Viktor Orban Speaking at CPAC, Studying Greeks and Romans, and Western Civilization

I am almost through ‘The Histories’ by Polybius, and hope to wrap up the last few hours today. Now I remember how my friend Joseph Crampton recommended I dig into Plutarch’s ‘Parallel Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans’ next, and that title is calling my name. My wife is also encouraging me in this, since our kids study Plutarch as part of our homeschooling curriculum. From what I’ve heard from them, 'Lives' is enriching stuff. I get this favorable impression, for instance, that Plutarch places a special emphasis both on telling stories with morals as well as explaining the morals to the stories he tells. He doesn't just subject his readers to dry recitations of names and dates without effect. That is a mercy, not least because 'Lives' will be the single largest title I have ever taken up, with Audible showing the copy I’ve just bought at 83 hours and 11 minutes long. This will take a while, then, but I will be sure to keep you updated as I go, so you can benefit as well. You may be wondering why, though, besides encouragement from my family and friends, this seems good to me. To answer in part, I credit Victor Davis Hanson’s ‘Who Killed Homer’ and 'Carnage and Culture,' as well as Os Guinness’s ‘A Free People’s Suicide’ and ‘The Magna Carta of Humanity.’ These have caused me to value more highly original source material by those Greeks and Romans credited for so much of Western Civilization. By all accounts, Polybius, Plutarch, and Cicero have been hugely important to the development of Western thought, and the unfolding of World History accordingly, as the West has achieved so much dominance on a global scale. For my part, I am trying to understand what to do about the ongoing decline of the West generally, and the United States of America in particular. So it seems wise to me to go back and study the intellectual roots of our civilization, found not only in the Bible and Church History, but also among the heirloom historical and philosophical works of the Greeks and Romans. Similarly, I plan on starting ‘Nudge’ by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein this weekend. My reason being a certain UnHerd interview Freddie Sayers did with Professor Susan Michie back in 2020, which I recently saw shared to Reddit. So also, an article at The Epoch Times caught my attention yesterday about Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban speaking at CPAC in Dallas, Texas on Thursday. The Conservative Political Action Conference invited Orban to address attendees, and our Leftist mainstream media is having a field day as usual because they hate his politics, particularly his warning the West about a takeover by, if we dare call them by their name, Communists. Thus, I find still more reasons to study the Greeks and Romans. Something clearly has to be done, but we must remember who we are before we can do it.