J. Budziszewski’s Pandemic of Lunacy is reviewed in Civitas Outlook.
J. Budziszewski knows the hard truths about society. Perhaps his gentleness can prepare us to survive catastrophe.
I think it’s very rare, maybe unique to our times, that people should brag about being crazy. Some do it to prove they’re victims; others to prove nobody else is sane either; others still to prove they’re in touch with the times—the crazy times may indeed drive people crazy. Good sense has never had such bad press, or this little purchase. I look around and feel a desire to defend sanity, because I suspect it’s a pathway to sanity. A primer for people who guess somehow that crazy is nothing to brag about.
Prof. J. Budziszewski (Emeritus) of Government, Philosophy, and Civic Leadership at the University of Texas at Austin, also known as the Underground Thomist, has such a primer to offer, titled Pandemic of Lunacy: How to Think Clearly When Everyone Around You Seems Crazy.
As a primer, it’s a series of 30 discussions of the assorted lunacies that have gained popularity or prestige among us, helpfully grouped by topic, with each topic comprising five chapters. The first three topics are practical: virtue, government, and family; the latter three are theoretical: what it means to be human, what reality is, and what God is.
The parts are roughly equal in length, about 100 pages each, so you can easily read this book over one weekend and still have time for the indispensable discussions it is meant to inspire and through which it seeks to guide the reader. You will feel both smarter and more orderly in your thinking as you go through these sections. They clarify and reject the Progressive derangement of thought and prepare the restoration of common sense.
Read the whole review here.
