touchstone archives
Commonplaces
Piquant excerpts lifted from Touchstone editors' own reading & listening.
Yet to establish the fact of decadence is the most pressing duty of our time because until we have demonstrated that. . . modern man has about squandered his estate, we cannot combat those who have fallen prey to hysterical optimism. . . .
We approach a condition in which we shall be amoral without the capacity to perceive it and degraded without the means to measure our descent . . . we have the feeling of watching actors who do not comprehend their roles.
Hysterical optimism will prevail until the world again admits the existence of tragedy, until it again distinguishes between good and evil. . . .
We must consider that we are in effect asking for a confession of guilt and an acceptance of sterner obligations.
—Richard Weaver
from the introduction to Ideas Have Consequences (1948)
— Culture — Commonplaces #208 — May/June 2024 —
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