Classics & Virtues

Douthat painting over all the left-lib options with Curtis Yarvin’s imaginary category to make himself feel better about his complicity

Da pacem, Domine, in diebus nostris, quia non est alius qui pugnet pro nobis, nisi tu Deus noster.

All the MAGA (and their allies in the media) concern trolling over American boots on the ground in Ukraine only for Trump to end up killing innocent Iranian civilians and saying American lives may also need to be sacrificed 🤬

“Will God Forgive Us?” church sign in First Reformed movie

Maybe the defining film image of our current moment:

The Catholic Church quoting the word of the Pope as a legal argument to the Supreme Court like it’s 1178 is kind of funny ngl.

Yeah the question with the gender much more how we manage to divert people from ending up where the x poster is rather than engaging with people there already. It’s much more important (or at least easier) to break the pipeline than to undo its effects.

Exactly! So well-put.

One of the things that makes the partisan gender gap convo so frustrating is centrists giving preference to men by talking about how we need to listen to their “very real concerns” when the concerns (driven by a bad media diet) are women have rights, can vote however they want, & can say no to sex

“Radical empath”*

*Hates the Jews

Had his image in my mind too!

By the end of his term, he’s going to look like Viserys, isn’t he?

Andrew T. Walker @ AndrewTWalker I'm a State of the Union-respecter. Love the pageantry. Always. predsfan1956 @predsfan1956 So only when it's a Republican president right? Check your post from last year: @AndrewTWalker - 3/7/24 State of the Union speeches are nearly always a massive waste of time. The pageantry isn't even worth it. Especially true with this stupidly political hack job of a speech that doubles as an angry geriatric shouting session about killing unborn humans.

I’m not a professional ethicist but I think this guy may be a liar

In 2024 Rufo offered $5000 to anyone who could prove Haitian migrants were eating pets.

Then he turns around and wonders why the brains of so many people on the right have melted into conspiracy slop

“Why the Mar-A-Lago shooter is forcing a conversation on the cost of oppressing conservative artists”

By Bari Weiss

Median Voter strikes again

Hannah Arendt on why social media is not “the commons”:

That would require more intellectual integrity of him than a drive-by Fox News article…

I was esp struck by the gall to put “democratic form of government” on the list of things that someone in the Trump admin defends. Egregious!

Yeah, I don’t understand him going all-in on MAGA like this either, especially at a time when the administration is as unpopular as ever. The short-term benefits can’t be that great

a man in a suit is talking to a football player who is wearing a green and white jersey . ALT: a man in a suit is talking to a football player who is wearing a green and white jersey .

If she somehow makes the ticket in 28, we are going to see some all time crash outs from these guys

BISHOP BARRON: AOC mocks Western culture - Marx would love that, but I find it chilling I speak against this radicalism not simply as a concerned American, but also as a bishop of the Catholic Church • OPINION By Bishop Robert Barron

Secretary Rubio lyrically invoked Dante, the Cologne Cathedral, Shakespeare, the democratic form of government, the university system - even the Beatles and the Rolling Stones - as representations of that common vision. But then he took a further step that especially caught my attention. Very much in the spirit of both Pope Benedict XVI and the church historian Christopher Dawson, he observed that culture is tightly linked to cult, that is to say, to religion. In a word, all the things that we value stand in relation to that which we value most highly. And therefore, Secretary Rubio was not afraid to identify the Judeo-Christian faith as the deepest and most abiding source of what is best in Western culture. Only, he concluded, when both Europe and America rediscover together the wellsprings of their common culture will they find the cohesiveness they both long for. It was heartening to me to see that this clarion call was met with a sustained standing ovation.

But not everyone was happy with his speech. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who happened to be in Europe at the same time as Rubio, mocked the secretary of state for being preoccupied with Western culture, which she characterized as "thin." ." All cultures, she averred, are ephemeral, passing, unstable; therefore, social analysts should concentrate not on wispy cultural achievements but on the "material" elements of a society which manifest themselves in the class struggle. I would first observe that it is simply breathtaking to maintain that the culture that produced the university system, affirmed the rights and prerogatives of the individual, and gave rise to democratic rule of law is "thin." But secondly, I would draw attention to the unnervingly Marxist quality of AOC's formulation.

Bishop Barron is criticizing AOC… bc she criticized Rubio’s Munich Speech… 🤡

Meanwhile the Pope has prioritized the treatment of immigrants bc maybe he realizes the “Western Civilization” defense stuff is just cover for the xenophobic policies of those with actual power to harm right now

Dark Woke.

The Nazi freaks aren’t ready for my woke Hegelian reading of Baelor Targaryen who has to reconcile the dialectical conflict between his conscience and the law

Once again I'm asking Democrats to take their messaging cues from the sitting Democratic Senator who is the most vulnerable for re-election in 2026

Not really familiar with this journalist but read up on him and saw where he has talked about knowing AOC pre-fame and how they use to talk about taking on the Dem establishment together. In 2018 he ran for NY Senate and lost by 15 pts, she ran for Congress and won.

*Spoilers for A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms*

Ive seen where he called it right wing art too, which is an exemplar case of missing the point, since the character in the screenshot chooses the just cause of a common man over self-interest, the interest of his family, & the loopholes of tradition/law

My Senator!

As a Emily Brontë superfan (the best Brontë btw), I’m waiting until the new “adaptation” is available to rent at home because I’m afraid I may end up going full William Prynne

I think the guy ranting about militarizing society, mythological reenchanment, and a hypermasculine new man may be a fascist ngl

Choose your fighter Dort or Aristotle who said “Empires are not defended by military virtue alone.”