https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/07/turkeys-new-mosque-monument-western-decline-bruce-thornton/?utm_source=Hoover+Daily+Report&utm_campaign=7e65066775-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_07_13_06_37&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_21b1edff3c-7e65066775-72527561

Egypt's Al-Azhar in dispute with government over fatwa authority
 Tensions are escalating between Al-Azhar and legislative and executive authorities over proposed legislation that would render Dar al-Ifta an "independent" institution, ending Al-Azhar's long-standing patronage of the Islamic legal body — and replacing it with state dominance and possibly tighter government control over the religious narrative.

Istanbul's Hagia Sophia holds first Friday prayers since reconversion to mosque
 Is Turkey's reconversion of the Hagia Sophia into a mosque a politically expedient decision or part of Turkey’s growing global assertiveness?

What Originalism Conserves  by Ilan Wurman
The Framers, very cognizant of history, sought to frame a constitution that successfully balanced self-government and liberty. Read More »

Irving Kristol’s Rules for Nihilists  by Richard M. Reinsch II
What if the “self” that is “realized” under the conditions of liberal capitalism is a self that despises liberal capitalism? Read More »

What Holds America Together? Russell Kirk's Roots of American Order
by Robert SpeaightRussell Kirk shows that the United States was a new thing built upon a number of very old things, and these are the roots which give it life today: the English common law, the English language, the English Reformation, the English Parliament; the Roman order and the Greek intellect, Montesquieu’s “depositary” of justice secured by the Supreme Court, and Edmund Burke’s gospel of continuity... [MORE]

Stand, Men of the West!
by Stephen KlugewiczWestern Civilization is undeniably in decline and indeed its very existence is in doubt. Yet these thoughts ought not to drag conservatives down into a morass of defeatism. Though the hour is late, a remnant must run to the barricades and shield itself and whatever is left of Western Civilization from the barbarians at the gates. I call on conservatives to refuse to cede the current hour to darkness... [MORE]

The Decadent Society & the Summer of Our Discontent
A Philosophy for Our Age: Historicist Humanism

Freedom, Responsibility, and the Liberal Arts
By Stringfellow Barr on Jun 11, 2020 12:30 pm
Pericles was proud of Athenian freedom and insisted it was worth dying for. Our ancestors shared that pride and that insistence. But they and he were proud, not of the absence of discipline or authority, but of the fact that in a society of free citizens discipline and authority are self-imposed. The other day ...
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The Odd History of the Whig Party

Thomas Jefferson, Whig Historian
by Bradley J. BirzerGiven how vital a role history placed in the English-speaking world of the 18th century, Thomas Jefferson’s own love of history should not be too shocking. Further, it should not be surprising that Jefferson embraced a rather Whiggish view of history, one that pervaded much of American political, social, cultural, and religious thought. Thus, when Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, he was not merely writing yet another legal document... [MORE]

An Ennobling Innocence: The Founding of Socrates' Republic
by David Lawrence LevineIt is the task of the wise ruler to seek to transform the city based on force into one based on speech (if only on myths and noble lies). This is no different for a founder of a community of discourse than for a founder of cities. The primary task of The Republic, then, is the foundation of a human mutuality based on an openness to speeches. Socrates’ efforts toward this end, however, are complex and, on the surface, quite puzzling... [MORE]

The Benedict Option and the Case for Spiritual Secession

Edmund Burke on Rights: Inherited, Not Inherent
The Swan Song of Roger Scruton: Wagner’s Parsifal: The Music of Redemption

Patrick Deneen and the Conservative Understanding of Time

A Master Historian at Work
by George H. Nash
Using the chapters in this new book as lamps and signposts, Bailyn has created an elegant roadmap of his intellectual journey. Read More »

GAMES INTELLECTUALS PLAY
By EPPC Distinguished Senior Fellow George Weigel
Syndicated Column
The proponents of a confessionally Catholic state as the optimum form of government are small in number. But they’ve demonstrated an impressive ability to rile up the debate about the current American political situation, and about Catholic social doctrine generally, so a few questions are in order. Read More

Is Conservatism an Ideology?
by Bradley BirzerIn his excellent, short book, Conservatism: Dream and Reality, Robert Nisbet had no problem in identifying conservatism as an ideology, proclaiming it one of three ideologies to have emerged since the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, the other two being radicalism and liberalism. In his definition of the ideology, conservatism, Nisbet provided six “dogmas” that every conservative—to one extent or another—accepts... [MORE]

Lessons from a Whisky Priest
Peter Kwasniewski
In February, I read a novel for a men’s book club (back then, we still had the good fortune to be able to meet for normal social interactions; March’s meeting got canceled). The novel was Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory, which I had never read, and had always reproached myself for not having […]Read More

Cardinal Pell Is Vindicated
Sean Fitzpatrick
“I have consistently maintained my innocence while suffering from a serious injustice.” These words, issued by George Cardinal Pell upon his acquittal on Tuesday, should both heal and haunt the Catholic Church. There can be no justice if there is no truth. And, even in the wake of inexcusable abuse by Catholic bishops, the truth […]Read More

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IS NOT A BOON GRANTED BY THE BENIGN STATE
By EPPC Distinguished Senior Fellow George Weigel
The Catholic World Report

Just governments have obligations to protect religious freedom as an unalienable right of persons, and to regulate its exercise for the sake of the common good. They will do that regulation properly if they keep that prior obligation firmly in mind, and resist the temptation to imagine that they “confer” religious freedom on the people they serve. Read More

The World Must Come to Walsingham
Michael Warren Davis
This face, for centuries a memory, Non est species, neque decor, Expressionless, expresses God: it goes Past castled Sion. She knows what God knows, Not Calvary’s Cross nor crib at Bethlehem Now, and the world shall come to Walsingham. Frederick Wilhelmsen called Juan Donoso Cortés the Augustine of the nineteenth century: the chronicler of civilization’s […]Read More

George Santayana and the Ironies of Liberalism By Nayeli Riano on Apr 07, 2020 04:00 pm
The question—is liberalism a self-defeating enterprise?—has gained traction over the last couple of years. Even as far back as 1921, the Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana dedicated time to this topic in the form of an essay he titled “The Irony of Liberalism.” In this brief work, Santayana explored prevalent themes that emerged throughout liberalism’s ...
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Francis vs. the Deep Church
Michael Warren Davis
Does the Vatican have a General Directorate for Personnel? This is, perhaps, the most boring question ever posed by a writer in Crisis Magazine. And yet, as we fumble for an answer, we also come a little closer to understanding one of the most confounding papacies in 2,000 years of Christian history. Last Friday, the […] Read More

Seamless Garment or Political Comforter?  Michael M. Uhlmann
In the 1970’s, the late Joseph Cardinal Bernardin and his episcopal allies advanced the notion that Catholic politicians should not be judged only, or even primarily, by their position on abortion. Abortion was merely one strand in a rich and finely woven “seamless garment” of Catholic social teaching in defense of life. Numerous other issues, […]Read More

Back to basics for conservative education reform
Character formation, civics, and the inculcation of the best of our traditions are inseparable from any meaningful idea of education, writes Yuval Levin. Conservatives will now have to press that case — and help our fellow citizens see its promise.
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Celibacy Is a Gift to Priests—and the Laity Michael Warren Davis
Few books have caused so much controversy even before they were published than did From the Depths of Our Hearts, a new defense of clerical celibacy in the Roman Church by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and Robert Cardinal Sarah. On January 14, Benedict’s private secretary, Archbishop Georg Gänswein, told the Italian news agency ANSA that, […]Read More

Male and Female He Created Them. And for a Good Reason  Anthony Esolen
It has been just six years since I wrote Defending Marriage: Twelve Arguments for Sanity, warning against the fantasy that two members of the same sex can marry one another, when they cannot even have sexual relations but can only mimic them. I founded my arguments not upon Scripture or the teaching of the Church—indeed I did not […]

Are Muslim Women Trapped in Marriages in Denmark? by Judith Bergman  

Western Governments Play a Key Role in Successful Honor Killing Escapes by Phyllis Chesler
The Investigative Project on Terrorism
February 11, 2020
https://www.meforum.org/60409/western-governments-play-a-key-role-in-successful
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Saudi Arabia’s ‘Slow Steaming’ Changes to Islam May Just Work
By James G. Zumwalt, The Hill: "“Slow steaming” is a concept by which container ships operate at lower speeds to minimize wear and tear on engines, save fuel, reduce emissions and otherwise improve efficiency. This concept proves that, sometimes, slower can be better than faster."

Making sense of Pope Francis on faith, evangelization, and proselytizing (Part II)
​By Eduardo Echeverria on Feb 05, 2020 11:58 pm
Editor’s note: This is Part II of a two-part essay; here is Part I. The Nature of Truth I argued in the previous section that Francis rejects propositional truth. On this view, the truth-status of [...]
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A postcard by the Cappucin mission in Mesopotemia of two Chaldean men from the villages surrounding the town of Mardin in South East Turkey, along the Syrian border. Chaldean Christians recognize the Pope as the head of the Universal Church. They split from the Assyrian (Nestorian) Church in the sixteenth century. Chaldean Christians are found in largest concentrations in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, the United States (Detroit), Europe, and Australia. The head of the Church, the Patriarch, resides in Baghdad with the title of "the Patriarch of Babylon". He has the rank of a Cardinal in the Catholic church. Their liturgy is in Aramaic.

https://www.amazon.com/Battling-Gods-Atheism-Ancient-World/dp/B016WT2IVQ/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Tim+Whitmarsh&qid=1578865281&s=audible&sr=1-1

Long before the European Enlightenment and the Darwinian revolution, which we often take to mark the birth of the modern revolt against religious explanations of the world, brave people doubted the power of the gods. Religion provoked scepticism in ancient Greece, and heretics argued that history must be understood as a result of human action rather than divine intervention. They devised theories of the cosmos based on matter, and notions of matter based on atoms. They developed mathematical tools that could be applied to the world around them and tried to understand that world in material terms. Their scepticism left a rich legacy of literature, philosophy, and science and was defended by such great writers as Epicurus, Lucretius, Cicero, and Lucian. 


Tim Whitmarsh tells the story of the tension between orthodoxy and heresy with great panache, a story that ended—for the moment—with the imposition of Christianity on the Roman Empire in 313 CE. 

Two Revolutions for Freedom 
Joseph Loconte ​

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of God
Donald DeMarco
Etienne Gilson was one of the clearest thinking philosophers of the 20th century. As a good philosopher, naturally, he fully understood the importance of reason, a power that is often downgraded or even dismissed in the modern world. In an address he gave at Harvard’s Tercentenary Celebration (1936), he made the following statement: “Realism always […]

Primal Screams: How the Sexual Revolution Created Identity Politics
By Dwight Longenecker on Dec 07, 2019 09:59 pm
Puzzled by the sudden surge of identity politics, Mary Eberstadt traces its genesis to the sexual revolution. By doing so, she addresses the “primal screams” of faceless, lonely people grabbing at an identity like a shipwrecked person clutching at flotsam. Primal Screams: How the Sexual Revolution Created Identity Politics, by Mary Eberstadt (192 pages, ...
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