Editor’s Introduction: This article was originally published in No. 27 of the late Anthony Fraser’s fine journal, Apropos. It is a review of Naomi Klein’s 2007 book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. As Ms. Klein is lately … Continue reading
Author Archives: Dr. Robert Hickson
G.K. Chesterton’s View of Tolstoy’s Aspiration to Simplicity
When in 1902 G.K. Chesterton first published his essay “Tolstoy’s Cult of Simplicity” in a book of twelve of his collected essays, he was only twenty-eight years of age, and it was then only two years after he had first … Continue reading
Considering Catholic Ecclesiology in Some of Its Professedly Progressive Forms
“Catholics today will need heroic virtue — did you hear me? heroic virtue — just to hold on to the Faith, much less to grow more in the Faith and to pass it on intact to our children.” Continue reading
An Invitation to The Modern Traveller (1898): Hilaire Belloc’s Satirical and Youthful Narrative Verse
If we would want to appreciate the comic genius of Hilaire Belloc, and especially the inimitable comic cadence and comic syntax which mark and unmistakably pervade his 1898 narrative verse satire, The Modern Traveller, we should first consider the larger … Continue reading
Maurice Baring’s Insights on the Russian Character
How might a deeply reflective book of almost four hundred pages written by a Catholic Englishman some seven years before the 1917 Communist Revolution in Russia — and thus also seven years before Our Lady of Fatima’s own 1917 sustained … Continue reading
The Suffocation of a Managed Political-Ecclesiastical Glossary
It was almost three months after the raids of 11 September 2001 against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and yet the language of public discourse was still swollen and fevered. On many fronts one could not easily block … Continue reading
The Higher Chivalry of Catholic Christianity
In any reflective discussion of a man’s “chivalrous disposition” or of the “chivalrous ethos and attitude” itself, one is also soon likely to speak of “a man of honor” and even “the matter of honor” itself and perhaps even “honor’s” … Continue reading
Speaking the Truth about Oneself and the Barrier of Presumptuous Hebetude
It came to pass this morning soon after our breakfast with the children, and when they had already gone to their studies or play and music in another room, that my German wife turned to me and posed several searching … Continue reading
Josef Pieper’s Presentation of Purity and Virtuous Temperance
It is now many years ago that a learned Catholic priest said to me in passing and with modesty during one of our conversations that “in the Old Testament there was always a close connection between impurity and idolatry—as is … Continue reading
“Impostor-Terms” and the Disorder of Expediency: Albert Jay Nock’s Insights on Language and Moral Conduct
In his 1937 collection of perceptive essays, entitled Free Speech and Plain Language, a classically educated master of English prose, Albert Jay Nock (1870-1945), presents many insights about the use and abuse of language which remind us of the ancient … Continue reading
The Farsightedness and Omissions of a Professed “Superfluous Man”: The Intellectual Journey of Albert Jay Nock
It is now nearly forty-five years ago that Albert Jay Nock’s intellectual autobiography was first recommended to me by a well-respected and graciously well-mannered “Epicurean Conservative” Professor at the University; and I was at once arrested by its title: The … Continue reading
The Fast Path and the Slow Path of Subversion: Roberto de Mattei’s Recent Strategic Insights
To understand how faithful Islam still tries, by faster and slower means, to instil and instal itself in Europe today — and in the secular West in general — will enhance the weakened Cultural Immune System of the Catholic Faith; … Continue reading
Fortitude, Proportion, and Innocence: Discerning Perceptions from Hilaire Belloc’s The Silence of the Sea (1940)
While I was last evening and this morning reading aloud to our six-year-old daughter the full 1836 text of “The Little Mermaid,” by Hans Christian Andersen, I came to think of Hilaire Belloc as well as of Caryll Houselander and … Continue reading
Francis Fukuyama: “The End of History?”
Through the alertness of a friend and through his informative recent note to me, I soon discovered many more things about Francis Fukuyama’s quite unexpected latest book, which is entitled Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to … Continue reading
Hilaire Belloc’s Sense of Destiny and Living Memory of a Woman and Child
With a friend’s recent gift to me of his just re-published 1936 anthology of Hilaire Belloc’s essays, I had with gratitude the welcome occasion to re-read — and even to read aloud to my wife again in the evening — … Continue reading