What lies at the root of the totalitarianism that seems to be asserting itself in free societies in today’s West? The answer to this question reveals a fascinating affinity between Ryszard Legutko, a 21st century Polish Catholic philosopher and the 19-century Dutch Calvinist historian and statesman Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer.

Western governments are become more controlling, behaving like overbearing mothers rather than the aloof arbiters they are supposed to be. This is the nanny state at its worst, deciding its naughty citizens did not know what was good for them and, therefore, needed to be kept away from harm.

One December 9th while walking near the foot of Tepeyac hill, Juan Diego was visited by a young woman who revealed that she was the Virgin Mary. After healing his uncle from what had seemed like a fatal illness, the Virgin bid the future saint to climb a hill and collect the flowers that were blooming there despite the Mexican winter. These were strange flowers, for they were European, but had apparently found fertile ground on American soil. 

If conservatism is about love for the society that is ours, what are conservatives to do when they look around and find their society increasingly unlovable?

Pre-pandemic, I flew at least one long-haul flight a month and regularly clocked 150,000 air miles annually for the previous twenty years. It was novel for my wife to see me ‘in a flap’ over simple things like checking in online and fretting over the contents of my bags.

What I saw in Derrida was a man of equal genius whose affirmative understanding of home redeemed French thought from its obsessive oikophobia. 

Our ancestors were far wiser than we; they knew that a legal system cannot be an end in itself. It must serve a higher power. If to-day’s courts and judges are to be allowed to retain the prestige and trappings of their illustrious predecessors, let them be once more made to serve what those judges of the past served.

Reigning or not, it is far from beyond the realm of possibility that one or more Royals may one day find the situation forcing or inviting them to mobilise precisely those traditions they embody in order to save their people from whatever dire fate otherwise awaits them.

With the Roger Scruton Memorial Lectures, conservative thinkers and ideas will finally have a space at the University of Oxford.

We are, then, in a rather odd situation. It seems that conspiracies are deemed believable when they arise in fiction. It also seems that conspiracies are thought to have really happened, and are considered an essential component in even a superficial understanding of history. But anyone who suggests that we may be in the grips of a conspiracy now is a ‘conspiracy theorist,’ a pejorative term that denotes a person who does not assent to all he is told by mainstream media outlets. 

Our institutions of higher learning nevertheless reveal how, even within a formal meritocracy, entrenched privilege can co-exist with an appearance of fairness. When the lower rungs of the ladder are kicked away by those already on top, social mobility grinds to a halt and the meritocratic promise loses its capacity to inspire.

The mere hint that a point of view is outdated serves as a signal that it need not be taken seriously. It can be legitimately vilified and condemned.