Truth and Liberty: The Present Crisis in Our Culture

Abstract

Few centuries have been as sanguinary as the twentieth. Leaving behind as their monuments the ruins of concentration camps and the work camps of the Gulag Archipelago, temporarily discredited, fascism and communism may have slouched into the shadows. Still, the forces of liberty have not succeeded in laying the foundations for a world of free republics. During the twentieth century, both in Europe and in the United States, the moral life of the free societies has been severely weakened. Families are a shadow of what they used to be. Traditional virtues and decencies, a sense of honor, and respect for moral character have given way to vulgar relativism. Thus, the dark underground river of the twentieth century has not been fascism nor communism but their presupposition: nihilism. And nihilism has not yet been abandoned.