Forward March - The Countermarch

An opened red capsule beside a milk-glass dish filled with red and blue capsules reveals its powdery contents. (AI-generated image)

Forward March

The Unexamined Idea

Choosing an idea is different from making it your own.

A moonlit residential street in Huntington, Indiana, leads toward an illuminated church steeple. Photo by Scott P. Richert.

Place & the Particular

Footsteps and Memories

The dead still speak, if we have ears to hear.

In the style of a social-realist painting, men leave a shadowed factory as children and spouses welcome them into the golden light of home. (AI-generated image)

Forward March

Remotely Present

Placing work at the service of life

A human hand passes a red apple with a bite taken out of it to the open wooden-and-brass hand of an automaton. (AI-generated image)

Forward March

The Original Sin of AI

Why we can’t create a system that’s better than us

Six conspirators sit before press cameras with their faces illuminated and an open red dossier displayed on the table. (AI-generated image)

Forward March

Hiding in Plain Sight

Conspiracy theories in the age of Trump, Part 2

As conspirators gather around a sealed red dossier, one conspirator secretly passes a document through a doorway to an outsider. (AI-generated)

Forward March

Of Sin and Conspiracy

Conspiracy theories in the age of Trump, Part 1

Stained glass of the Crucifixion, with Saint Mary and Saint John the Evangelist, in SS. Peter and Paul Catholic Church, Huntington, Indiana. Photo by Scott P. Richert.

Faith Incarnate

The Truth Needs No Defense

What the world desperately needs today is not a defense of the truth, but the proclamation of the truth.

An AI-generated image of the fourth horseman of the apocalypse, Death, riding through a dystopian Washington, D.C.

Forward March

His Kingdom for a Horse

Put not your trust in princes.

A AI-generated cartoon of Scott P. Richert in his library.

Forward March

Let’s Start Our Journey Together

Join me on The Countermarch.

Forward March

Power to the People!

Republicanism, federalism, decentralism, distributism, agrarianism, subsidiarity — the fundamental insight of these political theories is that the only way to confine politics to its proper sphere so that true culture and morality can flourish is to prevent the inordinate concentration of power.

Forward March

Taking Back the Culture

There are no political solutions to cultural problems. True restoration requires reclaiming the institutions of everyday life — family, church, and local community — from the all-encompassing reach of the revolutionary state.

Village of Imbsheim, Alsace-Lorraine, with its church, cemetery, fields, and vineyard rows viewed from above; the Richert family emigrated from here to the United States in 1832.

Forward March

Our Corner of the Vineyard

Cultural renewal cannot be achieved through national politics but requires a return to the principle of subsidiarity, in which authority flows outward from the family and local community rather than downward from the state.