Introduction

This blog is about the goods that have been abandoned, the evil things that have taken their place, and the attempt to recover one and destroy the other. As has been written, in a world where evil has dulled most men's sensibility to evil and to good, the first duty of reformers is to show the need to reform.

I write from a Christian, Augustinian, traditionalist perspective. The good things to be restored include Christianity, community, family, intellectual and cultural traditions, and the Social Kingship of Christ. The evil things to be destroyed include secular humanism, individualism in government and family, arrogance in autonomous human reason, and the dictatorship of relativism.

This blog will thus be unapologetically traditionalist and reactionary in rejecting much of the modern world. It will also unapologetically liberal and synthetic in searching for good wherever it may be found, even among modern writers. And finally, it will be unapologetically focused on truth for the sake of the good, on intellectual theories for the sake of practical action, and on insight into reality for the sake of communal order. Indeed, the integration of practice and theory is one of the chief subjects I plan to discuss. If this blog does not ultimately gather together like-minded individuals and bring forth practical action, it will have failed.

Among the authors whose writings I will use are Louis de Bonald, Joseph de Maistre, Donoso Cortes, Alasdair MacIntyre, Weaver, Nisbet, Chesterton, Pascal, Belloc, Augustine, Aquinas, and God. I will also take whatever truths may be gained from von Mises, Montaigne, Hume, Schmitt, Strauss and whatever pagan or atheist authors may have gained part of the truth. Nevertheless, my appropriation of their writings will be more cautious, and, I hope, more philosophically and theologically informed than is usually the case. I do not intend to sacrifice Christianity to secularism.

Although, as stated, I am Christian, Augustinian, and traditionalist, no single adjective or set of adjectives well describes the position I wish to advance. Only time will tell if this is because I incoherently borrow from a multitude of writings or because I occupy a well-defined theoretical position that the current poverty of the English language leaves unnamed. I plan to rewrite this introduction in a manner that is, to me, more philosophically satisfying as I refine my own commitments.

On one hand, I think that individuals are always dependent on things larger than them: on God, for everything, on their community and on others, for their intellectual and practical knowledge and techniques, and on their family, for their initial orientation towards the world. There is no autonomous individual; all that we have we have from another. On the other hand, I think that people have the most heavy responsibility of searching for truth and of doing the good in their own life, and that this responsibility cannot be lifted off their shoulders. The individual is autonomous; he is really responsible for what he does. The twin poles of man's dependence and man's responsibility cannot be easily reconciled in a way that is not glib, but any coherent account of man must include both.

In short, I think man requires God's assistance and must place all his hope in Our Lord. And yet I also think that God has given man freedom, because of which he is obliged to take a stand, whether for good or for evil.

If you would understand the perspective from which I write, then, read the Ballad of the White Horse, by Chesterton. That is my position.

"But you and all the kind of Christ
Are ignorant and brave,
And you have wars you hardly win
And souls you hardly save.

I tell you naught for your comfort,
Yea, naught for your desire,
Save that the sky grows darker yet
And the sea rises higher.

Night shall be thrice night over you,
And heaven an iron cope.
Do you have joy without a cause,
Yea, faith without a hope?"