The French Revolution
Les Miserables is the story of the French revolution and how it promised heaven but brought hell
A Tale of Two Cities is the story of the French revolution and how it promised chaos, and upon entering the chaos, the only way out was a salvific substitutionary work (Christ was the only way out of that pursuit of pure reason)
The Count of Monte Cristo is not the story of the French revolution and is a set piece that demonstrates standard human fallibility
Utopia
Communism - class relations are the fundamental distinction between men, systems will be instituted to facilitate equity and eliminate them, and then those institutions will fall away into irrelevance
Liberalism - irrational disagreement is the fundamental distinction between men, systems will be instituted to facilitate consensus and eliminate them, and then those institutions will fall away
Libertarianism - government intervention is the fundamental distinction between men, systems will be stripped away to facilitate free flowing transactions and eventually fall away into a utopia of freely entered contracts
Absolutes
The Chestertonian idea that forms the core of Orthodoxy’s argument, that Christianity is unique because it can hold two ends of of opposite burning passions and integrate them both into a coherent hole (which is uniquely in line with moral intuitions) is similar to the discussion of how Christianity is the only answer to the false choice presented by two dialectical opposites. Chesterton would say that only the Church is capable of explaining why the martyr is praised while the suicide is buried in a separate plot, how mercy and justice can coincide, and how the Savior of the world can be both Lion and Lamb.
Wonder what the neo-Calvinists thought of that?
Napoleon of Notting Hill against Hegel (or maybe Marx?)
The Napoleon of Notting Hill is the opposite of Hegel
The end of history, the culmination of liberal democracy - a system of government so functional that the ruler is determined through random selection and goes on to do nothing, that system goes back.
The king takes his kingdom and reintroduces feudalism to a London free of patriotic spirit, and the people see it as absurd, they’re all Londoners, why would anyone care about the new requirement that some of the residents dress up and play bugles.
And yet.
One boy, becomes one man, becomes the ruler of his home, and for some odd reason, he’s a patriot for a neighborhood. He loves Notting Hill because it is uniquely his. He fights for Notting Hill, he repels the invasion of Notting Hill, and the result is differentiation. The people learn to love their particular things even as they realize that history has turned back.
Christianity as an antihistorical force
