Are there reasons for hope? Certainly. Bad as things are in the culture at large, genuine renewal can begin at any moment, in any time…

Essays of the Week

Why Do Progressives Hate the West So Much? by Joseph Pearce “Democracy” and “capitalism” are uniquely “Western,” insofar as they began in the West, though they are not uniquely or originally “American,” the former having its origins in ancient Greece and the latter originating in England. They are, however, not applicable to the West alone but have become global phenomena, much as Christendom has become a global phenomenon. We can agree that the West is for everyone, regardless of any accident of birth. The West, as understood by Christians, is the flowering and flourishing of a civilization which goes back to the Homeric epic and the Hebrew prophets, and having been baptized by Christ, is “not the property of any particular race but the universal aspiration of humankind.” President Trump was right to defend such a civilization...  [MORE] Making and Revealing by Glenn Arbery For the past two weeks, I’ve been writing about the opportunity to make a new Catholic culture, not from scratch and not from attempts to appropriate whatever happens to be popular at the moment, but from the immense resources available in the tradition we engage at Wyoming Catholic College. These resources are not just in the past, of course, but very much in the present: the encounter with God in silence, the experience of the desert, the evidence of beauty. Are there reasons for hope? Certainly. Bad as things are in the culture at large, genuine renewal can begin at any moment, in any time… [MORE] Poetic Knowledge of the City by Joshua Hren Contemporary music and poetry, particularly the dominant forms and narratives popular today, have contributed to, and resulted from, the “licentious and shameless” ethos of our contemporary moment. We are badly in need of a poetry—and we may here use this word broadly to include everything from music to verse to fiction to film—that contains poetic knowledge of the city, to which our descendants will be forced to turn to mitigate what cultural chaos they have inherited. What we need today to re-create the beautiful city, an icon through which to see the glorious City of God, is a new Iliad, a new story that will manifest “what the many do together,” for what the many do together “rarely lacks a certain nobility, or beauty”...  [MORE] The Abuse of the Fourteenth Amendment by Allen Porter Mendenhall Libertarians and conservatives have never achieved widespread consensus regarding issues of federalism in American jurisprudence. The gridlock has to do with competing ideas about the proper role of the federal judiciary in protecting and preserving individual rights. On the one side are those who would empower federal judges allegedly to protect individual rights against the several states. On the other side are those who would strictly limit the powers of the federal judiciary over the several states. This jurisprudential clash is most profound and clarifying in the context of the Fourteenth Amendment...  [MORE] Josef Pieper on Academia & the Abuse of Language by Veronica Arntz Education in the liberal arts is an ancient tradition that has slowly been eroded through our increasing attachment to approaching the world scientifically and pragmatically. At the heart of the liberal arts tradition, however, is the proper use of language. Education in the liberal arts connects students to reality, through everything from geometry to astronomy to logic. In this way, students trained in the liberal arts are ultimately pursuing the truth, which is a far cry from the agenda of propaganda at universities. The liberal arts free students to pursue the truth fully, with the knowledge that everyone is searching for the truth...  [MORE] The Fierce Intellect of Stephen Tonsor by Gleaves Whitney Was my first encounter with the mind of Stephen Tonsor coincidence? Fate? Providence? I could not know what it meant at the time. Reading a passage from his writing that resonated with civilizational purpose, my thought became suspended in the rarified atmosphere of a civilizational as well as a continental divide. The author was comfortable with contrast, paradox, and tension: "The meaning of Western civilization emerges only when it is confronted by another civilization. It is in these dramatic historical confrontations that the meaning of culture, civilization, and religion emerges. We have been grievously and justly broken, but if such eyes as mine are worthy to foresee the divine meaning, the divine purpose, then we have been broken only to be made one"... [MORE] The Return of Christian Humanism Amos Kendall: A Great, Unremembered American James Joyce, John Senior, & the Illumination of the Modern World A Student’s Guide to Liberal Learning Tenure and the Common Good of the University Socrates Rises With Christ Augustine and Limited Government Minding Malvolio: Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night