowhere is a lie.”
Every revolution begins with just one man. So does every counter-revolution. All of our many foes have taken that lesson to heart. We have not. And unless we demand total victory, as they do, all we’ll get is more lumps.
Will a renewed influx of Ukrainians, especially amid the ongoing fallout of Hungary’s energy crisis, test the limits of the Magyars’ generosity?
To apply to myth the reigning science of the day, in an attempt to transform it into a factual chronicle of human affairs, means inevitably to mangle what is most intrinsic to myth: its kaleidoscopic abundance, its playfulness, its immeasurable depth.
Intellectual adventure is not available to bees, who simply do as they do in obedience to their limited nature. The hive may be a place of cohesion, but it contains no libraries, paintings, or statues to heroic bees of the past. Human life without the humanities would be much the same: cut off from our roots, deprived of meditation, and locked in an eternal now. The cult of relevance makes prisoners of us all.
The enemy advocates for a borderless world, free of family loyalty, religion, identity—anything that might obstruct a pliable global marketplace.
June, then, is a time of taking stock of the wonderful inheritance that those who stand for the Good, the True, and the Beautiful have been given.
Why are we allowing corporations to profit both from the desperation of people struggling with infertility and women in poverty?
Can the lived conservatism of the Postliberals find common ground—and common political cause—with the universalist notions of natural right, justice and equality espoused by the Claremont School? On this question, I believe, hinges the fate of a new conservative fusionism updated to meet the challenges of our time.
Restoring our proper relationship with the natural world, it must be asserted, does not entail a retreat from nature, but a renewed immersion in its mystery and a humble submission to its laws.
How is it that the greatest of all democracies has been transfixed by abortion politics for decades? The answer is simple and unpopular: It is because there is still a battle being waged for the soul of America.
We are subject to a host of techniques by which social control is exerted and through which traditional institutions are eroded. What follows is an attempt to catalogue the array of spells in the grimoire of our political elites.
Only a society of narcissists, concerned only with the endless accumulation of their own egos, would treat both the born and unborn as objects to be manipulated, consumed, and discarded in the process of ego-production.
Swedes and well-to-do people of all nationalities living closer to the center need not ever visit this district. So much the better to sustain the ‘playground narrative.’ On the other hand, the distance grants Rosengård residents space to avoid Swedish cultural norms, such as women’s equality and western attire, as well as at least some of the prying eyes of the Swedish government. This place is, by any definition, a parallel society.
Art is meant to elevate us. It provides a mirror through which we see ourselves anew and glimpse the structures of our predicament.
Patočka detests the World Wars. But there is, in them, a certain ‘divinity,’ a certain ‘saving potential,’ because—at the Front, as within the Church—‘all humans are equal before the face of the ultimate reality.’
Undeterred by his trials and compelled by curiosity, the Apostle Paul wears no mask; he mutes and stifles no truth that might advance the Gospel—no matter the cost.
Mushrooms are teachers, and we ought to learn from them.
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