How is the faithful Catholic to respond to the disturbing signs of the time? What is the “solution” to the problem of reigniting lukewarm Catholics and stoking the fires of those who wish to dedicate their lives to Christ and his Church? Pope Benedict XVI said “we are in need of a new evangelization—if the art of living remains an unknown, nothing else works… this art can only be communicated by [one] who has life—he who is the Gospel personified.” We must rely upon Christ, the one who has life.
— Read on www.ncregister.com/blog/elliott/lord-to-whom-shall-we-go

My great friend, Winston Elliott. Stunning piece.

As important as that truth is, it is easily misapplied. In practice it has meant that conservatives emphasize certain “cultural” forms of argument without seriously confronting the hard questions of politics or economics—as if worldly matters will take care of themselves if only our rhetoric is elevated and our intentions pure. Sometimes this leads to a politics of cant. Sometimes it leads to political quietism or a drift toward literary utopianism. And sometimes it just leads to ham-fisted attempts to produce “conservative” films or other forms of popular culture, in which the political message is almost always more conspicuous than the artistic merit.
— Read on www.firstthings.com/article/2019/03/a-new-conservative-agenda

My long-ago personal connection to Jackson parallels the underlying theme of BradleyBirzer’s book. Birzer, a historian at Hillsdale College, and a scholar-at-large at TAC, posits that Jackson was, in some ways, “the first truly American president.” His experiences and attitudes were deeply rooted in our young nation’s soil, his military leadership during our “Second War of Independence” echoed that of General Washington, and he became an exemplar of democracy.
— Read on www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/andrew-jackson-our-first-populist-president/

I’m very grateful to Jeff Taylor of the very fine Dordt College for his painstaking review of IN DEFENSE OF ANDREW JACKSON.

Christopher Dawson (1889-1970), one of the greatest of the unsung heroes of Christianity in the twentieth century, worried incessantly and critically about the rise of “progressive” thought in world history. As Dawson noted, time and time again, no one in the ancient or medieval Western worlds (or elsewhere, for that matter) considered history to be progressive. Instead, most who thought about history at all—East and West—thought of it as cyclical: A thing began, it aged, it died, and the cycle began all over again. A person came into the world, survived into middle age, became bodily corrupt, and died. Yet, humanity as a whole continued, even when the individual did not. The same was true of the seasons. Spring, then summer, then autumn, then winter. And, yet, out of this cycle, no fifth thing arose. Instead, the cycle began again, and spring followed winter. Always, and without exception. Cycles became critical elements to all first ethical, moral, and philosophical understandings of the world, whether in Miletus, India, or China.
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/02/christopher-dawson-time-bradley-j-birzer.html

This composer also lacks partisans who fondly recall his music in association with the pleasant memories of childhood, as many adults do in the case of, say, a Brahms or Mozart. This is because he wrote no piano or violin sonatas that a young student might learn. (He himself destroyed a few of his early chamber works and wrote none in his maturity.) In fact, probably uniquely among the great composers, he never learned to play the piano, as he was not groomed by his parents for a musical career.
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/02/learning-to-love-hector-berlioz-150-timeless-stephen-klugewicz.html

It’s not just the names, though. American soldiers work in sterile, modern environments, surrounded by computers and masses of paper. The lighting in every room is neon, artificial, and harsh. American pilots, though the most professional in the movie, look at Playboys, mess with cards, chew bubble gum, and eat endless amounts of candy bars and donuts. The military officers crave power openly, and the politicians drink, whore, and bluster.
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2014/05/fifty-years-learned-stop-worrying-love-bomb.html

The interwar period of twentieth-century Europe accepted—without question—the notion that all history and human action moved toward some end point, generally a happy if not paradisiacal one. Dawson feared that this idea, called progress, had become so ingrained as an absolute in the human mind by the 1920s that no one questioned it as a fact to which all must submit. Even the devastation of the Great War (1914-1918) did little to attenuate the belief in progress. That war had been waged in the name of progress, but now the cost was, perhaps, too bloody for interwar Europeans to contemplate as frivolous. Could that entire generation of young men have died for less than nothing, for a phantom idea?
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/01/christopher-dawson-nature-progress-bradley-birzer.html

I know that you guys decided to continue with the story addressed in the previous album, “The Similitude of a Dream”. Was that decision taken after the first album was finished, or did you know beforehand that there would be a sequel?

Oh, the decision was definitely made after the first album was finished. When I started writing I didn’t even want to [make it a sequel]– I remember coming home from one of the legs of the Similitude tour and wanting to just get some rest, but you know, just feeling that kick inside to go into the studio and write a little bit. And I think even as early on as spring of 2017 or even earlier than that, like during the winter, I started to jot down some ideas about that indicated we’d be going to lead towards the sequel. But I wasn’t sure either. I didn’t really have the whole picture. I just had a couple pieces though. It took a long time for us to sort it all out.
— Read on www.sonicperspectives.com/interviews/interview-with-neal-morse/