Mark Lilla

"We don't understand the reactionary mind. As a result, argues Mark Lilla in this timely book, the ideas and passions that shape today's political dramas are unintelligible to us. The reactionary is anything but a conservative. He is as radical and modern a figure as the revolutionary, someone shipwrecked inthe rapidly changing present, and suffering from nostalgia for an idealized past and an apocalyptic fear that history is rushing toward catastrophe....

In 1953 Czeslaw Milosz published The Captive Mind, his classic study of how intellectuals in postwar Eastern Europe were tempted to collaborate with the communist system under which they lived. But they were hardly unique. European history of the past century is full of examples of philosophers, writers, and jurists who, whether they lived in democratic, communist, or fascist societies, supported and defended totalitarian principles and horrific regimes....

Many people are becoming unmoored from a firm sense of self. To compensate, they join the ranks of ideological tribes spawned by identity politics and react with frenzy against any perceived threat to their group. Eberstadt argues that the rise of identity politics is a direct result of the fallout of the sexual revolution, especially the collapse and shrinkage of the family. The extended family has long been the first tribe and first teacher; the...