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Giotto di Bondone, “Massacre of the Innocents,” ca. 1304-1306, Scrovegni Chapel, Padua, Italy (photo: Public Domain)
Joseph Pearce is Visiting Professor of Literature at Ave Maria University and a Visiting Fellow of Thomas More College of Liberal Arts (Merrimack, New Hampshire). The author of more than 30 books, he is editor of the St. Austin Review, series editor of the Ignatius Critical Editions, senior instructor with Homeschool Connections, and senior contributor at the Imaginative Conservative and Crisis Magazine. His personal website is jpearce.co.
If you give the devil enough rope, he’ll hang himself. This is true but it’s not the whole truth. The problem is that he’ll hang you first. The devil hangs his own disciples, which is tragic enough, but he also hangs the innocent. These timeless cautionary thoughts should be kept in mind as we survey the way that the culture of death in the decadent West is collapsing in its own hedonistic too-muchness.