What Is Actually Happening

  • As political frenzy revved up over the last year, I found myself wanting to re-read Dostoevsky’s Demons, thinking it would offer some insight and perspective on what’s happening. Or rather not so much what is currently happening as what has been happening for the past 150 years or so. I had thought on my first

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  • The Lamp Has A Blog Now

    And they've invited me to contribute a monthly post. I'm extremely flattered, and a bit intimidated, as it puts me alongside Peter Hitchens and probably some other people who are better writers than I am.  My first post appeared yesterday. It's called "Being Honour Bred," a phrase from a Yeats poem which mentions people who

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  • By an appropriate coincidence, on the same day that I did that last post the new issue of The Lamp arrived. It includes an essay of mine which discusses the development of the counter-culture of the 1960s toward the current culture war, and the post reiterates a point made in that piece:  The essential feature

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  • Why We’re Divided

    The end of the Cold War three decades ago followed by the terror attacks in 2001 should have ushered in an era of consensus and low-intensity politics in the United States. That was the expectation at the time—but it turned out to be wrong. Over the past few decades Americans have turned on themselves, dividing

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  • "You should drive to where there more Bar". I don't know how to tag this. Philosophy? Religion? What Is Actually Happening? Travel? Oh wait, there's a Food and Drink tag, which I have very rarely used. 

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  • I'm trying very hard, and so far successfully, to stifle my impulse to talk about the political crisis of the United States. The crisis is far from abating. It's quieter now that the frenzy surrounding Trump has ceased, but the basic situation hasn't changed, and I'm trying not to spend too much time fretting about

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  • St. Ogg’s in Our Time

    (This is not especially appropriate for Easter Monday–well, it's not appropriate at all, but it's not exactly inappropriate either. But I wrote it a day or two before Palm Sunday, then decided it should wait till after Holy Week. So….) And the present time was like the level plain where men lose their belief in volcanoes

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  • Now Is the Acceptable Time

    I've forgotten how I wound up reading something at onepeterfive.com earlier today. It's not a site I normally visit. What I've seen and heard of it indicates that it focuses very much on the crisis of the Church, and I decided a few years ago that I just wasn't going to pay much attention to

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  • Rod Dreher had a post a month or two back in which he discussed the possibility that we are in a situation comparable to that of the Romans we call "pagans," those who continued to Rome's ancient objects and forms of worhip, when Christianity became the Empire's dominant religion. You can read the post here.

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  • A Syllogism for Our Time

    1) The people say that the emperor's new clothes are very beautiful. 2) You deny that the emperor's new clothes are very beautiful. 3) Therefore you are not one of the people.

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