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.

It is customary for a politician to chase popular opinions, putting partisan interests first and shying away from confrontation. However, Castlereagh was not a politician, but a statesman: an undaunted leader who took a stand when it mattered, carried the burden of power with pride and confidence, sacrificed everything for his country, and established Britain’s role for decades to come.

The picture that has been emerging of today’s papacy is one of a pope, with little or no regard for law and due process, governing a Church that has made disregard for law and tradition part of its ecclesiastical culture.

The “Graveyard of Empires” seems a fitting name for the nation. Afghanistan does not destroy them; it measures their willingness to fight for their interests and, thus, their vitality. It is the heart of Asia, it is a barren land of blood and dust, the ultimate test of ambition.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.” 

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.

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.

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.”

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

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

The Battle of Lepanto needed strong leadership. Today, Europe is searching for similar leadership. Europe needs statesmen: men and women who think about the next generation, not the next election; people like Don Juan of Austria and Blessed Emperor Karl, animated by a deep sense of service, ready to put the interests of their peoples before their own.

All is not yet lost for those who believe in Christendom. Saner leadership seems to be emerging in Hungary and elsewhere in Central Europe. So, too, in Western Europe a new generation is looking for answers.

One of the West’s problems is that at the end of the Cold War, it has been uncertain of its purpose—which has engendered a moral and political crisis, especially in the face of the threat of Islamic terrorism.

We continue to find insights into the power of music to arouse emotions—even about armed conflicts and military triumphs like the Siege (and later Relief) of Vienna on September 12, 1683.