The Consequences of a World without Constraints

Thoughtful readers and critics are the greatest gift to any writer, and so I am grateful to George Weigel, Wilfred McClay, and David Novak for reading my essay on the meaning of Jerusalem with their usual mix of moral clarity and civilizational depth.

All four of us seem to agree that the modern West faces a serious moral and cultural crisis. Social pathologies like broken families, low birthrates, opioid deaths, and sky-rocketing rates of depression are getting worse. And we also seem to agree that charting our way out of this crisis demands a genuine “religious awakening.” We need to recover, restore, and renew the Judeo-Christian moral vision, which will require, as George Weigel puts it, “a long, difficult, countercultural campaign of cultural resistance for the sake of cultural renewal.”

The “progressive” idea that dethroning the God of the Hebrew Bible would improve human life is now showing itself to be a tragic lie. Weigel, once again, speaks well for all of us: “if the true God is exiled, false gods—beginning with the false god of the imperial autonomous Self—will be worshipped, with the grave public effects of deracination and decadence memorably on display in the case of a certain golden calf.” And today, as Weigel describes, the golden calf rules again, as evidenced by