Category: Essay

The Last Steeplejack

Fred Dibnah, MBE, the late and great, was a steeplejack. He was also a self-taught engineer, a documentarian, and a daredevil who brought down exactly ninety disused industrial chimneys using—with rare exceptions—nothing but a hammer and chisel.

Nationalism from Maccabees to Modernity, Part I: Covenants over Conquerors

The champions of an imperial and of a national world order were and are sons to a mixed heritage. This essay explores the deeper compatibility of Europe’s Greco-Roman and Biblical inheritances, as well as of national political entities and broader universal commitments. 

A New Framework for Freedom

If a new framework for freedom is to emerge in the West, it must be recognizable. The stories of anchored freedom must be told, and they must be disseminated with the same adamance in mass culture, whenever and wherever possible, as the Boomer myth of freedom.

Criminalising ‘Conversion Therapy’ in a Liberal Democracy

How is it, we may ask ourselves, sexuality is widely deemed something fluid, unless its fluidity runs towards heterosexuality, and then all of a sudden sexuality becomes a binary phenomenon that cannot undergo any change?

Le Chambon

It is the ordinary nature of their goodness that makes the story of Le Chambon such a miracle. It was weathered men and women with brittle hands, shiny with callouses from backbreaking work, hard as oak and often gnarled with age, who did these things.

Sacré-Cœur Basilica: Counter-Revolution Incarnate

As I knelt to pray my rosary before the Blessed Sacrament, I was struck by the astonishing confidence required to build Sacré-Cœur. In 1789, France, the Church’s eldest daughter, declared herself no longer a disciple of Jesus Christ but an apostate.

Futurism, Feminism, and Faith: Musing on Valentine de Saint-Point

If Europe is to enter a new, restorative cycle, it will not do merely to push against contemporary ‘woke’ elites and the consequences of mass immigration. Her defenders must attend to what drove some of her most perceptive sons and daughters away.

The Peter Pan Generation

The ideal of responsibility is based on the simple assumption that with maturity should come a certain readiness to accept the sufferings and burdens of life with dignity. This, if you like, is part of the backbone of Western Civilization.

Plasticity against Personhood, or the Philosophy of Microplastics

Humanity’s ongoing plastic saga suggests that mass production and mass disposability—the same process that replaces fabrication and craftsmanship with production—also reduces our ability to make ourselves, that is, to reproduce.

The Weak Giant

For the first time in many decades, German politicians must learn to think, rather than feel— and to assert Germany’s vital national interests.

Pope St. John Paul II and the ‘Theology of the Body’

Pope St. John Paul II and the ‘Theology of the Body’

The ‘Theology of the Body’ focuses on the conjugal act and marriage and sees them as mutually inextricable. The conjugal act consummates marriage—and sex outside marriage is not conjugal.

November 7, 2021
The Hunt for Leadership

The Hunt for Leadership

Although I myself have not hunted for any game in decades save what can be found in restaurants, I do not approve of these limitations; in fact I cannot really trust any leader who does not hunt. It would be much better if they all did.

November 3, 2021
Vladimir Putin and Orthodoxy: A True Believer or Deceptive Opportunist?

Vladimir Putin and Orthodoxy: A True Believer or Deceptive Opportunist?

In Putin’s words, one can see the fusion, in his mind, of the roles of the Church and the state. I asked a number of Orthodox clergy as well as several Russian journalists what they thought Putin actually believed, and their answers amounted to a collective shrug.

November 2, 2021
Traditions, Liberation, and Meaning

Traditions, Liberation, and Meaning

The process of loosening, trivializing, and ultimately abolishing all the cultural institutions, expectations, and shared meanings of Western culture is the great project of Enlightenment liberalism.

October 31, 2021
Hello, Columbus!

Hello, Columbus!

October once more brought us that festival called in the United States Columbus Day, in much of Latin America the

October 30, 2021
Arsenic

Arsenic

One theory of Napoleon’s death is that he was poisoned by the arsenic in the wallpaper of Longwood House on St. Helena, accidentally or deliberately, as the case might be.

October 22, 2021
VOX at Viva21: Spain Still Lives

VOX at Viva21: Spain Still Lives

Vox is not against Europe but is in favor of truly sovereign states within the framework of Europe. It will stand with others against the intolerant “European Taliban” of the Left: “We will reconstruct what they destroy and rebuild what they demolish.” 

October 20, 2021
The Golden Rule is Key: President von der Leyen and Western European Leaders are Undermining the EU’s Stability

The Golden Rule is Key: President von der Leyen and Western European Leaders are Undermining the EU’s Stability

The issue here is not Eastern Europe vs. Western Europe, or even traditionalist Europe versus progressive Europe. The issue is preserving real cultural diversity within a European Union.

Coming into Port: The Conversion of Michael Nazir-Ali

Coming into Port: The Conversion of Michael Nazir-Ali

The conversion of Michael Nazir-Ali, at this point in the life both of the established Church of England, the Catholic Church in England, and the wider Catholic Church, is plausibly the most significant conversion since the now St. John Henry Newman knelt at the feet of Bl. Dominic Barberi in Littlemore, Oxford, in October 1845, and asked for reception into the Catholic Church.

October 14, 2021
The Slow-Motion Genocide of Nigeria’s Christians

The Slow-Motion Genocide of Nigeria’s Christians

Christians are being driven out of their communities, particularly in Nigeria’s north and middle belt, bit by bit, and many of the villages are being abandoned. This is what has been called a “slow-motion genocide.”

October 13, 2021
Revolution and Reaction

Revolution and Reaction

There is a path forward, but it is a narrow and tricky one that winds along the knife-edge between revolution and reaction.

October 11, 2021
Europe and Dogs

Europe and Dogs

Europeans have a fascinating relationship with dogs, a relationship that does not seem to exist in any other civilisation.

October 8, 2021