The Persistence of the Ideological Totalitarian Lie

The Totalitarian Impulse Then and Now “The Ideological Lie, as Solzhenitsyn calls it, was born when modern revolutionaries replaced the age-old distinction between good and evil with the illusory distinction between progress and reaction. In the name of progress, evil was called goodness, and goodness in the form of wise restraint was labeled evil, backward, racist,… Read More The Persistence of the Ideological Totalitarian Lie

Localism — or what?

What good is “progress” in the wrong direction Chesterton asked. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates… The Jetsons fantasy. After Oppenheimer? Really? But, the Progressives retort, it’s only crazy reactionaries who oppose Penicillin —or Planned Parenthood (as if these were morally equivalent) who oppose Progress. No specious rationalization can justify R&D technology for… Read More Localism — or what?

What Good is ‘Progress’ in the Wrong Direction?

G.K. Chesterton and the Meaning of Progress by Joseph Pearce. “Progress is a useless word; for progress takes for granted an already defined direction: and it is exactly about the direction that we disagree.” G.K. Chesterton c. 1920 (photo: Public Domain).National Catholic Registerwith permission of author. The great British writer G.K. Chesterton insisted that progress… Read More What Good is ‘Progress’ in the Wrong Direction?

Darwin’s Vicious Racism

“The complete title of Darwin’s most famous work, often abbreviated to The Origin of Species, was The Origin. of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. As Koster notes about Darwin’s view on race, ‘[he]never considered “the less civilized races” to be authentically human. For… Read More Darwin’s Vicious Racism

Videodrome. When the Seven Deadly Sins of Excess Morphed Into “Progress”

David Halberstam’s The Fifties: “Selling The American Way” “The Fifties is a sweeping social, political, economic, and cultural history of the 10 years that Halberstam regards as seminal in determining what our nation is today. Halberstam offers portraits of not only the titans of the age: Eisenhower, Dulles, Oppenheimer, MacArthur, Hoover, and Nixon; but also of… Read More Videodrome. When the Seven Deadly Sins of Excess Morphed Into “Progress”

The Abbey of Misrule

Paul Kingsnorth. “Do not be conformed to this world“— St. Paul Welcome to the Abbey. ‘Instead of thought there is a vast, inhuman void, full of words, formulas, slogans, declarations, echoes, ideologies … If we do not think, we cannot act freely; we are at the mercy of forces which we never understand, forces that… Read More The Abbey of Misrule