Western civilization is magnificent, our Judeo-Christian heritage is precious, and human achievement inspired by God is wondrous indeed.

Such are the overarching impressions from my two weeks in Italy, my first-ever visit to that civilizational nursery of the Western world. An American can be well-educated, can have seen the pictures and read the books and watched the videos, yet still not come close to appreciating the scope, the scale, the grandeur, the beauty, of what mankind achieved in the flowering of pre-industrial Western culture.