

The Vision of Old Sarum
It is no wonder that the countryside and small towns have always remained a bastion of traditionalism, naturally suspicious of progress and resistant to change.
It is no wonder that the countryside and small towns have always remained a bastion of traditionalism, naturally suspicious of progress and resistant to change.
The green banner of environmentalism rightfully belongs to those who resist the ideology of entropy, the global breakdown of every function and form, from borders to genders.
At least among the young, far more rebellious in today’s climate are those of us who, mixing love of country with an independence of mind, refuse to force everything in our culture through the unforgiving woodchipper of identity politics.
The survival of any traditional institution requires that, during historically critical moments, it remembers its reason for being, renewing its covenant with those it represents. Otherwise, it risks vacuity.
Placing one’s social role ahead of one’s personal preferences is certainly a sacrifice, but the assumption by some that such a sacrifice must make it impossible to live authentically or happily is far from being true.
We are addicted to snarky commentary and the daily-churning of vacuous novelty. We won’t really be champions of anything like ‘tradition’ so long as we remain mired in these postmodern poisons.
For Archbishop Welby, confirming traditional moral teaching is not a question of truth, but of practicality and prudential policy— considerably diminishing the moral significance of his letter.
Locals, forestry experts, farmers, and ecologists all agreed that the principal problem is bad forest management, which is best countered by a return of rural life and its traditional activities, particularly extensive cattle farming. But it’s easier said than done.
As lovely as it is to see far-flung hamlets of stone houses reinhabited, it is also sometimes difficult to find in their tenuous revival a genuine re-founding of the traditional Europe of which they were originally a part.
One of the terrible features of modernity is that we measure everything by the criteria of productivity and success. But we were not made to be productive, nor to be successful, at least not as our world understands such terms. We were made to flourish.