Ten years after the Crucifixion, the Emperor Claudius proclaimed Britannia a Roman province.  Rome would spend the next four decades battling for an area comprising most of modern-day England and Wales.  But after conquering Britannia by brute force, later Roman governors pacified their subjects with auditoriums and roads.  Cities like Londinium and Camulodunum (Colchester) became […]

In 1917 Tsar Nicholas II abdicated: a few months later the Romanovs were dead and Russia’s Christians faced a campaign of persecution that would last for over seven decades and claim millions of lives. Today the Church is more powerful within the former Iron Curtain than it has been in centuries. Why did the Communists […]

What men want to learn from Nature is how to use it in order wholly to dominate it and other men.  That is the only aim.  Ruthlessly, in despite of itself, the Enlightenment has extinguished any trace of its own self-consciousness.  The only kind of thinking that is sufficiently hard to shatter myths is ultimately […]

A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a […]

Tertullian is today most famous for saying “I believe because it is absurd.”  But, as Abraham Lincoln reminds us, “not every quote you find on the Internet is true.”  Australian professor Arthur Harrison traces that quote to Voltaire.  Sigmund Freud cited the pseudo-Tertullian’s motto as evidence of religion’s infantile fear of the rational. Max Weber took […]

Catholicism has a long tradition of describing the ineffable through art and architecture.  Statues and stained glass windows made the most difficult abstractions concrete for peasant and nobleman alike.  The cathedral’s stout buttresses proclaimed Christ’s enduring triumph while the great ceilings gave a shadowy glance of His Kingdom.  We have frequently spoken of “Hellfire” and […]

Dried-up old moralists cackling with glee about how all their enemies are going to burn in hell.  Devout Fundamentalists suffering fear of damnation every time they touch their pee-pees.  Children lying awake at night in terror that they might suffer eternally for stealing that cookie.  Most non-Christians find the doctrine of damnation decidedly off-putting.  The […]

This week we have Late Notes From The End of Time. I filled in for Tom Kawczynski (who is busy writing another book) on his Free Atlantic Radio podcast yesterday and so my Tuesday podcast is coming out on Wednesday. Those of you who would rather listen via your podcast app of choice can also […]

Originally published in Hybrid, October 2001 Both our phones are dead. They should be working: the payphone at Nostrand Avenue had a dial tone, even if I couldn’t get through to Manhattan. I press Redial despite the silence. Ron Kuby announces an unconfirmed report of a car bomb outside the Capitol Building. Five minutes ago […]

What started with tiki torches and fisticuffs has now escalated to gunfire. The Left has martyrs in Kenosha; the Right mourns its fallen Portland hero; both sides have vowed revenge. Government officials have proven unable or unwilling to stop three months of violence. The upcoming elections will inevitably leave half the nation convinced the other […]