The Tocqueville Option and the Benedict Option: Conservative Thought in Search of a Post-Liberal Alternative

The crisis of the conservative mainstream, both in the Western world and in our own country, has recently given rise to new and interesting trends, which, even if they are still at the stage of schools of thought or intellectual persuasion, in the future are no doubt destined to play a significant role on the historical stage. This latter holds true in particular for post-liberalism, a school which has a number of interesting theorists, and includes the political and religious philosopher Patrick Deneen and the philosopher and historian of political thought David C. Schindler.

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Boris Mezhuev
The Problem of Force: Simone Weil’s supernatural justice

Every human death feels unnatural. Even the peaceful passing of elderly relatives who’ve lived rich lives and completed the full circuit of experiences we all feel entitled to—work, marriage, children, vacations, holidays—are attended by a grief so massive that it slips our processes of rational cognition. It hits us obliquely, and never chronologically. I’m walking through the produce aisle of the grocery store and unexpectedly, while lifting a bag of apples into my cart, I feel the shocking lightness of my grandfather’s body as I bathed him while he was dying of cancer. Anguish so vast that it reaches you in fragmented details outside of time. A sack of apples becomes a spirit medium. How can the loss of a person be natural?

Every human death feels unnatural, but murder even more so. The first murdered corpse I saw was in Baghdad during my initial deployment as an infantryman in 2007.

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Scott Beauchamp
The Road to Transhumanism: How Man Became a Project

The category of the Project has been introduced into our daily lives. The very thoughts and feelings of the human person have been turned into a Project. It is happening in Russia and America. It is happening in philosophy and science. It’s also happening in geopolitics.

This is not a global conspiracy. It is a global trend. Still, one can’t help wondering whether or not the Grand Designer behind it isn’t the same one that the American hieromonk, Fr. Serafim Rose, was referring to back in the early 1980s when he wrote: “It is later than you think.”

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Svetlana Lourié
Seven Books Not Enough People Read

What is it with books and writers? Often, really lousy writers and their equally lousy books achieve great popularity, while miraculous works of miraculous artists and thinkers fall to the margins of obscurity. For example, no one read William Blake much until he was rediscovered by the Pre-Raphaelites and William Butler Yeats. The same was the case for a few centuries with John Donne until T.S. Eliot rescued him from neglect in the early 20th century. In the spirit of rescuing from neglect, below is a list of books I wish more people would read.

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Michael Martin
U.S. Sanctions Must Stop

Sharon Tennison, director of the Center for Citizen Initiatives, has called for an end to the U.S. policy of sanctions against dozens of nations during a deadly global pandemic. We urge everyone to read her appeal, sign on to it, and distribute it further.

CCI’s statement notes the foolishness of a policy which “affects the ability of [other] countries to contain the [COVID-19] outbreak, leading in turn to more infections” and the likelihood that the virus will then spread beyond those nations’ borders, restarting the global outbreak.

CCI’s appeal draws attention to the obvious inhumanity of the United States’ actions against Iran in particular, a country whose economy was already in shambles thanks to the so-called ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions regime …

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Paul Grenier
Talking Heads: Why Tucker Carlson Tell It Like It Is

[Published Feb. 10, 2020 in The National Interest ]

Over the past few years, an unusual political-philosophical realignment has appeared in the United States, one which brings together a certain kind of Christian conservative and a certain kind of secular leftist.

Judging from their public pronouncements, what unites these contrasting camps is a concern for ordinary workers, their families and their communities, and a refusal to worship at the altar of profit maximization and technological change. And that is just by way of first approximation. This is still a moving target. By far the most well-known member of the group to which I am referring is Fox News host Tucker Carlson. His show is the second most popular news show on American television today. With a figure like Carlson finally championing these ideas, a “new” strain of conservative thought has finally pushed its way into the public square.

READ ARTICLE ON THE NATIONAL INTEREST

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Paul Grenier