Many contemporary thought leaders have spoken intriguingly about a future without Jesus or, to be more precise, a future in which the transcendent truths of the Christian faith hold little or no sway over society. More to the point, these thought leaders often pose as anthropologists who find Christianity dehumanizing and as tea-leaf readers who [ Read More ]
Socialism is a highly-energized and mobilized political movement—especially among Millennials—in the United States right now. The 2016 presidential primaries saw a self-proclaimed democratic socialist, Bernie Sanders, almost defeat establishment candidate Hillary Clinton. The 2018 mid-term elections saw a 28-year-old democratic socialist, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, defeat incumbent House democrat Joseph Crowley. The 2020 elections are being influenced [ Read More ]
Socialism is a polarizing phenomenon in the United States, having caught the nation’s attention during the 2016 election cycle and continuing to exert an influence over the national conversation. There are many varieties of socialism, but what each has in common is an emphasis on material equality and communal property ownership. In this post, we [ Read More ]
Karl Marx’s thought has proven itself an unmitigated disaster in its historical instantiations. The primary reason is that Marxism offers itself as an alternative to God’s revelation and salvation in Christ. It offers an immanent salvation via social action and stands ready to persecute those who stand in its way. Untethered as it is from [ Read More ]
Here are ten books I recommend for people who wish to understand the idolatrous nature of Marxism and its corrosive effects on individuals and societies. Although Marx intended to liberate society and alleviate its suffering, his ideological framework unfortunately and necessarily suppresses society, induces poverty, and supplants religion. Marxism is not primarily an economic theory. [ Read More ]
Recently, Romanian public intellectual Mihail Neamtu came to Raleigh to facilitate a seminar on Marxism. Together, he and I and the participants read portions of Romanian historian Mircea Eliade’s The Myth of the Eternal Return, French philosopher Raymond Aron’s The Opium of the Intellectuals, Russian dissident Alexandr Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago, and the Catholic Church’s statement [ Read More ]
One of the most striking memories of my childhood is a small newsletter that carried the photograph of an emaciated elderly man. Beneath the photo was a story detailing this man’s arrest at the hands of the Soviet secret police for the crime of worshiping Christ together with other believers in an “underground” church. This [ Read More ]
Russian winters are not known for offering a wide variety of options for how to spend one’s evenings. Basically, you either stay inside or freeze half to death outside. So, when I found myself living in Russia during the winters of 1998 and 1999, I had plenty of time on my hands—enough to read Aleksandr [ Read More ]
Raymond Aron is by no means the only intellectual who has argued that Marxism offers itself as a replacement for Christianity, but he is one of most the fascinating persons to have done so. For that reason, this post will provide a concise summary of two chapters of his book, The Opium of the Intellectuals, [ Read More ]
Recently, I hosted a one-day seminar on socialism at my home in Raleigh, facilitated by Romanian public intellectual Mihail Neamtu. The seminar is part of my ongoing research into authoritarian and totalitarian temptations in Western societies. For the seminar, we read portions of Romanian historian Mircea Eliade’s The Myth of the Eternal Return, French philosopher [ Read More ]