America’s fate depends on men rediscovering their thumos

Washington Examiner senior editor Peter Laffin recently interviewed First Things editor Rusty Reno and Mark Tooley, the president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, on Christian nationalism. At one point, he said that although he agrees with Reno’s diagnoses of what has gone wrong in America and the West, he found himself asking, “What exactly are you proposing?”

In other words, he is asking Reno, “How do we get from the diagnosis to recovery?” This brought to mind something Catholic author Mary Eberstadt said in a recent talk: “Diagnosis has become a substitute for treatment.”