Cultural confidence and the liberal death wish

In a selection from his forthcoming book The Intellectual Temptation, former European Commissioner Frits Bolkestein suggests that an academic obsession with abstract theory over hard-won experience lies behind our political and cultural crises. Bolkestein takes us from centralization through multiculturalism to cultural self-flagellation: ideals – or ideologies – that define the landscape of contemporary Western Europe.

‘Asking for it’ – Rape, consent, and the problem of shame

Mikolaj Slawkowski-Rode

What’s wrong with rape? As soon as we scratch the surface of the problem we encounter the deep complexity of human relations. It is important to recognize this complexity, particularly when the discussion of sexuality – arguably the most intimate form of human relations – is played out in exultant parades in which triumphantly brandished signs defend “slut pride” by proclaiming things like “my short skirt has nothing to do with you”, “we’re taking ‘slut’ back”, and “I’m a human not a sandwich”.

We’re Back

A letter from the editor announcing the return of the Clarion Review.

The Homeric Christian: Gladstone’s Politics of Prudence

by: Melvin Schut

Ours is a time of entitlements, massive debt, and focus groups. Politicians court the public, tax, and redistribute. Yet it was not always thus. The nineteenth century has long been considered the heyday of small government and fiscal responsibility, especially pertaining Britain. And justifiably so. For this, William Ewart Gladstone deserves more credit than anyone else.

Recently … Read more

Our Hero Socrates

Peter Augustine Lawler

It’s my pleasure to be able to introduce Nalin Ranasinghe’s Socrates and the Underworld: On Plato’s Gorgias to you as one of the most able, eloquent, noble, profound, and loving books ever written on Socrates. Ranasinghe restores for us the example of a moral hero who inaugurated a moral revolution in opposition to his country’s post-imperial cynicism and nihilism. What Socrates discovered about the human soul remains true for us in our similarly cynical and nihilistic time. Here’s the truth:

The Iconographic Fiction and Christian Humanism of Flannery O’Connor

Vigen Guroian

“What the word says, the image shows silently; what we have heard, we have seen.” That is how the Seventh Great Ecumenical Council, held at Constantinople in 787, summarized its defense of the use of icons in Christian worship. What the council confessed to have heard from scripture and to believe, is that God became man in Jesus Christ. According to the Gospel of John “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:13–14). Through an act of unfathomable kenosis, the infinite had become finite, the uncircumscribable was circumscribed in a human being, and the invisible was made visible.

Aging, Individualism and Our Middle-Class Dreams

Peter Augustine Lawler

 

According to many experts, American society is on the threshold of a crisis in long-term care. People are living longer and longer, but often at the price of living with severe infirmities—bodily or mental—that render them incapable of taking care of themselves for extended periods of old age. At the same time, fewer and fewer people are available and able to care for them.

The Threefold Witness of the Church

The Catholic Peter, the Orthodox John, and the Protestant Paul

By: Louis Markos

As an Evangelical Protestant who came to know Christ in the Greek Orthodox Church, as a non-denominational “product” of the para-church movement, and as an avid supporter of Evangelicals and Catholics Together, I have always harbored mixed feelings about the divided state of the Body of Christ. … Read more

Reason, Freedom, and the Rule of Law: Their Significance in Western Thought

By: Robert P. George

The idea of law and the ideal of the rule of law are central to the Western tradition of thought about public (or “political”) order.¹ St. Thomas Aquinas went so far as to declare that “it belongs to the very notion of a people [ad rationem populi] that the people’s dealings with each … Read more

Israel as a Bumblebee

By: Herbert London

It has been demonstrated that the body of the bumblebee is too heavy to be sustained by its wings. From an aerodynamic standpoint the bumblebee shouldn’t fly. Yet it does.

In many ways the bumblebee is a metaphor for the state of Israel. If one were to apply rational criteria, Israel’s existence would be in jeopardy.

The … Read more

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