Is This Book Worth Getting?

Or will it be just too centrist to be useful?

The Miracle of “We” by R. R. Reno
This essay is an excerpt from R. R. Reno’s new book Return of the Strong Gods: Nationalism, Populism, and the Future of the West.

In the first half of the twentieth century, perverse loves destroyed a great deal in the West, not just lives and buildings, but cultural legitimacy as well.

Let's get this right: some may have been motivated by a perverse form of nationalism, but others may have been motivated what they thought was patriotism, as it was defined for them through state indoctrination. But the ones who were issuing commands? Their perverse love was the love of self and power, and this is what is at issue -- not perverse forms of nationalism, which are manipulated by the state, but the state itself.