Anthony Esolen, one of the finest minds in today’s academy, has ventured forth from his area of speciality, which is literature, to expound upon the wisdom of Catholic social teaching. His central assertion is that virtue is necessary at the heart of society and that modern life must orientate itself in conformity with a timeless moral compass. There is, of course, nothing incongruous in literary people taking to the political stage. One thinks of Solzhenitsyn or Orwell, or the distributism of the Chesterbelloc. And, of course, one can’t help thinking of the divine Dante in this respect. As Esolen is the translator of the Random House editon of the Divine Comedy, it is indeed decorous that he should follow his mentor into the hopeless inferno of secularism in order to point us to the purgatorial heights of wisdom. Here’s a link to Esolen’s article:   http://www.crisismagazine.com/2011/moral-capital