Western Civilization

Waking Up in the Middle of the Night of Totalitarianism 7
- Culture, History, International, Politics, Uncategorized, Western Civilization
- September 2, 2022
Sometimes events converge in my life and explode into revelation. A few weeks ago, I edited an interview with Elizabeth Spalding, one of the founders and now the director of the Victims of Communism Museum in Washington, D.C. About this same time, I read Under a Cruel Star, Heda Kovály’s account of life in Czechoslovakia
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A Powerful Animated Guide About Where Not to Seek for Happiness 3
- Culture, Philosophy, Religion, Western Civilization
- September 1, 2022
Earlier this year, nearly one-quarter of all Yale undergraduates enrolled in a course on how to be happy. “A lot of us are anxious, stressed, unhappy, numb,” a freshman taking the course told the New York Times. “The fact that a class like this has such large interest speaks to how tired students are of numbing
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Is Boredom Driving Our Culture of Lunacy?10
- Culture, Politics, Religion, Western Civilization
- August 31, 2022
“Somebody’s boring me,” poet Dylan Thomas once commented. “I think it’s me,” he added. Were you to become a fly on the wall, or in this age of electronic wonders, a tiny drone, you might observe my daily life and decide that I’m the most boring human on planet earth. I follow the same daily
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Want to Change Hearts and Minds? Try Humility.8
- Culture, History, Philosophy, Religion, Western Civilization
- August 30, 2022
A friend recently sent me a popular meme called the Pyramid of Intellect. It shows the various academic degrees, starting at the base of the pyramid with a high school diploma and narrows its way up to a Ph.D. But at the very top of the pyramid is a little section that reads, “People who
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When You’re Headed the Wrong Way, Turn Around 17
- Culture, History, Politics, Uncategorized, Western Civilization
- August 29, 2022
Eighty-five percent of Americans believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, an AP-NORC survey found in June. Large majorities disapproved of the current administration’s handling of the pandemic, gun policy, and the economy. If we look at the road we have traveled to arrive at this point, we find that the GPS for
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Reflections on the Reality We’re Facing 11
- Family, Culture, Philosophy, Politics, Western Civilization
- August 25, 2022
In his Life of Samuel Johnson, James Boswell recounts an incident in which he and Johnson were discussing philosopher Bishop Berkeley’s idea that matter was non-existent, that everything in the world is ideal. When Boswell says that the bishop’s hypothesis cannot be refuted, Johnson kicks a large stone and says, “I refute him thus.” Philosophers
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