Fox News’ abrupt dismissal of Tucker Carlson last week was celebrated by top brass at the Pentagon and by comedian Jimmy Kimmel — but it was mourned by millions of others who found in Carlson a rare chance to feel part of something truer and saner than late-night comedy and U.S. foreign policy.
Read MoreFrom the perspective of the Russian political philosopher Konstantin Krylov, Russia’s civilizational order is not liberal—in most respects, it is the very opposite of liberal. At the same time, Russia has, over the course of centuries, failed to properly come into its own as its own civilizational type. From Peter the Great to Vladimir Putin, Russia has lingered in a stunted, oversimplified version of its own “Northern” national idea even as it has repeatedly taken up, like children playing at dress-up, the civilizational ideas of others. Like much of the rest of the world, Russia at present is playing at liberalism.
Read MoreRussian claims that the war in Ukraine has a genuine spiritual or religious dimension have been met with disdain. Such disdain has come not only from the secular-minded proponents of liberalism from which we would expect it but also from conservative commentators and critics of secularization such, for example, as the Catholic George Weigel, an editor at First Things and author of a leading biography of (St) John Paul II. To Weigel, it is axiomatic that, when they invoke religious or cultural-spiritual justifications for the war, the Russians are lying
Read MoreDavid L. Schindler passed away yesterday. His loss is an enormous one to the American Church and to the Church universal. His loss is also an enormous one to our intellectual culture, for his was a giant and capacious intellect. And his loss is an enormous one to those of us who knew him and loved him. He will be greatly missed. In what follows, I would like to honor his memory by explaining, briefly, his impact on my thought. I will only say enough about me in order to say three important things that Dave taught me.
Read MorePolitical legitimacy is a subjective phenomenon. People often speak of it as if it has objective criteria, which in the discourse of modern liberalism are often associated with ideas such as free and fair elections and respect of human rights. In reality, though, a state is legitimate if people consider it legitimate, regardless of any such criteria. Indeed, legitimacy is precisely that – a measure of people’s subjective acceptance. This leads to an important conclusion – legitimacy is dependent on others.
Read More… The relationship between the liberal intelligentsia and the state that followed replicated in some respects that of the generations before 1917, but with some additional tragicomic twists. Isolated from the West under Communism, Russian liberals engaged in blind adulation of the West and went overboard for some of the most fatuous and contemptible aspects of Western culture. This was coupled with an extreme and ostentatious version of metropolitan elite contempt for the masses – but at a time when those masses were suffering terribly as a result of the Westernizing economic policies urged on by the liberals. This combination wrecked the ability of Russian liberals to gain mass support, and helped open the way for Putin’s program of authoritarian state restoration.
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