“A number of observers of the political, moral and spiritual life in recent years have taken up the famous theme of the decline of the West,” the French journalist Luc Ferry wrote in Le Figaro at the end of January. “They recall that civilizations are mortal, like human beings, and that our own, far gone
The acceleration of history and the increasingly rapid advancement of the postmodern project, aimed at the transcendence of humanity by itself, makes consideration of the fundamentals of the progressive project necessary, but also inevitable. Among them is its dedication to the hectic search for hitherto unsuspected “human rights” and their instant realization in the name
The latest Super Bowl offers the most recent opportunity to reflect on the terminal state of our national culture, held together chiefly by a distractive and unhealthy mania for commercial sports and perfectly exemplified by the infantile yet aggressively transgressive nihilism of a brainless showoff calling himself Bad Bunny and dressed all in white, suggestive
The US has not known social and domestic peace since the start of the present decade, and it is unlikely that it will know it again for the foreseeable future. This is because it has ceased to be a country at all, assuming that nationhood implies fundamental unity, which America no longer has. When novelist
Personally, I regard Mount Rushmore as an excrescence on the mountain and a monument to the horror that Edward Abbey called industrial tourism. Beyond that, it is an expression of a naive piety and a patriotic sentimentalism that no longer exists in America. Matthew Davis correctly views the presidential sculptures carved into the face of
Liberalism has always considered itself a noble creed, as liberals have conceived themselves its knights in shining armor. Perhaps – once upon a time – it was so. But that was in the 18th and 19th centuries, and we are now living in an era when liberals have many fears: climate change, fascism, malefactors of
It is likely that the ordinary man, not being an ideologue, would agree as he grows older with Arthur Balfour’s famous epigram: “In politics nothing matters very much, and few things matter at all.” This is only partly to do with sub specie aeterni, etc. For the rest, there is the simple recognition that politicians
Human intelligence: you either use it or lose it
Progressive education along narrow lines is, for liberals, the source of all legitimate moral authority
Does the Old Republican Establishment really believe that it can resurrect, reassemble, recreate itself and run — and win — again?
The Democrats are stone deaf, their hearing destroyed by their own high-decibel shouts and screams against the Great Sauron in the White House
They believe in everything and anything – and thus in nothing at all
Virtue-signaling doesn’t work
The world is, always was and always will be largely ungovernable and chaotic
Romano Prodi charges Trump with having broken the rules of international diplomacy
Whatever advances in the human condition will be made in this century will not be accomplished in the spheres in which previous ones have been achieved
Trump came to office on January 20 in the strongest possible position
Donald J. Trump is, without a doubt, the most remarkable American politician to hold office since 1945
The road to hell, as they say, is paved with good intentions
If the Washington elite had its way, every national government from now until Doomsday would be another Popular Front
