Category: Essay

The Romanticization of Mental Illness

The rise of videos celebrating and glamourizing mental illness is one of the alarming consequences of our ‘post-truth’ culture.

Apulian Rites: On the Love of Place

It isn’t easy for Europeans to love a place. Which is a provocative way of saying it isn’t easy for modern people to do so. We—moderns in general—are biassed towards language, and sooner see what we believe than believe what we see.

The Queering of J.R.R. Tolkien

If these academics are believed, every closet in Middle Earth is absolutely stuffed with creatures eager to launch Pride Parades in Mordor and Drag Queen Story Hour in the Shire. This work is not simply academic navel-gazing—activists have petitioned Amazon to include LGBT characters in the new small screen adaption of Tolkien’s work.

The Tears of Lebanon

For those who love Lebanon and its people, the apparent indifference of the West to this unique nation and its struggles is incomprehensible.

How the Latin Kings Became a Spanish Street Gang

Simply railing against illegal immigration misses the point. Industrialization, urbanisation, globalisation, and crime are today a web of interconnected factors. Latin American gangs in Madrid are the perfect example.

Rising Holocaust Denial and the Islamist Mind

The Western European elite has no trouble posting Holocaust remembrance messages on social media, but they struggle to recognize that the very immigration policies they favor actually contribute to anti-Semitism in Europe.

Sweden Still Facing NATO Obstacles

NATO expansion into the Nordic region of Europe could unnecessarily escalate tensions with Russia. In doing so, the expansion could cause a conflict which would not be in the interest of the United States.

Poland’s Best Kept Secret

Poland’s conservative thought offered some crucial contributions in the early modern period of European history. Now, as Legutko, Stawrowski, Roszkowski, and others show us, it may also offer original solutions and alternatives to the maladies that rot the old continent today.

Democracy-Building: A Moral Commodity

Democracy-Building: A Moral Commodity

Conservatives, of course, are aware of the urgent need to reduce the bureaucratic machine to a minimum. But in the quest to devolve governance to the local level, we must not forget the existential dignity of the penniless castaways generated by the oligarchic system.

March 15, 2022
Leadership in a World of Uncertainty

Leadership in a World of Uncertainty

Consider what Europe will look like if Russia wins, or loses, the war in Ukraine. Obtaining reliable information, in this case, is nearly impossible. To navigate these uncertain times, the best guidance may be found in the old-school academic discipline of political economy.

March 14, 2022
Common Sense Reigns in the Free State of Florida

Common Sense Reigns in the Free State of Florida

The highlight of the Common Sense Society event was the presentation to Jordan Peterson of its inaugural Sir Roger Scruton Award.

March 14, 2022
An Apologia for Emotion

An Apologia for Emotion

By understanding our emotions as a more primary part of ourselves, we can begin to respond to them as meaningful, and also as something we need not be dominated by. At the same time, we have a chance at last to put an end to the stupidity that has been unleashed by ideologies that function on an emotional level but masquerade as rational.

March 14, 2022
Destination: Kyiv Reporting from the Ukrainian Capital

Destination: Kyiv Reporting from the Ukrainian Capital

Kyiv has been hardly affected by major destruction yet, but there are checkpoints on every corner, and air raid sirens vail every thirty minutes, reminding everyone that a war is going on, right here, right now. A report from the war zone.

Why Some Catholics Think J.R.R. Tolkien Could Be a Saint

Why Some Catholics Think J.R.R. Tolkien Could Be a Saint

Tolkien maintained a great Marian piety throughout his lifetime. Indeed, he said that his entire vision of beauty was grounded in the simplicity and magnificence of the Mother of God.

March 12, 2022
Wokesters and Whigs: A Tale of Two Supremacies

Wokesters and Whigs: A Tale of Two Supremacies

The problem with complacent ruling elites is that, to justify their dominance, they are forced to resuscitate old terrors and to make up new ones. They rely on phantom enemies against which they can pose as our protectors.

March 11, 2022
Romanticising Rebellion

Romanticising Rebellion

Fictional rebellions invite us to side with the underdog. The story conveniently ends with their victory, but leaves no ruined lives and no unhealable scars—nothing to contradict the idea of a newly found paradise.

March 10, 2022
Defending Camelot

Defending Camelot

The Arthurian legend, despite attempts to use it for other purposes, is a parable of a militant Catholicism that saved Western civilisation.

March 9, 2022
Ukraine’s Forgotten Corner: Transcarpathia’s Hungarian Minority Faces The War

Ukraine’s Forgotten Corner: Transcarpathia’s Hungarian Minority Faces The War

Unlike the majority of refugees, Transcarpathian Hungarians are at least familiar with Hungary thanks to family ties or working relationships. They do not come as strangers.

March 8, 2022
Afterlife of an American Pulpster

Afterlife of an American Pulpster

Howard, the writers who influenced him, and many of those that came after in the same heroic vein seem more outside the pale of literary respectability than they would have been a century ago. It is not just the artificial divide between Literature with a capital L and popular genre fiction, or the modern disdain for the writers of the past. The even greater divide is between unironically portraying heroism in the West and despising it and deconstructing it in order to bring about its demise.

The Pope Whisperer: Don Lorenzo Perosi (1872-1956)

The Pope Whisperer: Don Lorenzo Perosi (1872-1956)

To fully appreciate Perosi, we must try to look at the hope he sparked in people during his golden age.

March 7, 2022