Society

ONWARD PROGRESS

Anyone who is so “progressive” as not to remain in the teaching of the Christ does not have God; whoever remains in the teaching has the Father and the Son. (2 John 1:9) ORIGIN OF PROGRESS At first glance, Biblical text would be the last place to find mention of the

Read More

R.I.P. Charlie Kirk

“In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all; and, to the young, it comes with bitterest agony, because it takes them unawares.” –Abraham Lincoln Where does one begin?  To say that I am at a loss for words would be an understatement.  Episodes as this have been echoed

Read More

CIVILIZATIONAL NIGHT AND THE DARK ENLIGHTENMENT

The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places. – Ernest Hemingway CIVILIZATION IN HISTORY Civilization, as a salient topic of the Zeitgeist, came to the fore with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.  This was considered by many as the end of history

Read More

GABRIEL MARCEL: A CHRISTIAN OUTLOOK FOR OUR FRACTURED WORLD

Both the informed Christian and the secular educated seem to have forgotten everything about Gabriel Marcel (1887 – 1973).  Throughout the twentieth century, Marcel has served as a symbol of France’s greatness as a dramatist, musician, and philosopher.  He seminally contributed to the emergence and growth of twentieth century existentialism,

Read More

ON HUMAN RIGHTS (PART 2)

The concept of human rights, if not centered on some grounding principle, is a mere patchwork of inharmonious preferences that incoherently tribalizes people into a Babel* of mutual incomprehensibility.  The defense of human rights needs a foundation of some substantial bedrock standard other than feeling or believing that some rights,

Read More

ON HUMAN RIGHTS

With the world becoming increasingly divided into civilizational ‘large spaces’, (the BRICS* group); sovereign states ‘going it alone’, (e.g., Hungary, the United States); and long-established alliances breaking up under the weight of heavy-handed globalism, (e.g., the European Union [EU], the North Atlantic Treaty Organization [NATO]), the new buzzword of the

Read More

SOURCES OF ENLIGHTENMENT IN THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

From my previous post on the American Revolution, I covered the nature of revolution itself.  I treated this topic as consisting of two forms: first, a background of historical events that move in a lineage from a common ancestral ‘cell’ leading inexorably toward revolution, in which I discuss the nature

Read More

ALASDAIRE MACINTYRE: JOURNEY OF A MIND

As a blog devoted primarily to culture, I view culture as the moral repository from which all politics and economics are derived.  But culture, in itself, cannot be understood without accounting for the historical situation that develops and produces the arts, philosophies, and values that constitute a civilization.  This includes

Read More

WHY THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE? 

Although the presidential election is now over, with the “vote” in favor of the Republican candidate Donald Trump, the electoral college must still meet to vote on, and certify, that Donald Trump is the President-Elect of the United States.  Although many consider it a needless formality, since the electoral college

Read More