On the way to Brussels for the European Council summit, Prime Minister Orbán warned that despite a long and diverse agenda, the coming days will be defined by a single, decisive question: war or peace.

It will be a volatile summit, with long-lasting consequences. Hungarian PM Orbán draws a clear distinction between those advocating continued military and financial aid to Ukraine and those calling for restraint.

Hungary, he emphasized, belongs to the latter group. “We say that no strategic decisions should be taken now,” the prime minister said, arguing that the EU should support ongoing American peace efforts and wait for the outcome of U.S.-Russian negotiations rather than making irreversible commitments.

A particularly contentious issue is the future of frozen Russian assets. PM Orbán explained that until recently, the continuation of asset freezes required unanimous approval by member states every six months, allowing Hungary to express its opposition. He said this legal ...

Today marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of fiction author Jane Austen, who examined ordinary, day-to-day, small-town family life within an Overton window-frame which once included Biblical civilization and ethics.

The world of Jane Austen's generation was rapidly pivoting the Overton window to a secular worldview, and so were the cultures of contemporary nations.

Lord David Cecil, a biographer of Miss Austen, noted this comparison between authors:

"If I were in doubt as to the wisdom of one of my actions, I should not consult Flaubert or Dostoyevsky. The opinion of Balzac or Dickens would carry little weight with me: were Stendhal to rebuke me, it would only convince me I had done right: even in the judgment of Tolstoy I should not put complete confidence. But I should be seriously upset, I should worry for weeks and weeks, if I incurred the disapproval of Jane Austen."

"We are smack in the middle of a Fourth Turning, and the turmoil of it all has affected the entire West. Over the last five years, virtually every major institution has disgraced itself. What used to be a high-trust society has been blown to smithereens, and nobody knows what to think anymore. And even when an individual person’s convictions haven’t changed, despite the societal turmoil, it is very difficult to know who to think those convictions with. This implosion of all the trusted institutions and relationships has of course included those of us on the political right.

"...So what am I saying? When being normal is weird, be normal. When being normal is normal, remember why you should be normal, and be prepared to defend it, which cannot be done apart from Christ. And when being normal is weird, don’t be extra weird. Be extra normal. Normal you say? By what standard? To the law and to the testimony. Exactly so."

Doug Wilson