Category: Essay

Feelings and the Burkean Contract

It is very difficult to argue for the Burkean Contract. If one sees oneself as a morally isolated, radical individual for whom history means nothing and for whom nothing is owed to the future, no amount of disputation will let in the light.

The City that Falls

In the arena of the culture war, ideas become political brands, stitched into the terrible body of the news cycle, until they share in that sickly bloodstream. Instead of building civic participation, they get their oxygen from media attention.

Does Good Taste Exist? Ask David Hume

While distinguishing between good and bad taste undoubtedly smells like an elitist activity, the conditions that Hume attaches to it do not, at first glance, seem to be.

The Muslim Warlord Still Haunting Spain

Beneath the tales of Almanzor’s campaigns is an intriguing subtext which seems to subvert preconceived modern Muslim and Christian notions of what medieval warfare between the two great religions was actually like in Al-Andalus.

Conquering Without a King: Drawing Lessons from Biblical Monarchy

The Bible recommends that kings be anointed after the conquest of their realm. Institutions are not to be founded in the throes of a crisis, which would result in their legitimising themselves through that crisis and so perpetuating it.

Why Amazon’s “The Rings of Power” is an Unlikely Omen of Hope

When I first heard Elendil’s line in the third teaser trailer, “The past is dead, we either move forward or die with it,” I became fixated with the whole carnival surrounding Amazon’s billion dollar creative venture—how could it be that J.R.R. Tolkien, a Tridentine-Mass-loving skeptic of modernity was providing the aesthetic and imaginative fuel of woke intersectionalists and activist ideologues in Hollywood?

The Sword and the Seated King

“As president of Colombia I request that the sword of Bolivar be brought out,” declared Petro. Attendees stood. The king of Spain remained seated.

How to Lose a Culture: Reflections on Walking and Migration

How to Lose a Culture: Reflections on Walking and Migration

While thinking can certainly take place when a person is physically stationary, it is more fitting for it to happen when he is in motion. Discursive thought is a motion from one point to another.

March 27, 2022
World’s Largest Economy on the Brink

World’s Largest Economy on the Brink

A fiscal crisis would force U.S. Congress into unchartered territory. Never in modern history has this legislative body been forced to be austere with its resources. Tax cuts do not work anymore, and you cannot cut taxes when your creditors are running away from your debt. There are only two options: spending cuts, or tax hikes.

March 26, 2022
What Would Happen if Gas Stopped Coming to Europe?

What Would Happen if Gas Stopped Coming to Europe?

Germany’s disaster management officials examined what a major disruption of natural gas supply would entail and the results are chilling.

March 26, 2022
Dispatch from the Frontlines

Dispatch from the Frontlines

Moldova, Romania, and Hungary are welcoming Ukrainian refugees but, if the situation continues for long, tensions could come to the fore.

Between Two Worlds: Russia, Ukraine and Balance of Power

Between Two Worlds: Russia, Ukraine and Balance of Power

The ages-old concept of the balance of power is supposedly understood by every international relations student. However, preoccupied with the ideas of globalism, American and European leaders often forget to take it into account when forming their policies.

March 25, 2022
Pope Francis on European Secularism

Pope Francis on European Secularism

Pope Francis’ comments on the anachronistic and watered-down secularism of the modern EU suggest that the globalization of liberal ideology is little more than a form of ‘ideological colonisation’ that neither respects the cultural particularity of individual nations nor protects the openness of the public sphere to the worship of God.

March 23, 2022
The Young Evelyn Waugh: Tragicomic Seeker

The Young Evelyn Waugh: Tragicomic Seeker

Nobody could escape the merciless nature of Waugh’s satirical wit, but he was more than a mere humourist. Alongside his gift for comedy, he also possessed an awareness of a fateful void in the modern world.

March 23, 2022
How Columbus’s Winter in Iceland Helped Him Get to America

How Columbus’s Winter in Iceland Helped Him Get to America

It is a well-known oral tradition around the Olafsvik-Rif-Hellissandur maritime region that Columbus visited Iceland and stayed at the farm at Ingjaldsholl during the winter of 1477 to 1478, likely arriving sometime in the early autumn and leaving in late spring.

March 22, 2022
Epicureanism and the Missing Soul of Modernity

Epicureanism and the Missing Soul of Modernity

This world, as it figures in Lucretius’ magnum opus, is of Epicurean make. It is a world denuded of divine influence, reduced to a drab and tranquil steadiness. Its substantial uniformity also foreshadows, to an uncanny degree, the empirical emptiness of modernity.

March 22, 2022
Gigantomachy—On Slaying Giants and Surviving Ghosts

Gigantomachy—On Slaying Giants and Surviving Ghosts

Tradition tells us that giants are born from fallen angels joining themselves to willing humans, and that even after these are slain, their specters may yet demand sacrifice. We are still facing giants today, as well as the ghosts they leave behind, and may learn something from those ancient tales.

Faith and Patriotism in a Besieged Kyiv

Faith and Patriotism in a Besieged Kyiv

Animated by faith and patriotism and buoyed by an unkillable sense of humor, Ukrainians are thus far shocking the world by their steadfastness in the face of Russian aggression.

March 17, 2022
Notes on the War

Notes on the War

As I am writing these words, I can hear a battle raging on the other side of the Kyiv Sea. The worst thing about living close to the front line is not knowing where the next missile will land, but we are determined to carry on with our lives for as long as possible.

March 17, 2022