Western Civilization

“The mature music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven—the Viennese Classical composers—reflects the best ideals of the Enlightenment in that it embodies rational clarity and order and makes a direct appeal to the listener without undue obscurity.” - Imaginative Conservative

“Charles Taylor draws attention to the problem of disenchantment and the loss of meaning in the modern era. This phenomenon is historically recent—while most modern people intuitively understand the problem, it would be difficult to explain to those who lived 500 years ago.” - TGC

“Traditional narratives cast this period as a dark age of backwardness and barbarism, before the ‘rebirth’ of classical tradition during the European Renaissance. But the evidence suggests otherwise.” - Smithsonian

“The enemy is still America/Europeans. The victims this time: whales. For all its technological innovation, the sheer banality of its theme is the most remarkable thing about it.” - Acton

“there is a more profound theological reason that the Age of Feeling turns to an Age of Anxiety. We are creatures and not the Creator. We were never designed to bear the impossible weight of creating and sustaining our identities.” - World

“There are probably two groups reading this article: The first are the complainers….The second, are those who, like me, are tired of hearing how great things used to be by those who came before us.” - Relevant

“Christians are faced with a situation that has perhaps not been seen widely in the West since the fourth century: To be both a good church member and a good citizen has become increasingly difficult. Difficult choices will have to be made in the coming years.” - Carl Trueman

“Many Christians despise the Enlightenment for its denigration of the authority of the church and trust in the Bible, while many academics castigate the Enlightenment for its elevation of neutrality instead of narrative and equality instead of equity.” - TGC

“Currently, an average 33% of U.S. adults express ‘a great deal’ or ‘quite a lot’ of confidence in 14 institutions, marking a three-percentage-point dip since 2020 and a return to the level seen in 2018 and 2019.” - Gallup