For conservatives, Catholics, and other Christians, the midterms might accurately be described as a disaster. There is no benefit in pretending that things are better than they are; humility demands a true recognition of our status.

Exit polls and even the President himself point toward the Iran War and its impacts on the economy as primary driving factors behind those who voted for Democrats, and those who simply failed to show up to vote for conservatives. If that is true (and it seems likely), there is a tragedy in the fact that people would ultimately care more about economic issues than moral ones. Dostoevsky asked the harrowing question whether we would be willing to build a perfect civilization if it depended on the torture and death of one innocent child. It would seem that for many, they would be content with the death of many children if it would lead to a cheap fill-up at the gas pump.

As someone who has been critical of the Iran War, the frustrations are relatable, but the corresponding actions are not. It cannot be the case that household expenses (as important as they are) should matter more than the moral issues that were being voted upon, both directly and indirectly (by election of pro-abortion candidates).

In fact, when voters were given referenda, they voted to expand abortion availability in nearly every state where it was at-issue (with the exception of Idaho). Pro-abortionists did not campaign on mottos like “safe, legal, and rare,” but with the vapid promotion of women’s choice and bodily autonomy. In fact, the abortion debate is no longer centered on when a child becomes “alive,” as we saw in historic arguments that bickered about whether the child was alive at 6 weeks, 8 weeks, 12 weeks, 15 weeks, and so on. Instead, it is widely accepted that the baby is alive, and yet this factor is granted no moral significance.

Voting against data centers became a primary area of unification between the two parties, which seems to combine environmentalism with a hatred of AI and corporations more broadly. Forty-one data center-related ballot measures were up for a vote on Wednesday, with 40 of them resulting in passage. There is more consistency and unification on data centers than whether we should provide medical care to children who survive their own abortions. Whatever one’s stance on data centers, this fact should make us all shudder.

Eight trans-identifying people were elected during the midterms, in what is being acclaimed as the “gayest Congress in history.” While that is indubitably true, it is hardly a reassuring sign for things to come, whether we are imagining the future of protecting minors from mutilation, ensuring fairness in sports, or attempting to pass any moral legislation. These people are either profoundly mentally ill or are fetishistically seeking attention by acting in the most degrading and degenerate ways available to them. Even if their roles were entirely impotent, their election reflects badly on the electorate and provides a devastating example to young people.

In the state of North Carolina, voters chose a seemingly nonsensical combination. They opted to necessitate voter ID (again) and to put restrictions on taxation in the state, while also paradoxically electing Democrats (who are opposed to voter ID and in favor of higher taxes).

So when people ask, “Are things really as bad as they seem?,” we ought to recognize that in some ways, they are actually worse. This Congress will not accomplish much. President Trump would rather resentfully veto every bill that reaches his desk than work with the people who persecuted him and his family, and this will be to our benefit. Therefore, there will be another election before Congress is able to make major changes. However, we must lament the moral state of the country.

The American republic was set up for a moral people, and we cannot honestly say that we have that. Those who are fighting in favor of the pro-life cause are not reaching the majority, and ground is gradually being lost. The legal system is likewise being used to change the moral landscape and set a standard of acceptability that none of us should be comfortable with.

We need leaders to step forward and shift the Overton window by speaking the truth clearly and publicly. Likewise, we need to step into positions of structural power so as to begin engaging in cultural change regardless of whether it is an election year. This looks different for each person, but nonetheless is meaningful. Not every person is called to public life, but we are each called to express the Truth in (and by) our lives and to wield our positions well. There is much work to be done.

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This essay was written for Crisis Magazine, so you may read it in full there (freely). While anyone is welcome to read it, it will be most intelligible to Catholics. The introduction follows:

Imagine that you’re in a quiet chapel and trying to pray before the tabernacle. But in the sanctuary, staring at you, is someone else. That person is also, at least nominally, trying to pray. It is easy to imagine that this mutual posture is not conducive to the most productive kind of prayer. Yet, this is increasingly how we orient our highest form of worship, with neglect for the impact on the priest who leads such prayer.

Every weekday morning, I co-host a Catholic radio show, which we begin with a classic Morning Offering: “O my Jesus, through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I offer you my works, sufferings…” The show is available on YouTube, so I am looking into a lens throughout. For months I have been haunted by the question, “Am I really praying?” I am performing the physical gestures and saying the right words, but if prayer (imperfectly defined) is to place oneself in the presence of God, it would be very difficult for me to say yes.

Ultimately, however earnestly I am trying to pray, I am conscious of the live audience and how they perceive the moment. They evaluate everything: the perceived flippancy or reverence as I cross myself, the emphasis placed on certain words, whether I glance around the room or stay focused, whether I nod at the name of Jesus, everything. As a result, that prayer becomes inherently somewhat performative.

Keep reading at Crisis Magazine…

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America is poised to go to the polls once again. Not for the first time, she finds herself faced with imperfect candidates—because even those men who try, fail. It is a season wherein we feel most confident in identifying the flaws in others that we would rather not see in ourselves.

Yet good things are happening. The first detransition clinic opened within the last couple of days, which seems unavoidably symbolic. It is the end of the era in which people could assert that so-called gender transitioning was without its risks and would not be something that its victims could come to regret. Please recall that scared parents were told that their children would commit suicide if they did not sign off on such procedures.

Now, as the fervor calms, we can finally acknowledge the scale of the damage. Those girls who had double mastectomies, euphemistically called “top surgeries,” will never be able to breastfeed their children. Many of those girls given long-term testosterone will struggle with infertility. The same goes for boys given estrogen. Both groups maldeveloped in ways that make normal life harder thereafter, such as the women who now have permanently masculine voices because of how testosterone affected their vocal cords. Some of those children even had their genitalia mutilated, creating permanent disfigurement and infertility.

The new clinic will attempt to reverse the damage where it can, as will others that are scheduled to open around the country next year, but “detransitioning” is as much an experimental science as “transitioning” was. The effects of this vapid ideology will be felt tangibly by its victims for the rest of their lives.

The Texas clinic is the result of political forces that prioritized the battle and fought against these ideologues. The Department of Justice and TX Attorney General Ken Paxton led the fight against Texas Children’s Hospital, insisting on the creation of the detransition clinic as part of an eventual settlement. It will provide free services for the next five years.

This brings us to where we are—because we must acknowledge that political figures have tremendous power over people’s lives, especially the most vulnerable (as those teens were). We will not find perfect people in the political arena, just as we do not find them in the mirror, but we must choose those who are at least aiming for the good.

We must hierarchize, remembering that our religious and ideological enemies are certainly doing so. In fact, that is why inaction can be so devastating. Refusing to engage in the political sphere does not mean that things will freeze as they are, but that they will be moved by those who show up.

We ought to prioritize the defense of innocent life first, opposing abortion and euthanasia, because life in the moral order is like oil in modern economics. It is foundational such that all other things depend on it. No matter how you feel about education or healthcare, people must be alive to appreciate them. Any argument about rights or favorite programs must first acknowledge the sanctity of human life from conception until natural death.

Then we must look at the protection of the family unit, for it is the building block of society. This includes the defense of the true definition of marriage. This is also where we acknowledge the immediate need to protect children and their innocence, create policies that reduce the burden on young families, and acknowledge parents as the ultimate protectors and educators of their children.

By focusing on a short list of tangible priorities, we can avoid being overwhelmed by the frenetic season or driven to despair by the announcement of scandals. Instead, we can rightly focus on what is most important and do the highest good that is available to us. While we live in a deeply individualistic society, we must recognize the truth that so many of the devastating policies that have torn apart families in recent decades were instituted from the top.

Power matters, so it must be seized by those who seek to institute moral policies. The libertarian-esque approach of refusing to assert moral authority has led to far too many drag queen story hours for children. The society that defends such depravity does not deserve to exist, and cannot endure. Let us do what we can to defend the pillars of society, recognizing the limitations, but choosing the highest good nonetheless.

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France never seems too far from a rambunctious protest-turned-riot, so even when engulfed streets reach our press, few raise more than an eyebrow. But there is something fascinating about the Marxist-Islamic alliance that is behind the flames.

On the surface, the far-left and the social policies of wanton openness have nothing in common with the religious rigidity sought by Islamists. Yet, both find the West an enemy to be destroyed. Both abhor the Christian underpinnings of Europe and seek to burn the lasting symbols of former ages.

The open border policies of the Left are the conclusion of an ideological assertion that there is nothing domestic that is worth defending. It is only within that framework that it is defensible to usher in hordes of Muslim men. Further, it is asserted that Europe is built on oppression and there is therefore a kind of equalizing justice in opening one’s doors to foreigners who have not played a role in the raising of such repressive institutions.

So many of those imported Muslims likewise look upon all things recognizably Western as deserving of destruction, not because they are “patriarchal,” but because they represent an enemy that would (and did) prevent the spread of global Islam. Ironically, Mohammadans so often sneer at modern Western institutions for not being patriarchal enough, which one could see as comedically tinted when considering the feminists who simultaneously promote open borders to followers of Islam while trying to emasculate Western institutions.

So the political Left brought the arsonists who would burn the streets of France with impunity. Together, their alliance brings about the next stage of purging. Let us not forget that as dire as recent pictures of burning France look, the French Revolution that sought to similarly sever France from her history and her Faith was far more bloody. Modern France is in no small part rooted in the godless anarchy that saw nuns slaughtered for their fidelity.

It could even be said that the France that now burns does so as a result of a long-standing, nihilistic ethos that reframed the purging of history with the euphemistic label of Enlightenment. A callous rejection of the past does not necessitate a future of decency or betterment. Instead, it vaporizes the attachments that give people a sense of duty to their posterity.

When we of the Christian tradition see a building of beautiful, classical architecture in flames, we rarely merely lament—we grieve. We feel an almost personal sense of loss, even for a place we have never been and likely would never go. Our collective loss as people of this shared tradition is felt individually, because that is what it means to have a culture. One should feel a part thereof—connected to its art, architecture, music, and faith. We are already almost severed from it, such that we look upon such places as reminders of our history rather than of our shared home.

It is no wonder then that foreigners should wish its destruction. Yet herein, one can more fully understand the type of betrayal being perpetrated by those who seek to tear down what was theirs by inheritance, but which they declined to receive.

As we watch Europe burn, and as we feel pangs of grief, let us understand why. In our history, and God willing in our future, there are physical reminders of our search for the good, and of our reaching for the beautiful. In the Western tradition that we called Christendom, we attempted to build in recognition of the soul of man, that he might be uplifted to a higher mode of living, so as to better aim for his permanent Home. That was never a flawed idea, but rather was representative of our shared Faith. While we may be heading toward turbulent times, we must recollect that what guided our former brethren to aim so highly might also guide us when it is time to rebuild.

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When a tiger mauled a man to death at Yorkshire Wildlife Park, we might expect certain responses. The event was witnessed and videoed by horrified zoo attendees, and those videos have subsequently been passed around online. Such demonstrations provide rare exposure in our time to the barbarity and viciousness that so many Christian martyrs suffered when they were condemned to be torn apart by wild beasts.

While it is typical to consider our society to be more civilized than those of ancient Rome, the majority of responses on social media platforms demonstrated that onlookers were not appalled. In fact, they emphasized the importance of the tiger’s welfare, and expressed concern after zoo attendees reported that they had heard “the sound of gunshots.” To be clear: they were not concerned about the man, but the fate of the tiger. Later reports indicate that response teams at the zoo fired warning shots in the direction of the tiger. They did not shoot the tiger.

To cover this topic seems to require an abundance of statements that ought to be self-evident. Firstly, people should not enter tiger enclosures, and there is a good chance of being seriously harmed if they choose to do so. It is also true that when a human being is in danger from an animal, we should try to assist them, including by killing the animal that poses an active threat.

We still do not know why the young man chose to jump into the enclosure. It has been heavily speculated that he was mentally disabled, which seems to be a reasonable assumption, but he has not yet been publicly identified. Audio footage exists in which he asked an onlooker to take his picture in front of the tiger exhibit before he jumped only minutes later. We do know that a woman tried to stop him, but was not strong enough to do so.

As alarming as the attack itself was, the number of people who immediately favored the tiger in the altercation was far more so. A quick tweet regarding human worth became a highly controversial item:

Responses varied in their attempts at logic. Some were aghast at the very notion that human life could have more value, others attempted to reduce such value to a monetary figure, some reduced morality to a mere numbers game as to which species contains more members, and still others employed Darwinian understanding to justify allowing the man to die without assistance.

Those who claimed that a simplistic “survival of the fittest” Darwinian argument ought to settle the question failed to acknowledge that tigers face near extinction because of humans. So, if power is to be our moral standard, then the tiger would not fare well.

Often, the argument was convoluted to a misunderstanding as to why we should “punish” the tiger for “doing tiger things.” Shooting an attacking tiger is not about punishment, however, it is merely and specifically an action to save the life of a young man who was actively being killed. The incident was not the tiger’s “fault,” which is to say that the tiger does not bear moral culpability because it is incapable of that degree of reason.

That fact alone makes the point: tigers are lesser than humans in part because they lack that which makes humans unique. Tigers act largely based on instinct. Further, they are not made in the image and likeness of God, and they lack the uniquely human rational nature that endows us with the duty of moral responsibility. The human person possesses a dignity that the tiger cannot share.

These conclusions were once the basis of Christian society. That they should be considered confusing or difficult questions in modern America (and even more so in England) should make us shudder not only for our direction, but for what that entails. After all, the pre-eminent issues of our time converge on this topic of the unique nature and worth of man.

The willingness to abort children when they are disabled or inconvenient, the increasing acceptance of euthanasia at the end of life, and the misunderstanding about human value compared to animals, all express a complete failure of modernity to see man’s worth. Throughout Christendom, we would have pointed toward the Incarnation, in which God exalted Man by becoming one of us, as that further evidence of the importance of humanity—because of our importance to God. God uniquely dignified man’s nature by assuming it in the person of Christ. We would have pointed to His voluntary suffering and His request that we bear our own crosses as evidence for the redemptive nature of our tribulation and how such challenges do not reduce our inherent dignity. We would have asserted that because of who we are to Him, we are not defined by our suffering, our disabilities, or our weakness.

But now, people look at those who make foolish decisions as deserving of death by torture. They look at tigers as having the same or greater worth than that of a young man. They understand no distinctive difference between the life of a human and the prowling cat. May God have mercy on us.

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We are seeing an increase in high-profile cases wherein the rightful focus is migrated from the act that a criminal committed onto any extenuating circumstances that can lead to a plausible diagnosis. In other words, we seek to pathologize evil. It is easier for us to declare people sick than it is to acknowledge the malevolent capacity of each one of us. If this ideology is accepted, one might be forgiven for asking whether we should we close the prisons and open only hospitals. Criminal rehabilitation is all that we dare utter, punishment being a word no longer spoken.

In our excuse-making for those who have committed violent acts following a troubled early life, we engage in a moral crime against all of those who have experienced similar hardship (including those who did not go on to engage in brutality). If we proclaim that those who have experienced hardship, even extreme tribulation, are not responsible for their crimes thereafter, then we do them the injustice of denying their humanity.

We assert that they must become so defined by the darkness that they experienced that they cease to be meaningfully human. Our ability to reason is a primary delineating factor in what separates us from mere animal. We know right from wrong and we are able to choose it. Some experiences can certainly intensify temptation and make choosing the good harder, but they do not vitiate our autonomy. Those who have harmed us cannot rob us of our humanity or of our will.

Many of the martyrs have taken solace in the fact that even in the most extreme moments, they were still able to take a moment to pray to the one true God. In that most intimate of ways, and in the midst of grotesque persecution, they had their own will and they chose the Good.

The modern assertion of victimhood is being morphed into a proclamation that those who have suffered are no more than their wounds—that they are no more than their abusers believed them to be. Instead, they are reduced to mere pets by the social scientists who offer a type of absolution by dehumanization.

Christa Pike had a long history of childhood sexual abuse and neglect. But then at eighteen years old, she collaborated with two others to torture a fellow classmate to death. Thereafter, she kept a trophy of the murdered student’s skull and took it to school to show off to her friends. She was later sent to death row. The case became high profile in recent weeks as she prepared to face the death penalty, with large swaths arguing that her early history was not adequately taken into account at her sentencing.

Hers was not a split-second decision that was made via a trauma-induced reactivity. This was the slow torture and carving up of a classmate, followed by continued boasting in the aftermath. If we wish to proclaim that Christa Pike was simply affected by her early life to such a degree that her actions are in some way understandable, then we must proclaim that in those acts of abuse that she suffered, she lost her agency. She becomes a mere product of someone else’s decision making, and it is hard to muster a more unchristian ethos.

Fr. Alfred Delp, S.J, who was eventually executed by the Nazis for being a Jesuit and part of the resistance to the regime, wrote rather differently about those who have suffered:

“We need people who are moved by the horrific calamities and emerge from them with the knowledge that those who look to the Lord will be preserved by Him, even if they are hounded from the earth.” —Alfred Delp

There is a dignity in man that cannot be eviscerated by suffering, but is exemplified by those who choose to become lights in the world despite their circumstances. If we do the opposite and thereby implicitly proclaim that those who have suffered are without agency, how else might we typify that? Do we deny victims of horrors the right to vote? Do we deny them the ability to own the weapons that they might need to defend themselves?

While this might seem outlandish (and rightly so), it is the logical conclusion of the argument that is being made. There is no reason why this denial of agency must only exist within the justice system; in fact, that is necessarily unjust. Either people have agency and that should be acknowledged everywhere, or they don’t, and that likewise must be reflected throughout other areas of life.

Our denial of malevolence within the human heart is excused as a type of compassion, but it actually does great harm societally and individually. We must acknowledge acts of evil and be willing to confront them, else we will be rendered incapable of enacting justice. Moreover, via such a broken ideology, we will rob real victims of the dignity that comes with a recognized moral duty. Prior suffering can make the choosing of goodness especially virtuous, because it is harder, but it cannot mitigate our responsibility such that it denies who and what we are. We are called to act as moral agents and therein will we elevate ourselves above those who have induced suffering unjustly and against those who would deny our personhood.

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The age of widespread transgender surgeries for minors appears to be coming to an end. Not only is individual tolerance lowering for such behaviors, but pressure from the top is being exerted on the ideologues who caused harm.

Interestingly, the key momentum for much of this did not come through cultural debate, but rather through an administration that was willing to use pre-existing laws to protect the vulnerable. In January 2025, President Trump issued the executive order "Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation," which aimed to use the power of the federal government to stop these practices via insurance rules, grant denials, medicaid changes, and direct pressure by the Department of Justice.

In April of that year, then-Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a memorandum titled “Preventing the Mutilation of American Children,” directing the Department of Justice to seek out and prosecute those who were violating federal law in the drugging and mutilating of children. Since then, major hospitals have reached settlements with the DOJ, putting an end to the butchery and in some cases even funding healthcare for the victims:

• NYU Langone Hospitals: Agreed to pay $8.5 million and stop trying to transition minors.

• University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC): Agreed to pay $950,000 and cease such pediatric procedures.

• Mount Sinai Health System: Agreed to cease these interventions and dedicate $2 million for care related to adverse outcomes.

• Cleveland Clinic Foundation: Reached an agreement committing to end these interventions and fund $2 million in care for those previously affected.

• Connecticut Children’s Medical Center: Agreed to halt the procedures and dedicate $500,000 for patient care support.

• Texas Children’s Hospital: Reached a resolution involving the establishment of a detransition clinic framework.

Those who are prone to cynicism will reflexively pronounce that such changes are only as temporary as an administration, but that might not be so. The legal climate has now become such that it is not merely institutions, but individual doctors and nurses who fear the penalties of their decisions.

For an example of this in action, we can look to Children’s Hospital Colorado in Aurora, Colorado. The hospital stopped prescribing puberty blockers in January 2026, citing government pressure. Four families sued, alleging that they were being discriminated against in a way that was prohibited under Colorado law. The Colorado Supreme Court ruled 5–2 that the hospital’s suspension likely violated state anti-discrimination law and ordered the hospital to resume providing puberty blockers and hormones to minors. That is when the case became interesting.

On June 16th, 2026, the hospital announced that it had technically resumed so-called “gender-affirming care,” but that no doctors were willing to write such prescriptions because they were afraid of violating federal law. Hence, the hospital was now operating within the confines of the legal framework, allowing such drugs to be prescribed but without having a single doctor who was willing to place himself at personal risk by doing so. Herein we come to the crux of the issue.

We have reached a moment in which those in positions of power are finally doing the right thing, because of fear of doing otherwise. This dark era of carnage has shown us that large swaths of doctors were not committed to performing medicine as such, which is to say, of being healers. Instead, they were willing to engage in such novel experimentation on children for the sake of either financial gain or (perhaps worse) notoriety in their field.

While some might find this observation repugnant, we saw something similar during the covid era, when so few in the medical field were willing to speak against the grain. The family doctor who is not attached to a large conglomerate and feels free to act according to his own judgment is largely a thing of the past.

Given this reality, we find ourselves in a situation where both of these factors are in play:

1. Medical personnel are no longer lionized as a heroic class. This began to change within public consciousness during the COVID era (after an initial surge of trust), and plummeted further with the transgender scandals.

2. Those who otherwise would rather follow the status quo will nevertheless be compelled to do what is right out of fear of consequence.

The latter point might remind us of Nietzsche’s claim that most morality is cowardice rather than goodness. That certainly is not what we aim for, nor is it the basis of a Christian society, but it is something.

While many fought in the culture wars, teenagers who spent too much time on Instagram were getting themselves permanently sterilized by doctors who told them (falsely) that they could stop anytime without long-term consequence.

Doctors are now being sued and losing court battles for their individual roles in this diabolical fad. A New York jury awarded $2 million to Fox Varian, who underwent a double mastectomy at sixteen and later sued her psychologist, Dr. Kenneth Einhorn, and her plastic surgeon, Dr. Simon Chin. Payouts like that will mean that malpractice insurance will soon be unaffordable for those who wish to practice this experimentation.

In other words, in tangible ways, the battle is being won. Those who fought most successfully used systems of power to achieve such goods. They did not assent to the libertarian claim that conservatives must argue in the public sphere ad infinitum and never use government or law. Instead, protection of children was a priority, and cultural tolerance of this spectacle decreased thereafter. It is a case of leaders being willing to lead.

Those who abuse, sterilize, and mutilate children should be afraid of legal consequences. In any just society, they would rightly be held accountable for their damage. As we reflect on a saga that left so many children with irreversible damage, we ought to use the opportunity to reflect on the variety of people and institutions that played a role. The medical system practiced the direct barbarism, but the legal system facilitated the removal of children taken from their families, academia expelled students and faculty for using biologically correct pronouns, and the entertainment system engaged in a campaign of desensitization and normalization.

The apprehension by those on the right regarding the use of power has merely led to a ceding of institutions and a growing body count. Methods that fail to protect children are not worth engaging with. There is nothing wrong with using legal systems and hierarchies to bring about good. That is what happened here, and truthfully, it is the way positive changes were usually made throughout most of human history.

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The symbols, architecture, and labels that we use do not merely affect our understanding of what those things mean; they affect how we understand our placement within a broader culture.

President Trump has been doing a lot of renaming of late. No sooner had Lake Ontario been renamed to Lake America than he began floating the idea of a “Trump Strait” in the Middle East. But his trend is not limited to naming; it addresses symbolism more broadly. Next, he took aim at the Infinity sculpture outside of the Smithsonian Museum, demanding that it be replaced with a statue of George Washington. He asserted that Washington represents America better, which is hard to argue with.

Many simply laugh (or roll their eyes) at these changes because some of his alterations seem to merely reflect an egocentrism, but let us consider that President Trump understands something of the importance of symbolism, however imperfectly implemented.

We have largely moved away from representative symbolism and abandoned the desire to use icons to reinforce group loves. Our companies and institutions are much more inward-focused, and with the exception of deeply divisive class warfare, we tend not to see symbolism of broader concepts of patriotism, national identity, or group culture.

I was in Washington DC with friends over Labor Day weekend, and as we were walking, we came across an eyesore of a building. The dialogue between us went as follows:

If it had been an IRS building, then at least we could unabashedly proclaim a fittingness of its grotesque exterior (not to worry, the IRS building has a foreboding grandeur instead).

We intuitively connect a building’s exterior with its function. Historic churches understood this point best, as they attempted to point the soul to Heaven by their beauty. The best of them stand as witnesses to incalculable sacrifice and devotion, such that they become an offering of sorts to God. When walking inside such ornate churches of antiquity, one quickly realizes that the people who designed and built them were not aiming for minimalism or for the least that would serve a task. They were building with recognition that the people who entered had souls, and would be formed by what they saw and where they worshipped.

We too must design, build, and name as if the people of our cities have souls. We might trivialize something as small as a sculpture outside of a museum, but when combined together, seemingly minor identifiers of a culture can be important for making a people feel that they belong. We have become so individualistic and utilitarian as a culture that it can be difficult to acknowledge a need for group identity.

Yet those on the Left, who excel in group dynamics, have been waging this war for decades. As they toppled statues, renamed buildings, and sullied American heroes, the Right opposed those moves verbally but provided no real counter response.

By effectively ceding the field, we allow young people to mature with a diminished sense of belonging. In so doing, we give them no sense of duty or responsibility toward what they inherit. To them, the country can feel much more like a mere collection of corporations than a people with an identity and a culture. That impoverishment leaves them vulnerable to the communistic blandishments that they will be exposed to in modern academic settings.

In his post-apocalyptic novel, A Canticle for Liebowitz, Walter M. Miller Jr. describes a society in which the culture no longer points toward the good:

“For Man was a culture-bearer as well as a soul-bearer, but his cultures were not immortal and they could die with a race or an age, and then human reflections of meaning and human portrayals of truth receded, and truth and meaning resided, unseen, only in the objective logos of nature and the ineffable Logos of God.”

We must remember that our culture too, is not immortal. We have to decide what unites us as a people, what symbols represent who we are, and whether the distinctiveness of our culture is worth defending. If we do not defend and actively assert these things, then they will be effaced until we no longer recognize the ground upon which we stand.

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Lindsay Clancy doesn’t deny strangling each of her children to death, so the fact that she has become an icon and hero to so many women ought to give us pause. After all, it’s one thing to identify mental illness as a causative factor in a horrific crime, but it’s another thing entirely to join a fan club and stand outside the courthouse with a picket sign.

When reading through the pronouncements defending Lindsay, it’s clear that a plethora of women are over-identifying with her, either as mothers who have been overwhelmed at some point, or as women who felt that their health concerns weren’t taken seriously. Perversely, in engaging with such exaggerated empathy for the villain, all empathy is lost for the children who died slowly at her hand. If we can so easily have sympathy for an overwhelmed or depressed mother, why not what it would feel like to know that your own mother is about to kill you, as she just did your closest friend—your brother? The distorted lens that sees merely a vulnerable woman instead of a serial murderer is simultaneously incapable of seeing the humanity of those most vulnerable, confused, and scared children at the end of their short lives.

If we step back and examine the argument directly, we can more easily see the depths of evil, and further how destructive the principal claims would be if they were applied to society broadly. The main posited argument is basically, “I’ve had similar dark thoughts, so she shouldn’t face the full consequences for her actions.” Presumably though, even those women who had such occasional dark thoughts, and who now support Lindsay, did not act on them. Are we to suggest that their inaction is regrettable or at least immaterial? By their current protests, they implicitly assert that they would have been blameless in such an instance, even while their living children demonstrate that they had enough control to choose not to follow through on disturbing impulses. If they had such control, their experiences are not a basis to assert that Lindsay did not.

It’s part of the normal scope of human existence to occasionally have dark fantasies in difficult moments. For example, plenty of teenagers have fantasized about shooting their high school bullies, yet nobody asserts that we should therefore stop punishing school shooters. Plenty of drivers have considered ramming those who cut them off in traffic, yet we still rightly punish those who do. The cost would be incalculable if we were to devolve the justice system into some version of, “Let’s just forgive those who actualize any dark thought we’ve ever had.” It would surrender even the pretense of justice, and would raise empathy for the offender over compassion and justice for the wronged.

We already see that happening to a limited degree, wherein routine criminals are sent for psychiatric help, released after a short time, and then re-offend (creating new victims). But why does Lindsay’s crime generate literal crowds of sympathetic fans and other crimes do not?

This is where we find ourselves contemplating something that none of us want to consider seriously: that Clancy’s supporters are a mere logical extension of the expanding abortion argument. Pro-abortion advocates in recent years have stopped focusing on viability (“It’s okay until X weeks!”) or even on personhood (“It’s just a clump of cells!”). Instead, the focus has been on the autonomy, purported rights, convenience, and choice of the mother. That’s a significant change in messaging.

If the abortion movement now largely exists on the premise that a baby has no right to life because of the burden on his/her mother, on what basis do they draw the line at birth? Ultimately, that is merely a matter of location (inside or outside of the womb). We may, in fact, be moving toward a reality in which some maintain that a child has no fundamental right to life until he reaches a certain age at which he is no longer considered dependent (and therefore burdensome). While plenty of readers may scoff at the suggestion, it was certainly true in older societies that lacked a Christian ethos—why not a future one?

The underlying philosophical claims that we are making about children are having growing consequences on our legal framework and the broader culture. The women who are claiming that Lindsay Clancy was not responsible for her actions might unintentionally result in a distorted understanding of the nature of women too. If their claims were accepted, and we were to assert that women are not responsible for the killing of their children, then we would also eviscerate their claims of agency. If they lack culpability, then they likewise would not be granted legal decision-making either.

Ultimately, how we treat children matters, and a failure to acknowledge the gross injustice of their deaths points to a society that already devalues them as less significant than their attacker. Most villains have complicated stories, whether it be depression, anxiety, broken homes, abusive parents, drug addiction, and the like. Despite those things, we still acknowledge that part of being good is the willingness to use one’s agency to make choices that reject evil temptations. Such people are neither pets nor projects, they are people who must be held to account for the decisions they have made, on both sides of the grave.

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You’re running. Someone is trying to kill you. Your chest feels tight and you can barely breathe as you step into an alley to hide. You pull out your phone with a trembling hand and struggle to dial 911 as your sweaty fingers make streaks on its surface. You press the dial button and prepare to whisper to the dispatcher, when you hear an artificial voice say, “What’s your emergency?”

This is the dream being conceived of in New Orleans, where the plan to use AI to answer and rate 911 calls is about to become a reality. Only after the AI is ‘convinced’ of your urgency would you get to speak to a human. Other calls would be dealt with entirely by the machine.

New Orleans has one of the highest 911 call volumes in the country, so advocates of this plan are highlighting efficiency and improved call routing. They may even be right. But what we gain in the practical can have a human cost that is not easily quantifiable.

Let us be clear: 911 operators are sometimes the last voice that some poor soul hears before he or she dies. Whether a person is suffering from a heart attack, has been in a car accident, or is actively under attack, 911 operators are a lifeline in more than one way. Yes, fundamentally, they are there to send first responders to a scene. But the secondary function matters too—they represent a “person on the end of the phone.” That’s a phrase that would have no real emotional meaning to an AI bot, but it means something to all of us.

In a manner that is challenging to articulate but no less real, there is a comfort in knowing that the other person knows what it is to suffer—to panic, grieve, and to feel desperate. By the very nature of being human, we share in suffering.

Remember the groan that you exhale when calling a company and being greeted by a robotic menu that serves as a firewall against a fast resolution? The very antithesis of that is the warmth that is possible when someone in desperation calls for help and reaches a human. It’s true—a person on the other end of the phone in a crisis isn’t enough, but it’s something. It matters to be heard, not merely to be siphoned through algorithmic prioritization.

As a society and community, we should care enough to want people to be accompanied in their darkest moments, even imperfectly. Not every 911 dispatcher is wonderful, but at least we leave space for human goodness by having dispatchers who know what it is to struggle. It is impossible to calculate and explain the human cost of letting people die while being accompanied by what is essentially a voicemail box, but we ought to shudder at what it says about us if we allow it.

On the more practical level: people pick up subtleties that a machine simply cannot. There have been numerous publicized cases of domestic violence calls in which the victim calls in a large pizza order. The operator understood what was happening, took the address, and sent police. Would AI? The bot could, of course, be trained to understand that lingo and respond accordingly, but what about the first time? The first operator who took that original call wasn’t trained that pizza would be used as a code word for help, but he could hear a panicked voice and intuited that something was very wrong. It is the nuances like that that we cannot replace.

So many of the areas that are being filled with AI are holes where we had gross inefficiencies and redundancies. Tasks that are monotonous and dulling to the senses are undoubtedly some of the best to be filled by emerging technologies. Yet we must pause before placing any computer where a soul is needed instead.

We’re a bit confounded by this notion because we rarely talk (or think) in those terms nowadays, especially in the corporate world. We think of employees completing tasks that must get done, not as people who have souls that ought to be acknowledged. But both can be true. The most valid critiques of mega corporations center around the reduction of human beings to merely workers. It is a tragic reality that we ought to work to change.

As we attempt to reorder society using newer technologies, we must remember that people are not mere data sets that need to be handled according to efficiencies and economic effectiveness. There is more to us than that, and as such, we should make sure that those who suffer in their most vulnerable moments don’t do so alone.

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Dr. Anthony Fauci frustrated much of America by refusing to testify before the Senate hearing earlier this week. He was granted a sweeping pardon by then-President Joe Biden, so he need not worry about federal charges, but he may be concerned about his brand. His newly released diaries show that he exhibited glee and excitement as he became a household name, so branding is not naught to him. In truth, how we are remembered (and understood) matters to most of us. That said, Fauci’s “brand” is tied to something bigger—to the brand of medicine itself.

During the collective panic of the covid era, Fauci wasn’t just one doctor in a white coat. He wasn’t even just the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) or just the Chief Medical Advisor to the President of the United States. He was the personification of medicine as a unified body. One might go further still and say that he personified scientism, as made clear by the “Follow the science” maxim. (Scientism is a heretical ideology that raises empiricism and skepticism as unerring and as the only methods to know truth.) As the embodiment thereof, Fauci could neither lie nor be wrong. His intentions must be pure and noble.

Doctors and nurses were fired for questioning the policies that he recommended, and which so many (blindly) implemented. The damage is still largely untold as people not only lost their livelihoods, but young children failed to learn to discern emotions from facial expressions that were hidden beneath masks during formative years of their lives. Students did so poorly in work-from-home environments that schools and colleges auto-passed them because it became impractical to do anything else. Depression and suicides soared. Sick people died alone in hospitals and nursing homes. The grieving were denied funerals in which they might find closure and pray collectively for the dead. And these are merely the social consequences of such “scientific” policies.

The face of it all—whom we were told not to question—was connected to the lab that likely started it and to the media figures that accelerated the panic. Now, there’s a desperation to get Fauci to testify and to get to the truth of what happened. But the truth is much more disturbing than one man. The truth is that the cultish adherence to medical authorities during that period revealed the true allegiance of most Americans. Under the auspices of “the science,” every public and private function could be rent asunder.

As such, medicine has a branding issue. Trust in the industry has been greatly weakened. But scapegoating one man (however guilty he is), does not fix the faith problem that was exposed during the covid years. Too many people have a faith in medicine and science that is pseudo-religious in nature. Medicine’s self-presentation as a force against human suffering and death at any cost poses it in a god-like role and its practitioners as saviors. Yet because medicine is merely a human institution, it will fail by error and by vice. Thus, it presents a poor foundation for any society.

Medicine doesn’t merely have a branding problem; it struggles to fill a deific role as a human industry. The “brand” of medicine as purely altruistic needs to collapse, because it was always a lie. We can and should be grateful for the advances of medicine that have reduced human suffering and extended lives, but when we exalt it beyond its nature, we do tremendous harm to the social fabric and can even create an unsustainable civilization.

In an environment of widespread professed secularism within our institutions, we create a void for religious attachment, if only because Man is inherently God-seeking. G.K. Chesterton warns us that, “When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.” The covid saga exemplified his warning, as a supposedly areligious industry developed a zealous fervor and devoted disciples.

It is possible for us to bring good out of that era if we can come to the widespread realization of the limitations of medicine, and of our propensity to idolize those who work in the industry. Dr. Anthony Fauci was a high priest in an unadmitted religion of our age. It is well that he is dethroned, but let us not miss the rest.

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This essay was published in full at Crisis Magazine. It can be read freely there. The introduction follows.

Those who favor abortion’s legality have long rejected any label that they were pro-abortion. Instead, they maintained that they were “pro-choice” or, alternatively, “pro-women.” That messaging is aligned with bygone marketing slogans like “safe, legal, and rare.”

California is now helping to expose just how misleading that branding has always been. California is suing Heartbeat International to prevent the pro-life group from providing Abortion Pill Reversal—or from even providing information about using progesterone to reverse a medication abortion in progress. In other words, California is actively trying to prevent women who have taken the first step in a chemical abortion from saving their children’s lives.

Continue reading at Crisis Magazine.

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Andrew Tate has spent years building an empire on cruelty masquerading as honesty. This week, he and his brother Tristan have been arrested in Miami and are facing extradition to the UK due to an array of new charges. The most troubling question is not whether they will be convicted, but how they amassed an audience of millions of young men by equating degeneracy with masculinity.

The allegations against them are serious, but they are similar to those that have been made against the brothers for years in multiple countries. The latest charges relate to offenses between 2010 and 2017.

Andrew Tate faces:

• Seven new counts of rape

• Three counts of arranging or facilitating trafficking for sexual exploitation

• Three counts of assault

• 19 counts of indecent images of children and extreme pornography.

Tristan Tate also faces new charges:

• One count of sexual assault

• Two counts of rape

• Three counts of arranging or facilitating sex trafficking

In addition, they already face previous charges of rape, bodily harm, and human trafficking in regard to three other victims in Britain between 2012 and 2015.

The ‘manosphere’ influencers are actively fighting extradition back to Britain, but what is far more important is how they became such popular figures. For example, was it in doubt that the Tate brothers are awful people? They attracted vast numbers of young men despite running a pornography empire, bragging in public videos about abusing women, and facing repeated allegations of sexual assault.

Regardless of the public record, or worse, because of it, they achieved a massive following. That audience swelled when mainstream figures provided them with a platform and the air of respectability that comes with such appearances.

Tucker Carlson interviewed Andrew Tate and defended his conspiracy theory that he is merely being persecuted for being “in favor of the West” and for speaking with uncommon candor. Nick Fuentes, allegedly a Catholic commentator, has defended the Tate brothers repeatedly. Candace Owens interviewed Andrew and used him as an example of authentic masculinity. Her video description was, “I sit down with Andrew Tate to discuss the dangerous thinning of Western culture, the importance of street smarts, and what motivates the global elites.”

Whether a criminal trial convicts them or not, both men have been recorded saying and doing diabolic things. And they have millions of followers because of it. In fact, when Catholic commentator Matt Fradd posted on X in favor of the pending extradition, the comments on his post were flooded with accusations that he had sold out or was working “for the Jews.”

Those who defend the Tate brothers often do so by expressing that they appreciate the “authenticity” or how “honest they are.” One might better argue that the brothers simply tell the audience what they want to hear: that you can and should treat everyone around you like objects, and in doing so, you can become rich and famous. It enables those who do not want to live virtuously to reward their own egos by re-casting themselves as conquerors instead of monsters.

There is a not-so-hidden assertion in the midst of this that being crass is more truthful and “authentic,” as if our nature is inherently so debased that rolling in excrement might be the greatest expression of authenticity. But it is not the case that to be indecent or uncivilized is to be honest.

Among young men who are tired of effeminate leaders and highly processed bureaucratic speech, there is a confusion between civility and manipulative speech. Manipulation is really a type of lie, and is thus not at-one with civility at all. It is neither the case that to be decent is to be dishonest nor that indecency is mere sincerity. Said differently, it is possible to be good—for your aspirations to be noble, your speech both decent and truthful, and your actions admirable. It is simply hard.

C.S. Lewis reminds us, “No man knows how bad he is until he has tried very hard to be good.” Those who have not tried to be good (by the objective standard of the saints, not one’s own excuses), are ignorant of the difficulty of the task. It is hard to bear responsibility for one’s position, to act in accord with the highest decency possible, and to choose to be virtuous.

There’s an irony that we cannot overlook in the “redpilled” celebrities who pretend to be defending the West while denigrating chivalry, fatherhood, family, marriage, and decency. What of the West do such men seek to defend? The ‘values’ they are espousing are far more akin to the Ottoman invaders than to the city-states that were threatened by them.

Another common defense of the Tate brothers is that of whataboutism. This is the reflexive assertion that if charges have not been filed against Epstein’s friends and the Muslim rape gangs of England, that these charges somehow should not proceed. “What about…!,” its proponents scream. But not everything is a mere political battle. There are real victims in these cases for whom we should desire justice. We can long for swift justice in all of these scenarios, but we should celebrate whenever any move in the right direction is made, rather than sneering and making comparisons to other areas of law enforcement impotency.

In seeking justice across all of these cases, we herald the good and work toward a society that is “Western” in every positive sense. We cannot endure the delusion that the Tate brothers were merely “two brothers who told the truth,” nor that being crass or abusive is demonstrative of a life well lived. It is not authentic to lack control of oneself. It is not powerful to lack civility, and it is not good to choose evil.

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In a progression that ought to surprise no one, those who advocate for euthanasia are now publicly asking whether they can take the organs of those who are killed by doctor-assisted suicide.

Countries already have a financial incentive for these early deaths, because end-of-life healthcare is almost always expensive. Killing someone at age 60 saves about 19 years (on average) of the most expensive healthcare costs of a person’s life (using the US life expectancy of 79). This is just one of the reasons, and not the biggest one, as to why euthanasia is inherently an ethics nightmare.

In Canada, five percent of deaths are already due to euthanasia. That’s not merely because euthanasia has been culturally normalized, but further because actual health care is difficult to obtain, hidden behind a long wall of extended wait times and suffocating bureaucracies. Moreover, those who are in difficult moments are being forced to decline “offers” of early death from those who are supposed to help them. Doctors can and do make the offer of euthanasia regularly, thus forcing those who are vulnerable to defend their reasons for wanting to live.

The next step, making euthanasia directly profitable via organ donation, is now being discussed publicly. Dr. Robert Truog, a physician and bioethicist at Harvard Medical School, said: “It would be an ethical thing to do because this is something the patients have chosen for themselves.” He co-authored the paper, Contextualizing the Dead Donor Rule in an Era of Voluntary Euthanasia in the New England Journal of Medicine. Hence, this is no longer on the fringes.

But notice the argument: “something the patients have chosen for themselves.” Underpinning so many of the modern medical evils is the concept of absolute self-ownership alongside a total lack of duty on the part of the physician. The doctor is no longer an agent of medicine, but a mere executor of the will of the patient, however absurd, evil, or even non-medical those desires are.

The same philosophical principle is appearing elsewhere in medicine. The transgender saga likewise centers around consent, the highest value in pagan Rome now being embraced in the decaying West. On that basis, we can remove healthy reproductive organs, produce surgically created wounds that must be kept open with lifelong dilators, and even kill people, so long as they consent. When we accepted that basis for morality, then we necessarily found ourselves on a bottomless slope, waiting for the next exclamation of the reductio ad absurdum. The medical industry has not been short of ideas.

In fact, NPR quotes Dr. Truog promoting these organ donations under the auspices of altruism:

“They have very generously thought: ‘How might my death help other people?’ It’s a very altruistic, generous thing to do.’”

So let us ponder the person who lacks family and support, and who is suffering in a hospital. Instead of focusing on assisting him, his doctor suggests that euthanasia is an option, and describes it as a common choice for people in this position. (That’s what happened to the 79-year-old Canadian priest who was in the hospital for a hip fracture.) Then, let us imagine that the doctor goes on to herald this choice as a great act of charity, because the patient could help save lives by surrendering his own and choosing to donate his organs. That is the reality that some people would like to actualize.

It forces the sick patient, who is likely in pain, to justify his own existence, and then pit his life against the lives of others. It incentivizes him to choose his own death when he simply needed support. Those who work in hospitals already describe organ procurement specialists as being reckless and aggressive with regard to how they often pressure families. In this posited reality, they could exert the same pressure on the vulnerable patients themselves.

Ultimately though, Truog is right that “denying them that option doesn’t seem to make any sense,” which is to say that if we accept the foundational philosophical argument that people should be able to kill themselves, and that doctors should be able to assist them, it is just a matter of time before the organs are for sale too. It will look even more grotesque than current euthanasia methods. Surgeons will murder people by taking their organs while they are still alive, killing them. But functionally, it’s the very same evil.

We do not own ourselves, for we are not self-created, and we are not mere matter. We are stewards of our lives, each with callings from our Creator. Our suffering has meaning and can be a cause of growth and redemption. We are more than the pain that envelops us in dark moments, and it is the duty of every man of Faith to help others to see that. What we are witnessing in secular society is the consequence of a worldview that is antithetical to human life and human flourishing, for it does not know of man’s true calling.

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There is a type of connection that is seldom reflected upon in the modern age, and which comes from understanding the nature of another person as he exists before God.

I have been blessed with a variety of friends, colleagues, and acquaintances. Some of them are more similar to me than others dispositionally as well as in terms of interests or shared loves and values. With some of them, I can “share the Faith.” I have been thinking about what this means of late, likely as a result of recent highly public political sagas in the Church.

Being able to share the Faith with another is not akin to sharing a hobby or even a core value with another person, even though those are goods in their own right. It is so much more. A shared hobby might mean that we have a similar personality type (for example, friends who enjoy gardening are likely to have more similar dispositions to one another than those who enjoy axe throwing competitions), but what hobbies cannot convey is something much deeper: “I recognize the dignity of your beginning, the eternal nature of your destination, and the gravity of who you are to God.” Let’s unpack that.

If you share the Faith with another, you both understand each other’s immortality. As C.S. Lewis said, “You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”

The person sitting across from you is more than what you can see visually. The person with whom you converse will live on in an afterlife without end, a destination influenced by the choices he makes in the present. Moreover, it is not merely the case that he has plans for his own life, but that God too has a purpose for him.

In the context of a friendship, this means that we are called to properly see the other not for who he is to us (primarily), but for who he is before God and entirely outside of our relationship. It means valuing the other in a truly non-secular way.

In this manner, sharing the Faith with another is not reducible to “we both go to church” (or even the same parish), even though outwardly, that might be all that is apparent to an observer. It means that in an immeasurable way, we are working to aid in the other’s salvation, and our friend is trying to aid in ours. It means that even something as simple as giving advice is done within the framework of realizing that you may be helping (or harming) someone else’s pilgrimage to Heaven. It is at once wholesome and terrifying, because there is a gravity to everything that we do and say—to how we live.

I do not mean to suggest that people cannot have close or meaningful associations with those who do not share the Faith, but I do assert that they will lack the particular depth that is possible in friendships among faithful people.

By sharing the Faith, you also share the very image of the hero. You are bonded over an understanding of what holiness looks like, so you know what your interlocutor aspires to. You know what he considers to be virtuous, heroic, and good. These things are not otherwise evident, nor are they constancies in a relativistic society like our own. That doesn’t mean that the person of faith will be perfect, but at least you will both have the same vision of failure.

In fact, by a shared vision of (Transcendent) success, you can guide, care, and love. While one person’s worldly success will look different to another’s, our spiritual success will be in alignment. We can pray together, grieve together with an understanding of those we have lost, experience pain in light of the redemptive nature of suffering, and better support one another through the difficulties inherent in this life. Having the Faith permeates every area of our lives, such that who we are, how we act, and how we love are shaped by it. All the better that we might share it.

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What does it mean to lose one’s voice—to lose the outward expression of the soul? We tend to think of speech primarily as an instrument, or a tool of persuasion, but it is more than that.

Turn to the modern English people, who ceded the defense of speech in favor of protecting people who might be offended. This is an easy topic to shrug off, especially when it is not directly affecting us, because allowable speech seems like a broad political issue. Yet, I posit that it is not.

Speech is chiefly and principally an issue of personal and practical worship. By “worship,” I mean here an act of justice to the transcendent value of the truth. Communication is an act of worship insofar as it is an expression of what is true. Whenever we speak, we declare. We proclaim a truth. In a fundamental sense, that speaking of truth into the world is an individual act of natural worship. We give voice to something outside of ourselves—greater than ourselves. It is an attestation of loyalty to something higher than the society that demands only comfortable lies.

If I declare that the sky is blue and all of society says it is green, I am engaging in right worship and they are not. Their offense to that truth is immaterial to the fact that my speech is just and is a proper use of my faculties.

“The natural habitat of truth is found in interpersonal communication. Truth lives in dialogue, in discussion, in conversation — it resides, therefore, in language, in the word. Consequently, the well-ordered human existence, including especially its social dimension, is essentially based on the well-ordered language employed.”

— Josef Pieper

So it is not merely that I lose the ability to discourse with my neighbor if speech restrictions prevent my speaking truthfully, it’s that because I cannot dialogue with him, we cannot together work to sustain a neighborhood, a community, or a society. Thus, the rapidity of the decline of the British social structure necessarily accelerated after speech laws decrying “hatred” and “offense.”

Too often, we think of dialogue as existing for its own sake, as a “right” without any corresponding duty, as if our want to express is enough to necessitate our legal protection for doing so. But such arguments are foundationally egocentric, so they fail upon serious examination.

Instead, we ought to conceive of our ability to speak as an imposed duty. This articulation, which casts us as unique compared to mere animal, is not merely the stating of our individualistic preferences, but the mandate from above to recognize truths, act on the basis of them, and order our societies thereby.

If we bury the truth behind a distorted value of niceness, we build without foundation. Moreover, we gag the man who might tell us of the sand beneath our feet. So we keep building and our institutions keep toppling, and the people who ought to be guiding and leading us are kept silent. In a perversion of what is just, they may even face penalty and incarceration for warning us of our errors.

This explains so much of why modern Europe is failing to build (or even sustain). Europe does not recognize the fundamental duty of man that is being stifled. It recognizes only the technocratic society that it can build at his expense. Each person becomes merely a stepping stone under a banner of acclaimed “progress” — but even that claim is a lie that few can speak boldly enough to correct. Movement is not progress if the direction is not positive.

Losing one’s voice stifles our natural being in the world, muting not just the literal speech, but negating the would-be speaker’s existence in a measurable manner. If an architect watches you build a house, but does so while gagged, do you have an architect watching over you? Literally yes, but practically no. His existence has been reduced to naught. He cannot warn you of your errors, and he may rapidly lose the desire to, in any event, instead relishing in the knowledge of your weak foundation. So too with the silenced men of the West.

The greater society should care about the part (the individual) firstly because that man is a piece of it, but also because the individual’s acts of duty are goods that we should want realized. In silencing him, we prevent his acts of right worship.

If man is not free to do the good, then society itself is opposed to human flourishing, so its potential end and its means are evil. In this scenario, it is ordered counter to what man is made to be. So when the devil’s bargain is made to silence some honest men because we do not want to hear particular truths, we must necessarily accept the fact that those truths were pillars, even if we cannot see what they were holding up. We will just have to wait and see what crumbles.

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I realize that I have been less productive in recent times than I would like and than history attests to. I wanted to provide a brief explanation.

For the past few months, I’ve been dealing with a degree of exhaustion that I couldn’t quite explain. At first, I thought it was simple fatigue, but it progressively worsened and has become rather debilitating. I realized the severity of the problem only after I almost stepped in front of a truck while walking my dog with my eyes closed. You know that feeling where you’re so exhausted that you keep closing your eyes for several seconds at a time? It was like that, but at 1 PM in the afternoon for no “reason” at all.

Thereafter, I sought medical explanations. After a sleep study, a visit with a sleep specialist, and an ENT, some conclusions have been drawn. My tonsils are oversized and are believed to be placing a significant burden on my airway, leading to UARS (Upper Airway Resistance Syndrome). It means that when I’m sleeping, my tonsils obstruct my airway just enough to cause me to have micro-wakeups every few minutes throughout my sleep. So, I’m suffering from a type of sleep deprivation that doesn’t have any relief.

As a result, I’m running at maximum effort all of the time just to meet my base obligations. Some days it’s worse than others, but it’s pretty bad most of the time now. When you’re exhausted, creativity is the first thing to go, which is why my writings have become less frequent (even non-fiction requires creativity!). This notice is not to say that I’m going to stop trying, but rather to let you know what’s happening.

The theory is that when I got sick earlier this year, my tonsils (which were always on the large side) grew just a little bit more, and never shrank again thereafter. So, they need to go. Tonsillectomies have a notoriously brutal recovery in adults, so I’ll be out of work for a couple of weeks, in a lot of pain and unable to speak. My guess is that I won’t be particularly up for writing during that time either. (Though I hope that’s not true!)

I don’t yet have a date for the surgery, but I see the surgeon to get that set up on July 9th, so it will be some time thereafter. I will keep you all informed.

Thank you to all of those who support what I do, in different ways, and please keep me in prayer. This has been a really trying time, and sleep deprivation just makes everything harder. In fact, it makes things seem more difficult and dark even when they’re not.

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“Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.”

—Blaise Pascal

On the streets of Belfast, an attempted beheading took place mere days ago. The attack was filmed by horrified and disarmed onlookers who seemed desperate to help but were unsure how to do so without being stabbed themselves. It is a video that is difficult to watch, and even more challenging to forget. Eventually, one brave Irishman took action, repeatedly hitting the Muslim aggressor with a hurley stick.

The symbolism of that action is unmistakable. But first, one must become familiar with the Irish pastime of Hurling. It is a sport that is believed to have a 2,000-year history, and is decidedly Irish. For a brief primer, consider watching this two-minute video:

Let us consider why this matters. I posit that just as the hurley stick is woven into Irish culture, so too is beheading woven into a different one. After all, beheading is mentioned in Islamic religious texts, both the Quran and Hadith, and can be seen without much interpretation:

“So when you meet those who disbelieve, strike [their] necks until, when you have inflicted slaughter upon them, then secure their bonds...” —Surah Muhammad 47:4

One of the attackers who beheaded British soldier Lee Rigby on the streets of London in 2013 quoted directly from Surah 9 (of the Quran) when engaging in his assault. Conquest and initiatory violence are not alien concepts to those who have embraced Islam and its subsequent cultures in the Middle East and much of Africa.

In the beheading video (not recommended) taken in Belfast, we see a revelatory series of events in rapid succession. Onlookers tire of waiting for the police to arrive, they intervene themselves, then you hear someone behind the camera yell, “There’s a cop. Back off, back off, back off.” In other words, even though they are actively preventing a literal beheading, they are afraid that the police might arrest them instead of the immigrant aggressor.

To act in the defense of oneself or one’s neighbors has been recast as criminal behavior in so much of the West. Eighteen-year-old Henry Nowak died while telling police that he had been stabbed and that he couldn’t breathe, while police forced his hands behind his back for his alleged racism. Events like that are not only horrifying and tragic for those who are forced to live through them, but they affect how the broader society relates to police and to government. It creates fear and antagonism rather than a healthy structure in which police are viewed as peacekeepers who are upholding justice and coming to the defense of the innocent.

In the aftermath of the Belfast attack, we can see the downplaying of the gravity of the violence. Mainstream news outlets have deferred to calling the Belfast assault a “knife attack” as if that label is akin to an attempted beheading with a box cutter (“Stanley knife”). But why? Might we suggest that if they used the word “beheading,” every reader would immediately know the motivation of the attacker? Beheadings are not part of the local culture in Belfast. They are a product of an imported and foreign culture.

When the aggressor was repeatedly hit in the head with a hurley stick, there was a brief moment in which people decided that their culture was better, and was worth defending. However momentarily, there was a determination of one man to use an instrument of authentically Irish culture against a man who was exhibiting his own.

Protests against mass immigration policies are now spreading throughout the British Isles, spurred on by frustration at the seemingly constant barrage of attacks by aggressive immigrants and a growing exasperation with police forces who cannot be relied on.

Ultimately, the nations of the West will have to decide what it is that is authentically Irish or English or German or French, etc., and whether that is worth defending. For decades, such nations have abdicated their own duties and downplayed their strengths in order to pretend that all cultures and faiths are morally equivalent. They are not. We must strive to reject inferior cultures that normalize barbarism, and in so doing, we laud the good and set standards of behavior.

Ultimately, it is a question of justice. It is just for societies to uphold order and defend the innocent. They should do so via law enforcement bodies that recognize such values. They must be encouraged by a media that cares more about truth than the promotion of mass immigration. As long as these foundations are crumbling, we will experience widespread disorder.

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This essay was published in full at Crisis Magazine. It will be of most interest to practicing Catholics. It can be read freely there. The introduction follows:

The Charlotte diaconate ordinations occurred last weekend. Ours is a diocese that has been the subject of an abundance of articles over the past couple of years, ever since the newly-appointed Bishop Michael Martin instituted controversial changes. He sequestered the Latin Mass to a remote chapel and attempted to institute a litany of changes to the Novus Ordo Mass in what amounted to the discouragement of reverence and tradition.

The music at this weekend’s Ordination Mass was grossly inappropriate. Even that phrasing is somehow an understatement, for little can capture the spiritual contrast of black gospel singers bellowing alongside a piano, singing their praise and worship music in the place of the Offertory Antiphon while the newly ordained were attempting to serve Mass.

Keep reading at Crisis Magazine…

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