Many of the ancient world’s best and brightest—Plato and Aristotle in particular—held democracy to be among the worst possible forms of government because the great majority of men and women are ruled not by their reason but by their passions.
may we avoid the misery of headlines as much as possible and avail ourselves of the riches of the Western tradition, whose great authors and artists give glimpses of that Beauty, ever ancient, ever new.
Abominations like mass shootings lead us to look for causes in the form of racism, of guns, of media distortions, but we must resist the quick-draw realm of social media takes and their inability to distinguish between proximate and remote causes.
In today’s public discourse, all opposition is perceived as contradictory: One can support either a conservative politician or the dignity of women. One can eat meat or be environmentally conscious. There’s no third option.
In our current Woke culture, the body ceases to be determinative for human life, and we become some perverted vision of the angelic.