One cannot read Christopher Dawson’s The Crisis of Western Education without feeling a tremendous sense of loss – the loss of purpose, the loss of a full life, the loss of the future. I’ll quote Dawson at length here, because…
Category: Culture
The Hound of Distributism, A Solution for Our Social and Economic Crisis, Edited by Richard Aleman. I picked up this gem at the 2023 Chesterton Conference in Minneapolis. If you want to quickly and (relatively) easily get the gist of…
“For the new paganism has nothing in common with the poetical idealization of Hellenic myth by the humanists and classicists of recent centuries: it is the unloosing of the powers of the abyss — the dark forces that have been…
“On the third day the friends of Christ coming at daybreak to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realised the new wonder; but even they hardly realised that the world had…
We hear a lot about progress. We hear about progressive policies and progressive attitudes. But how often do we stop and think, what does progress mean? What is the end toward which we are progressing? We tend to think about…
Few things in this world are more culturally unpopular than abstaining from alcohol. Just about everywhere on earth people are conditioned to associate alcoholic beverages with fun, and even to believe it’s impossible to have fun without alcohol. And this…
The Shallows, What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, by Nicholas Carr, originally published in 2010, with an updated afterword (2020). “Of all the sacrifices we make when we devote ourselves to the Internet as our universal medium, the…
I cannot stop thinking about the painting below, What Is Truth, by Nikolai Ge. The fact I use this image as my phone’s lock screen undoubtedly contributes to my obsession, but it goes much deeper than that. Take a look:…
Holy Moments, A Handbook for the Rest of Your Life, by Matthew Kelly. It’s a little book with a big idea. And it looks like you can buy six copies for FREE. The idea is to fill your life with…
As I’m laughing my way through Bruce Cambell’s autobiographies, If Chins Could Kill and Hail to the Chin, I find myself inexplicably fascinated with the actor’s 2005 film (and directorial debut) Man with the Screaming Brain. Maybe it’s the title.…
Recently I wrote about Time of Death, my favorite episode of ER. A close second, which aired a little over a year later (February 2, 2006), is Body & Soul. Both episodes explore the coming of death: In Time of Death, it…
When you think about “unpopular culture” in the context of this blog, you probably think about “high culture.” Maybe so, but today we’re going low. Bruce Campbell explains what his autobiography is all about on the back cover: “… Bookstores…
After writing my short review of an 18-year-old ER episode I couldn’t forget, I started thinking about books I’ve read over the years that similarly stuck in my mind. I came up with 33 of them. This is by no…
Every once in a while, popular culture scores a home run, producing something truly artistic, memorable, and moving. For me, one such instance was an episode of ER, Time of Death. It was the sixth episode of Season 11 and…
In the Arena, An Autobiography, by Charlton Heston, is not my normal read. It sparked my interest because three of Heston’s films, The Ten Commandments, The Omega Man, and Soylent Green, are among my favorites and I was curious about…
A sure sign you are up against a bad argument is when you are cancelled. Bad arguments are like mushrooms – they grow and thrive in the dark.
Dale Ahlquist, The Story of the Family: G.K. Chesterton on the Only State That Creates And Loves Its Own Citizens Public schools Two-income families Birth Control Abortion Divorce These cultural institutions are so commonplace that, with the exception of abortion,…
Tolstoy’s last major work was A Calendar of Wisdom, Daily Thoughts to Nourish the Soul. He wrote many of the sayings, and included or adapted those of many others. Often cited names include Marcus Aurelius, Cicero, Confucius, Emerson, Goethe, Kant,…
There is one type of criticism that is constructive, when people criticize you to help you. There is another type of criticism, when people criticize you to help themselves. The things we hate in other people sometimes turn out to…
It came to me in the middle of the night why we are, on the whole, so afraid, so desperately looking for someone to take care of us, so unable to make decisions, so welcoming of the Nanny State, so…