“And there is the understanding, born of repeated exile, that everything that seems solid and valuable is ultimately perishable, while everything that is intangible — knowledge most of all — is potentially everlasting.” Bret Stephens.

Having reverence for books, wisdom and knowledge is vital.

Controversial article? Jews are often smart. Tell me something I don’t know. This was an idea I thought about and discussed with my father almost 50 years ago. He said, and I think his approach has great wisdom, that the Jews had an ancient tradition of literacy (the most ancient in the world) and a great reverence for books, wisdom, and knowledge. Other peoples who similarly have developed or maintained a strong tradition of academic discipline and curiosity have excelled as well: we see this among many peoples but especially the ancient Greeks, Enlightenment Scots, Chinese and others. I consider myself an intellectual and I suppose I am. But both my father and I benefitted from having an education that was partially Jewish through our many Jewish teachers and professors. Next to the Jews, I would say many of my best teachers were Jesuits or Jesuit-educated professors. My grandparents were talented and hard-working people with little formal education not even finishing grade school and going to work as early as age eight. So my grandfather was (apparently) a talented linguist (he could communicate in Hindi, English, Punjabi and some French (as well as his native Gaelic and Scots) but he could not read most of these languages or write them. He was, however, an avid reader of newspapers and periodically and fascinated by geography, maps and atlases. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of baseball traditions and stories (he must have heard thousands of games on the radio and seen hundreds in person) and he remembered dates, names of battles, regiments etc. He also loved music and enjoyed Rachmaninoff, John McCormack whom he saw perform in person. But I don’t think he ever read an entire book in his life. So he knew something about music, poetry and songs but almost nothing about literature. He was very knowledgeable about Socialism and Marxism because he flirted with Socialism/Marxism and therefore Communism as a young man. He escaped the influence of the Red Clyde, however, and by the time I knew him he was a staunch anti-Communist. From my grandfather I developed a love of Scottish songs, military music and baseball. From my parents I was instilled with a reverence for books, music, languages and higher culture. I was aware it was a great privilege to be able to go to school and to afford to buy books and do some travel. Too often people are narrowly educated and stop thinking and reading into adulthood. One problem of education today is that it has become so easy to get (like a supply of freshwater) that young people take for granted the highly subsidized leisure time they have to study and improve their minds. As a teacher, I see the biggest difference between students is one of concentration and discipline and reverence for schooling and education. If one does not have good discipline and respect for education then one will not progress very far. I can’t understand how some people think they can learn a subject in depth without listening and without reading and studying.

By Richard K. Munro

Rome conquered and endured due to its organization, superior communication systems, superior professional military and its basic legal and economic stability. One great weakness of Rome, however, was its lack of a formal system of executive succession. During the era of “Good Emperors,” the Emperors adopted the person thought best to succeed. This fell apart when Marcus Aurelius died and was succeeded by his son Commodus. Also for some reason, Rome stopped developing economically and technologically. Theoretical steam engines were invented but never used except as a parlor trick. The Romans had presses for olive oil and could have easily developed the printing press but did not. Perhaps their dependence on slave labor hampered or discouraged technological and economic innovation. Gibbon was convinced that Christianity destroyed the Empire by destroying its military virtue.

But the root cause, I believe is that philosophically and morally pagan Roman society was rotten to the core. Sex was for erotic pleasure only and the rearing and education of children were neglected. The Romans were extremely hedonistic and dedicated themselves to Bread and Circuses. In Rome by the 3rd century, there were over 180 festivals a year -which meant free food and games. I believe the Romans stopped thinking and working. The barbarians were numerous and warlike and increasing armed and trained in the Roman fashion. We forget that many of the barbarian leaders were Roman citizens and had been officers in the Roman army.

Nations and civilizations which discover how much easier and soft it is to live for ephemeral pleasures without worrying about anything permanent in the world of the mind and the soul, soon find their mental muscles turn to mush and they cannot think about difficult economic, social and political problems. They prefer emotional outbursts instead of thought and sustained the intellectual effort. Uneducated, indisciplined people become incapable of organizing their experience into a logical pattern and become impotent to plan or train for changes in the future or very important to recall the lessons of the past.

In short, only the educated are free and the uneducated will lack the wisdom to sustain and make a more perfect Union.  Surely, this must be considered a warning to our own “permanent” and “highly-advanced” civilization. In the years to come we may find out how fragile our civilization really is.

It is these defenders of order that Birzer seeks to highlight. For people like myself, it is easy to feel like you are alone, watching the world burn, but not knowing what to do about it. I live in a state with a very small Christian minority. While I am thankful for the Christians I have in my life, we all know that we are, in the words of Russell Moore, a prophetic minority. Birzer’s work serves as an antidote and an encouragement. There is a vast tradition of those who have looked into the abyss but have remained strong. In fact, they have done more than that, they have created. They have harnessed pieces of the Good, True and Beautiful and presented them to us for our fortification and enjoyment.
— Read on www.enteringthepublicsquare.com/blog/book-review-beyond-tenebrae-christian-humanism-in-the-twilight-of-the-west

A more serious challenge came from English poet and historian Robert Conquest who charged Lewis and Charles Williams with holding and promoting totalitarian sympathies. While his criticism applied mainly to Williams, Lewis became a part of the controversy by praising Williams’s Arthurian poetry. The two men, Conquest claimed, willfully obscured the venerable mythology, thus rendering it and its story unintelligible to the average person. They turned the vast Arthurian legend into a “complex intellectual parlour game,” a gnostic jumble, accessible only to the Elect. In Williams (and, by inference, in Lewis), one finds “a genuine writer who has fully accepted a closed and monopolistic system of ideas and feelings, and what is more, puts it forthrightly with its libidinal component scarcely disguised.”[7] That which is intelligible advocates the use of violence “to bring in unbelievers” with human beings treated merely as a means to an end.[8] Lewis and Williams each promote a “psychology of totalitarianism—of hierarchy and sadism.”[9]
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/12/cs-lewis-his-critics-bradley-birzer.html

One of the bestselling and most popular rock groups of all time, Pink Floyd—in its various incarnations—released 15 studio albums between 1967 and 2014. Throughout it all, the band never stopped experimenting with sound, pioneers in psychedelic and progressive rock. Their eighth album, Dark Side of the Moon, sold over 45 million copies and remained consistently on the album charts for a decade and a half. Their eleventh album, The Wall, sold over 23 million copies in the United States alone and many, many more worldwide.

Over the last year, Pink Floyd’s stalwart guitarist, David Gilmour, has emerged as the grand and genteel statesman and gentleman of the rock world, donating his guitar collection to charity. Gilmour raised an astounding $21 million from that auction, including from the sale of his famous black Stratocaster used for “Comfortably Numb.”

Gilmour’s chosen charity? ClientEarth, a nonprofit that seeks to radically and fundamentally alter economic activity toward a more sustainable and “green” future. “The global climate crisis is the greatest challenge that humanity will ever face,” Gilmour tweeted, “and we are within a few years of the effects of global warming being irreversible.”
— Read on www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/if-orwell-had-an-anthem-pink-floyd-would-have-produced-it/

One of his great apologetics perfectly conveys the wonder and joy of Christ’s Incarnation and Resurrection.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/spending-this-advent-with-chesterton/?fbclid=IwAR0D6DCynJLp4QQ_rIWXwQ5tkJi2G2VXYRwotkcwcue7-KA2irT2JlwlwTU

Cicero took this line of argumentation much further—and with much greater depth—in his famous dialogue, On the Laws. Here, though, Cicero’s speaker claimed that through reason the universe is one with God, offering a sort of intelligent pantheism. “Thus we can assume that the universe must possess wisdom and that the element which holds together all that exists excels in perfect reason. From this we see that the universe is in fact God and that the vital force of the universe is held together by this divine nature.” In and through its own reason, the universe also moves toward perfection, order, and harmony. From its beginning, the universe was good and wise, and it only moves towards an even greater goodness, truth, and beauty. In our contemplation of the good, the true, and the beautiful, we humans become better. “Humans have emerged for contemplating and imitating the universe. We are certainly not perfect, but we are a part of perfection.”
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/12/how-think-about-god-pagan-mere-christianity-bradley-birzer.html

Even as Peter Jackson’s blockbuster film versions of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit have brought J. R. R. Tolkien’s imaginative creations to the masses, the underlying meaning of Middle-earth has remained o
— Read on isibooks.org/j-r-r-tolkien-s-sanctifying-myth-2124.html

Perhaps no modern thinker best represented these changes than did Thomas Hobbes. In his seminal work, Leviathan, Hobbes called for the creation of a “mortal god”—the Leviathan—to counter and augment the will of the “immortal god.” In his view of society, man was utterly and completely depraved, incapable of anything but self-interest and cannibalism. “Hereby it is manifest that during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war, and such a war as is of every man against every man,” he wrote. “For war consists not in battle only, or the act of fighting, but in a tract of time wherein the will to contend by battle is sufficiently known; and therefore the notion of time is to be considered in the nature of war as it is in the nature of weather.” As such, when men are left to their own devices, Hobbes laments, there can exist no industry, no agriculture, “no navigation; nor use of the commodities that may be imported by the sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving, and removing, such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” The immortal god, Hobbes admits, has bestowed upon each of the natural right and liberty of self-preservation. Rather, however, than seeing this right as extending to all of mankind, we selfishly hoard the natural right for ourselves and use it as a pretext for violence upon and against our neighbor.
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/12/hobbes-leviathan-collectivist-horror-bradley-birzer.html