The Loss of the Heart of a Human Community, by Anthony Esolen

By Anthony Esolen, Crisis Magazine, Oct. 18, 2022

Anthony Esolen is the author or translator of 28 books, most recently In the Beginning Was the Word: An Annotated Reading of the Prologue of John (Angelico Press), ….

When I am sick of thinking about the American Church, my mind often turns to Canada. It’s not that the Church is healthier there, but sometimes it’s good to clear your head of the prominent American personalities and their protégés, in both the Church and the State. Canada has its buffoon in Justin Trudeau, as we have had our buffoons for several decades now, but he’s not my buffoon, so I can look at his vacantly pretty face and not have to think about my retirement account, the public school in my town, the blundering of my nation into war, babies butchered in my state, and the degeneration of America’s politics into an entity remarkable for its ineptitude and intellectual vacuity.

And the odd thing is that my Canadian neighbors have almost the same view. Whatever party they vote for, they consider that Ottawa is far away, that they in Nova Scotia will get ignored as always, and that one bunch of jobbers is about as worthless as the next. It’s not that they are cynical. They are quite a cheerful lot. It’s that they put no trust in politicians. Sometimes the swindler-in-chief tosses a bag of coins your way. Sometimes he doesn’t. It hardly matters. He’s still what he is, and you still have to get along in life by your wits and your will, and, where we live, usually by your hands and back and shoulders too. …

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