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HANSON: Progressive regression and the new medievalism

What we're seeing happening in the streets across the U.S. is the result of 'progressive,' socialist, and Marxist ideologies

For most people, the story of the medieval world was one of cramped cities, constant violent crime, and episodic outbreaks of deadly plagues — the dividends of unclean urban conditions, rotting food, fouled water, open sewage, and unchecked rats, fleas, and lice. Most of each day was spent simply trying to survive until the next.

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Castles and walls dotted the landscape to protect kingdoms from marauding tribes and foreign invaders. City gates were usually closed at dusk to keep out nocturnal marauders. Public executions drew massive crowds. And religious schisms and conflicts often turned deadly.

HANSON: Progressive regression and the new medievalism Back to video

In other words, it was not altogether unfamiliar to the world we are becoming today.

Yet meanwhile, science advanced quietly among true elites at universities, courts, and monasteries, producing windmills, mechanical clocks, and eyeglasses. Sophisticated crossbows were manufactured in great numbers. Large, multi-sail warships were built that could cross narrow seas.

Some of history’s greatest literature —Dante’s Divine Comedy, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and St. Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae — was the product of the medieval mind.

We still gaze dumbfounded at the architectural genius and beauty of the colossal cathedrals of Cologne, Florence, Milan, Paris, Rome, and Seville. The Byzantine cathedral Hagia Sophia may have risen near the beginning of the medieval period and for a millennium, nothing rivaled its majesty. All these medieval architectural masterpieces were built without computers, porta-potties, overtime, or building permits.

Yet after the collapse of the classical world (circa A.D. 500), Western civilization still needed a millennium to recover even a modicum of its lost knowledge and technology. Centuries passed before the Renaissance saw hygienic principles of sewage systems, aqueducts, and waste disposal–not to mention the medical expertise of classically trained doctors and scientists.

Yet our progressive-regressive modern West is now suddenly beginning to resemble the medieval age —with one important caveat: after centuries of so-called “progress,” we should know........

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