Free Republic

Pope Francis needs to take tougher action against the United States’ most influential Catholic in Rome, Cardinal Raymond “Breitbart” Burke. The renegade cleric is not only undermining Francis’s reformist, compassionate papacy, and gospel teaching as it applies to refugees and Muslims, but the rebel prince of the church is also using his position within the walls of the Vatican to legitimize extremist forces that want to bring down Western liberal democracy, Stephen K. Bannon-style. Simply put, the Vatican is facing a political war between the modernizing Pope Francis and a conservative wing that wants to reassert white Christian dominance. Burke...

The 13th century Trisulti Charterhouse in the province of Frosinone, central Italy.The Dignitatis Humanae Institute, which is working with President Donald Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon to found an academy in Italy to defend Judeo-Christian civilisation, today fought off the Italian government’s latest attempt to remove the academy from an historic abbey near Rome. DHI chairman Benjamin Harnwell, who has always protested his innocence in the face of the state’s accusations, said the court action to remove him from the Trisulti Charterhouse has been entirely politically motivated. “The Ministry of Culture simply wanted me out because I proudly work...

This book was published in 2013 but I just learned about it today. With his groundbreaking and controversial DIM (Disintegration / Integration / Misintegration) hypothesis, Dr. Leonard Peikoff casts a penetrating new light on the process of human thought, and thereby on Western culture and history. In this far-reaching study, Peikoff identifies the three methods people use to integrate concrete data into a whole, as when connecting diverse experiments by a scientific theory, or separate laws into a Constitution, or single events into a story. The first method, in which data is integrated through rational means, he calls Integration. The...

If you don't have time to read my review of Tom Holland's Dominion, here it is in three words: Read this book. A few more words: Buy this book, give this book to friends, and encourage them to read it. "Dominion" is not only rich, seductive, eye-opening, conversation-sparking, and occasionally surprisingly witty, it is urgently necessary. Read this book – before it's too late. Why do I endorse "Dominion" so zealously? Let me tell you a few stories. I was a schoolgirl in New Jersey. I sat next to "Aisha." She moved like a butterfly and, quiet and shy, she...

The nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the United States Supreme Court would make her, if confirmed, the sixth Roman Catholic on the nine-person court. The Catholic Church has already contributed much to the United States’ legal system - including “the whole idea of law in general,” Fr. Pius Pietrzyk, OP, told CNA. “It’s the development of canon law (the law that governs the Church) that gives both the United States and Europe their modern notions of law..." While aspects of canon law were present since the early days of the Church, the use of the term ‘canon law’, as...

"We may think that the culture of a society or civilization grows out of a variety of forces—social, political, historical, even biological. But what if culture is itself a potent force, one that, in part, shapes the others? “Culture,” Joseph Henrich writes, “can and does alter our brains, hormones, and anatomy, along with our perceptions, motivations, personalities, [and] emotions." .............. .............. "In the academic literature, societies that trace their origins to Western Europe are referred to as “Weird”: Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic." .............. .............. "In his telling, the qualities that make up Weird-ness did not—as many historians and...

....In a dark season of pestilence, COVID has reduced to tatters the illusion of American exceptionalism. At the height of the crisis, with more than 2,000 dying each day, Americans found themselves members of a failed state, ruled by a dysfunctional and incompetent government largely responsible for death rates that added a tragic coda to America’s claim to supremacy in the world....

Cultural suicide used to be a popular diagnosis of why things suddenly just quit. Historians such as Oswald Spengler and Arnold Toynbee cited social cannibalism to explain why once-successful states, institutions, and cultures simply died off. Their common explanation was that the arrogance of success ensures lethal consequences. Once elites became pampered and arrogant, they feel exempt from their ancestors' respect for moral and spiritual laws like thrift, moderation, and transcendence. Take professional sports. Over the last century, professional football, basketball and baseball were racially integrated and adopted a uniform code of patriotic observance. The three leagues offered fans a...

A variation on the theme of the cold -- a cold with an attitude.  Is Western civilization going to collapse over a cold?>As Newsweek stated a few months earlier:  [A] cold can also have more severe symptoms in the very young and the very old. Older people are more likely to develop a more serious infection compared with adults or older children. And people who smoke -- or who are exposed to second-hand smoke -- are also more likely to get a cold and have more severe symptoms. Another group of people who are more severely affected by infection...

MUNICH - Speaking during the Munich Security Conference Saturday morning, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called out European leaders and others for claiming the West is “westless,” pushed back on allegations that the United States “rejects the international community” and explained that the NATO alliance has been bolstered, not weakened, by President Trump’s demands on allied countries to properly budget for defense.  "I saw the topic for this weekend’s gathering, this idea of 'westlessness' as the core theme for this year’s conference. And I am sure, too, there are many of you who would call yourself here realists, but let me...

On February 12, 1733, James Oglethorpe disembarked from the Anna, a ship full of British settlers, at a site near present-day Savannah, officially founding the settlement that became the Georgia colony. Georgia was the 13th colony to be established, of the group that became the United States of America, 43 years later. Just like its neighbors, Georgia was built by British settlers who were to spend the following generations building farms and ranches, towns and cities, churches and businesses. Georgia was to see the spread of civilization, from the Atlantic coast inland, and produce many of America’s great talents -...

Yes, yes, I know. The climate is breaking down. It’s urgent. An emergency. We’ve only got a few years left to ‘fix’ it. Indeed, we won’t fix it. Weather patterns will become increasingly unstable and unpredictable, and the effects it will soon have on how humans around the world grow food will be devastating, likely causing harvests to fail across entire continents and food prices to sky-rocket. Millions have already suffered due to the amplified instability. We’re facing imminent societal collapse (whatever that means), both around the world and in the UK. All of our lives are soon going to...

A fundamentally political move against the conservative populistVIA TRISULTI, Italy (ChurchMilitant.com) - Italy's ministry for culture is claiming it has evicted Steve Bannon's "Gladiator School" from a 13th-century Italian monastery, 38 miles south of Rome. "As the DHI indicated when the Ministry for Culture first announced this politically motivated manoeuvre back in May, we will fight our case in court with every resource at our disposal," said Benjamin Harnwell, director of the Dignitatis Humanae Institute, in comments to Church Militant. "We look forward to demonstrating that the objections against the DHI promoted by the Left over the last two years...

In an article in the Wall Street Journal, on October 5, 2001, Francis Fukuyama declared that his "end of history" thesis remains valid twelve years after he first presented it shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Fukuyama’s core argument was that after the defeat of Communism and National Socialism, no serious ideological competitor to Western-style liberal democracy was likely to emerge in the future. Thus, in terms of political philosophy, liberal democracy is the end of the evolutionary process. To be sure, there will be wars and terrorism, but no alternative ideology with a universal appeal...

Christianity is the foundation of Western Society. However, many in political and academic arenas deny the historical and current benefits of Christianity. Teleios Research recently examined the histories of European tribes (n=35) in the early Middle Ages, from 300 years before to 300 years after conversion to Nicaean (non-Arian) Christianity. We used Wikipedia for group characteristics and societal measures at each specific time period.

In this brand new SteynPost, Mark considers the latest attempt to discuss the demographic transformation of Europe without getting damned as a racist white supremacist, etc, and the crude arithmetic of the latest UN population statistics.

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism. On the 5th of May, the American Freedom Alliance convened a conference on leftist radicalism. Before David Horowitz stepped up to the podium to discuss the threat of leftist extremism, Dr. Karen Siegemund, the president of the AFA, welcomed the attendees by speaking to our common values. “Each of us here believes in the unparalleled force for good that is Western Civilization, that is our heritage, whether we were born here or not,” she said....

“The West is the best.”—Jim MorrisonOne of the truly frustrating aspects of our all-too modern and post-modern era is how easily radicals dismiss anything to do with western civilization as a racialist celebration of “whiteness” and of Caucasians. To believe such a thing, one must first believe that “races” actually exist, something no scientist worth her or his salt would believe. Yet, even assuming that such a thing as “race” does exist, where does it matter in terms of history?There are, of course, relatively simple ways to blow this objection to western civilization as “white civilization” to smithereens, but...

Western civilization was founded on a set of philosophies that focuses strongly on the sanctity of individuals and their power of logic and reason. This belief led to a desire to trust things that could be proven to be true or legitimate, from government to science. Judeo-Christian morality has formed the basis of most Western notions of ethics and behavioral standards. Thus, the attack on Western civilization must begin with the attack on the church and Christian values, and, just as important, the family unit. The reason why the church, Christian values, and family are targets of the left is...

Can Islam Be Defeated? Two of the questions I am most often asked are, “Why does Islam seem so attractive to converts?” and “Can Islam be defeated?” Not surprisingly, these two questions are interrelated. There are many elements to Islam that attract Western converts today, including its seeming clarity on right/wrong, its unwavering commitment to monotheism and its appeal to anti-Jewish and anti-Christian sentiments in our post-Christian culture. But I believe there is an even greater appeal to the heart of fallen human nature. In the New Testament, the apostle Paul speaks of the fallen human heart as the life...