If you want your money to be spent on curation, care, and cultivation of rich history, it’s long overdue time to take back control. It takes a lot of time to create something, and a mere moment to destroy it forever.
Emmanuel Macron’s invocations of “European sovereignty” notwithstanding, the nation—not Europe, nor the entire world—remains the only viable locus for the exercise of democratic power.
I am prepared for the objection that this outlook is anything but positive and that the reader is probably looking for hope in a new renaissance of European civilisation rather than the harsh realisation that even a victory of Western patriotism can only have a deferring effect in the context of the decline of the West.
“A fellow Hungarian villager, Feri Augusztin, came to my father and told him to hand over his daughters, me and my sister Ella, to the Russians. This was the same person who earlier chased the Jews out of their homes. He informed the Russians that we were wealthy Hungarians and threatened Dad, saying that they would execute him unless he gave up his daughters.”
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.
Eurasianism, with its glorification of the Mongol Golden Horde and eastward orientation, tends to divorce Russia from its European heritage, a divorce that is incompatible with any drawing closer to Ukraine.
Geography and natural resources will motivate political conflict, but identity and national construction will determine what social cleavages can be exploited by local and foreign agents in that conflict.
Organic association and the principle of subsidiarity are the rescue of nations. They allow for the political articulation of common roots without alienating local cultural differentiation. They also permit overarching identities to be honored along with overlapping ones. Keeping this principle in mind, we may trace the history of relations between Moscow and Kyiv with an eye to how it could have been, and may yet, be applied.
Miguel de Cervantes presents us with the mirrored vices of savagery and civilization. Like Tacitus, he celebrates indigenous prerogative to resist foreign excess, even as he asserts the imperial principle.
“This tragedy has proven that Ukraine was right to fear what they foresaw as inevitable, sending the message to the world continuously since 2014: Russia will stop at nothing.”—Dr. Csilla Fedinec
Catalan separatism emerged when the region’s bourgeoisie began facing the end of a long period of economic privilege during which the Spanish state’s policies had benefited Catalonia over most other regions. The threat of secession would now function as an invaluable bargaining chip to retain privileges.
Catalans have historically understood themselves to be Spaniards, and it is within this conception that Catalan culture flourished and her people accomplished feats of genuine heroism. But separatism requires that we sacrifice our memory—for only then are we fully receptive to a new, invented past.
Throughout his life, Stefan Zweig promoted the idea of a peaceful, united Europe but this was a call which went unheard during his lifetime. On the 80th anniversary of his suicide, his forgotten calls for peace in Europe are as urgent as ever.
Bismarck succeeded, by a combination of chicanery and bullying in uniting Germany militarily, legally, and culturally in the image of Prussia. Subtract the military element, and the EU seems to have been trying to do the same thing to Poland, albeit using more subtle methods.
Rotterdam mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb told reporters that no decision to dismantle ‘De Hef’ had been made. Calling the turmoil “quite peculiar,” he said that his office had not even received a request for a permit.
Another use of the imperial past is possible: one that does not collapse empire into nationality, one that assumes overlapping rather than contradicting spheres.
This year, celebrations of the taking of Granada have been repudiated by the establishment left, including a platform by the name of Granada Abierta, together with Podemos, who described them as an ode to cruelty and genocide. In contrast, VOX has called for the 2nd of January to be declared a national holiday.
Edoardo Albert has done a magnificent job of giving us men of flesh, blood, and bone. The Northumbrian Thrones trilogy is a historical and literary achievement.
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.
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.
Christopher Dawson is an enigmatic character in the history of Western thought. No scholar of his generation was a greater champion of the idea of a united Christian culture, yet few were as sensitive to the problems such unity entailed. Although his influence waned after his death, Dawson’s reputation has been experiencing a broad revival, […]
The northern Irish state was born in 1921 as a political compromise. The circumstances of its birth bear certain similarities to the issues and conundrums thrown up by Brexit 100 years on.
Professor Norman Stone, the renowned historian who died aged 78 on June 19 this year, was an outstandingly colourful figure on a British intellectual landscape that has long had an accelerating tendency to the flat, dull, monochrome, and ideologically uniform. Norman Stone spoke his mind and lived as he pleased, for which he was both […]