{"id":11796,"date":"2019-04-23T12:00:59","date_gmt":"2019-04-23T19:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=11796"},"modified":"2021-07-26T09:05:48","modified_gmt":"2021-07-26T16:05:48","slug":"the-cathedral-mirror-of-the-west-then-and-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-cathedral-mirror-of-the-west-then-and-now\/","title":{"rendered":"The Cathedral: Mirror of the West, Then and Now"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The recent fires at the medieval Catholic cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris almost immediately were seen as a referendum on the West, even by those who are not Christians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>How at the supposed apex of Western technology, science, and affluence could a sudden inferno devour the spire, roof, and some of the interior icons of the nearly 800-year-old cathedral, itself perched on the bank of a river, and the survivor of centuries of desecrations, remodels, expansions, and repairs, when the arts of preservation, fire prevention and response, and engineering were supposedly backward by our standards?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Logically or not, many saw the fire as a curtain call for the West, or at least an eclipse of the ancient marriage of European Christian belief and scientific brilliance that together produced the most impressive and beautiful expressions of Western transcendence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And now the second-most-revered church in the West smolders \u2014 something that neither French revolutionaries nor World War II bombers could accomplish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In our smug era of high tech and conspicuous consumption, Western Europeans and Americans do not build Christian cathedrals anymore. Our challenge is simply to keep standing \u2014 at least sort of \u2014&nbsp;what we inherited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/2019\/04\/notre-dame-cathedral-fire-religion-decline-western-civilization\/\">Read the full article here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review The recent fires at the medieval Catholic cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris almost immediately were seen as a referendum on the West, even by those who are not Christians. How at the supposed apex of Western technology, science, and affluence could a sudden inferno devour the spire, roof, and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-34g","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":709,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/greatest-church-soon-to-be-mega-mosque\/","url_meta":{"origin":11796,"position":0},"title":"Greatest Church Soon To Be Mega Mosque?","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 14, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim FrontPage Magazine Ostensibly dealing with a building, a recent report demonstrates how Turkey's populace \u2014 once deemed the most secular and liberal in the Muslim world \u2014 is reverting to its Islamic heritage, complete with animosity for the infidel West and dreams of Islam's glory days of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Religion&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Religion","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/religion\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6094,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/christendoms-greatest-cathedral-to-become-a-mosque\/","url_meta":{"origin":11796,"position":1},"title":"Christendom&#8217;s Greatest Cathedral to Become a Mosque","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 19, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim PJ Media While unrest in Turkey continues to capture attention, more subtle and more telling events concerning the Islamification of Turkey \u2014 and not just at the hands of Prime Minister Erdogan but majorities of Turks \u2014 are quietly transpiring. These include the fact that Turkey\u2019s Hagia\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Turkey&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Turkey","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/turkey\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11548,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/does-make-x-great-again-ever-happen-in-history\/","url_meta":{"origin":11796,"position":2},"title":"Does \u2018Make X Great Again\u2019 Ever Happen in History?","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 3, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness The short answer: Sometimes. Here\u2019s one example. By 527 A.D., the Eastern Roman Empire at Constantinople seemed fated to collapse like the West had a near century prior. The Persian Sassanids were gobbling up Byzantine lands in the east. Almost all of old Rome\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Roman Empire&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Roman Empire","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/roman-empire\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6357,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/in-egypt-media-sympathizes-with-muslim-brotherhood-persecution-of-christians-ignored\/","url_meta":{"origin":11796,"position":3},"title":"In Egypt, Media Sympathizes with Muslim Brotherhood, Persecution of Christians Ignored","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 19, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim \/\/\u00a0NRO's The Corner While Western media, following the lead of pro-Brotherhood Al Jazeera, continue demonizing the Egyptian military\u2019s attempts to neutralize the Muslim Brotherhood terror bases \u2013\u00a0where people have been tortured, raped, and killed, all according to Islamist fatwas (yes, including the rape, more on this later)\u00a0the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Muslim Brotherhood&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Muslim Brotherhood","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/muslim-brotherhood\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6261,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/muslim-persecution-of-christians-april-2013\/","url_meta":{"origin":11796,"position":4},"title":"Muslim Persecution of Christians: April, 2013","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 24, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim \/\/\u00a0Gatestone Institute Before Egypt\u2019s President Muhammad Morsi was ousted, April was one of the worst months for Christian Copts there.\u00a0 On April 5 near Cairo, when a longstanding feud between a Christian family and a Muslim family\u2014based on male Muslims sexually harassing Christian girls\u2014culminated in the violent\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Egypt&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Egypt","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/egypt\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13088,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/mythologizing-the-past\/","url_meta":{"origin":11796,"position":5},"title":"Mythologizing the Past","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 3, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"In our moment of \"woke\" , do not let the Left cancel out the memories of your childhood. We must not agree that the 1950s and 1960s were times of evil. They were not.\u00a0 Westerns like the Searchers, High Noon, Shane, The Magnificent Seven, and Hombre all explored themes of\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/searchers.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11796"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11796"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11797,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11796\/revisions\/11797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}