Rod Dreher's Blog

Carnage, Faith, And Hope

Annie Jacobsen on the Joe Rogan podcast

I finished listening to the most frightening books I’ve ever “read”: Annie Jacobsen’s Nuclear War: A Scenario. It’s a deeply researched book about the mechanics of nuclear war — how unspeakably horrible it would be, and how insanely — and I mean insanely — easy it could be to kick off. In a single hour, everything we know could be gone, and indeed, as Khruschev prophesied, the survivors would envy the dead.

Until reading this book, I had not known in any d...

Rod Dreher's Diary: Banned In Britain?

A friend in London texted me this last night:

I looked at the government’s link explaining the Online Safety Act, to see what this newsletter possibly could have done to have crossed the line:

The Act requires all companies to take robust action against illegal content and activity. Platforms are now required to implement measures to reduce the risks their services are used for illegal offending. They also need to put in place systems for removing illegal content when it does appear. Search servic...

Thanksgiving Abroad

So that’s what I did yesterday in London. Well, one of the things. I also got to ride in a plum-colored elevator at the Hachette HQ:

Once I get rich, I will buy a townhouse and outfit it with a plum elevator. Everybody should have a plum elevator, right? On this Thanksgiving, I thank the Lord for plum elevators. I also thank him for the taxi driver who drove me home at midnight from the Budapest airport. Usually when you get in cabs here, the drivers are playing some horrible bompity-bompity pop,...

If We Get Authoritarianism, This Is Why

The current Chicago mayor makes his predecessor, Lori Lightfoot, look like Catherine the Great by comparison. Listen to this video:

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An Autumn Night In Westminster

Nick Cave and Your Working Boy

Now that was a fine London evening! Last night at the UnHerd Club, Freddie Sayers interviewed me before an audience, talking about the Situation in the US, with the Right, Nick Fuentes, and all that. Lo, who should come to the event but the musician Nick Cave! We ended up having dinner after the event. Tell you about it in a second.

But first, the event itself. The British are really interested in this cock-up (as they say) on the American Right. The room was full of...

'The Age Of Disclosure' Delivers

Still of a UAP, featured in ‘The Age Of Disclosure’. There’s a reason it’s blurry

So, I watched the new UAP documentary The Age Of Disclosure, which you can rent on Amazon streaming. It’s not cheap — $19 to rent — but I highly recommend doing so. There is very little in the film that people like me, who have been immersed in this stuff, that is new — but it’s a great way to get the most basic information in a single place. You will note that all the people interviewed are senior government offici...

Britain And The Autumn Of Our Culture

It’s autumn! Glorious! My favorite season. It’s a time of pensiveness, of listening to cello music, of looking forward to the joy of Christmas. And tweed! The great Martin Shaw took me to a small shop in Dublin a couple of years ago, telling me that this is where Seamus Heaney bought his tweeds. I bought the Donegal tweed jacket you see in the photo above — the kind of jacket you could never wear in Louisiana, owing to its subtropical climate — and it has become my favorite article of clothing. ...

Men & The Rise Of Orthodoxy In America

Grant Currier, right, raised Evangelical in America, during his chrismation ritual into Orthodoxy at the Russian cathedral in Budapest, Nov 2024

Here’s a really excellent, thorough, and fair New York Times story about the astonishing number of young Americans — especially men — coming into the Orthodox Church. Ruth Graham is the author, and hats off to her. I’ve used on of my gift articles to unlock it for you. Excerpts:

Something is changing in an otherwise quiet corner of Christianity in the Uni...

'Goodbye, Middle Class. It's Been Fun'

An American friend went shopping at Target with her kid for school supplies yesterday. She sent me this pic, with the comment, “Goodbye middle class. It’s been fun”. My jaw dropped: $26 for a packet of colored markers?! What the hell?! I keep saying here that every time I go back from Hungary to the US to visit, I’m shocked by the cost of living. But something about this just dropped my jaw. Colored markers!

Aaron Renn is always worth reading, but his latest Substack, a compilation of articles ab...

Civilization, If We Can Keep It

Last night I sat just behind Michael Walsh as he played a recital of the works of Franz Liszt (1811-1886), with a brief appearance on the program by Richard Wagner. He is known here in Budapest as Liszt Ferenc — he was Hungarian by nationality.

Walsh is an accomplished author, journalist (many years with Time magazine), and a gifted musician. I’d met Michael before, on one of his forays to Budapest with his wife Kate, and knew of his considerable reputation as a writer. But I didn’t know a thi...