I highly recommend the substack by Mr. David Goodwin, Classical Christian Times. In a recent issue (April 25, 2023), he ran the column “The 8-year-saga at FOX News, the Ides of March, and the rise of the American Empire.” I felt compelled to leave the following comment. You can read Mr. Goodwin’s original article here. Ad fontes!

Dear Mr. Goodwin,

As someone who sincerely appreciated Carlson’s speech at the Heritage Foundation (below), and as someone who is grateful to God for Battle For the American Mind, I am very indebted to you.

I did not know, however, that I was also indebted to you for a crystal ball that divines the hearts and motives of Progressives, to turn on FOX. I didn’t know that the departures of Ailes, O’Reilly, and Megyn Kelly were not coincidental; since that would mean “The Progressives” infiltrated FOX itself (it was their own employees who took down Ailes & O’Reilly), and that Kelly didn’t depart due to poor treatment at the hands of a former president (“blood coming out of her wherever”) or an opportunistic NBC. I didn’t know that New York City could be the setting for such exciting plots – Carlson whisked to NYC, juries sat in NYC, settlements paid in NYC! (I did, however, already know that “New York State and City have become powerful allies of the Progressives” because I can fog a mirror.) I didn’t know that FOX, the NRA, and Trump were all involved in lawsuits over mere paperwork, not some of the most outrageous misuses of the Truth ever seen on the Right side of the political aisle. I didn’t know that Carlson – of whom FOX lawyers disavowed in court – was Julius Caesar come again; nor that Caesar is evidently the hero we ought to have cheered for against his woke Roman plebs.

Because I love the Christian classical education that you champion, I have the privilege of teaching Pascal’s Pensées, where he says “Le cœur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point” (the heart has its reasons that reason knows not). The reasoning behind things as hidden as heart motivations, or as massive as the rise of Progressive empires, lies in the hands of Providence, not ours (Deut 29:29). Because I love Christian classical education, I have learned that rhetoric must be painstakingly built on logic, otherwise it will devolve to mere sophistry, cobbled together from insinuation and tendentious associations.

Perhaps we dither on details, while you abide by your main point: “power-structure is my point, not the particulars.” But must we sully CCE in the mudslinging of 24-hour infotainment, when Augustine’s City of God, Machiavelli’s The Prince, and Hobbes’ Leviathan tell us these truths, without the secret gnosis interpretation of “The Progressives?”

You say: “An empire, I’m afraid, is on our doorstep.” I say, Mr. Goodwin, to fear not and sleep well, for our God is in the heavens, and He does all that He pleases. If history does have a crystal ball for the future, the hope of CCE – and of any republic – lies in the fear-less men and women who seek a better City. We busy our hands with trowel & sword, not wringing them in anxiety over what the progressives are plotting.