I returned home a few hours ago from a flying visit to Georgetown University and would like to pay tribute to my hosts, the Tocqueville Forum. This vigorous organization, under the directorship of the sagacious Patrick J. Deneen, seeks to bring a tradition-oriented philosophical and cultural perspective to a university that has sadly lost its way over the past forty years or so. At the Forum’s invitation, I gave a lunchtime talk to undergraduates on The Lord of the Rings as “a fundamentally religious and Catholic work” and an evening talk to a larger audience on the theme of “Small is Still Beautiful: Economics as if Families Mattered”. I was particularly impressed by the intellectual rigour of those who attended these talks and was heartened by the knowledge that such undergraduates continue to flourish at Georgetown.

Having experienced the good to be discovered on this venerable Jesuit campus, I perceived how bad things have become with regard to the institution as a whole. This was perhaps epitomised by the fact that Georgetown offers residents at its campus hotel the choice of watching the Arab news channel, Al Jazeera, but not the choice of watching the Catholic channel, EWTN. It is indeed perversely ironic that the Jesuit powers-that-be at Georgetown are more comfortable with the promotion of “understanding” between Christians and Muslims than they are with offering Catholic orthodoxy to visitors to campus. It’s all a long way from the vision of the University’s founder, Father John Carroll.

So much for the the good and the bad. The ugly side of Georgetown was displayed on another TV channel offered to guests at the campus hotel. This channel seems to have been made by Georgetown students and consisted entirely, so far as I could see, of narcissistic videos of students getting drunk at nightclubs and behaving abominably. I shan’t elaborate. Needless to say, it shows the ugly face of hedonism, which is the barren fruit of secular fundamentalism.

I shall end, however, as I began. The good that the Toqueville Forum is doing amidst the badness and ugliness that surrounds it is a veritable beacon of light in the darkness. I am honoured to have been a guest of such a resolutely bold initiative.