Victimology: Rousseau’s status as a victim is secure, so long as society is responsible for his portion, and he is not

Coming Home: Tradition and My Hometown by Michael De Sapio The beauty of one’s home, neighborhood, and community is easy to forget, especially in an age as transient and rootless as ours. Yet, it’s in the quiet moments or on a historic occasion in your hometown that you are pulled back to consider the things that surround you. “Coming home” is an important process of the mind, allowing us to see the mysticism in the ordinary. Of course, it helps if you live in a place that gives rise to such thoughts. It is a blessing not to live amid high-rise apartments and steel-and-glass office buildings. The sense of tradition that comes from living in a historic town—a town that has retained its history—fills one with appreciation…  [MORE] Tolkien, Lewis, and the Need for Literary Realism by Glenn Arbery The effect of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien on the imagination is undeniably good. Both saw the effects of a secular world full of Nietzsche’s all-too-comfortable “last men,” and they countered modern indifference to God and complacency with imaginary landscapes and actions that required the cardinal virtues to oppose the great cosmic threats posed by Satanic powers. But Tolkien and Lewis tempt us to escape to a self-evidently numinous world rather than to seek out the texture of wonder in this one. What we need is an unsparing literary realism—literature without recourse to fantasy, literature in which talking trees do not come to the rescue...  [MORE] The Nationalists at the Constitutional  Convention by Nathan Coleman Had the Nationalists carried the day in 1776 and turned the Continental Congress into a national government, implied powers would have been the normal constitutional practice from the moment of independence. The groundwork for Nationalist assault upon state sovereignty began in 1780–1781, when Alexander Hamilton, recently resigned as General Washington’s aide de camp, penned a long, and probably semi-private, letter to friend James Duane and published a series of six essays titled the “Continentalist.” Hamilton diagnosed the “fundamental defect” facing the Confederation as “a want of power in Congress…  [MORE] Victimology 101: Rousseau, Victimhood, and  Safe-Spaces by Steven Kessler Many liberals maintain that they themselves are victims. Where does this belief come from? And why would anyone want to be a victim? To understand the origins of victimhood, we must understand the work and thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the godfather and patron saint of liberalism. Rousseau’s desire to live free from the judgment of others, to live free from shame, all emanate from his status as a victim. Rousseau’s status as a victim is secure, so long as society is responsible for his portion, and he is not. So long as he is a victim of society, a victim of the rich, a victim of those with more esteem than he, he is not culpable for his behavior, no matter how shameful it would be otherwise...  [MORE] Drama versus Tyranny by Joseph Pearce Going to the theatre is not a means of escaping from the “real world” and all its problems; nor is it a purely passive activity, or merely recreational, as in watching a ball game. Or at least it needn’t be, and sometimes shouldn’t be. Great drama—great art—can edify. It can enlighten; it can lift us into the presence of the good, the true and the beautiful. It can also strengthen us in the commitment to fight political tyranny; it can be a powerful means of resisting corrupt government. In short, it can be a force for good in the political sphere...  [MORE] Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Spring Wisdom: “To a Skylark” Young People Are Canaries in the Mine Maryland’s 1867 State Constitution, Among the Oldest in Use Today What Happens When We Don’t Talk About Virtue? Aristophanes on Laughter Intellect and Intuition: Longing for Insight? The Betrothed: The Greatest Novel Ever Written? Composers and Wine Bob Kane and Bill Finger: Batman’s Creators “The Nihilism of the Empty Tomb”