America can only be made great again if it first seeks to make its citizens virtuous again.
By Joseph Pearce
Crisis Magazine
February 2, 2026
Earlier this month, in his State of the World address to ambassadors, Pope Leo XIV warned that "a new Orwellian-style language is developing." He added that "freedom of speech and expression is guaranteed precisely by the certainty of language and the fact that every term is anchored in the truth." The pope's placing of the "state of the world" in an Orwellian light, or perhaps an Orwellian shadow, prompted the following musings on the state of the world, the state of America, and the relationship between being great, being good, and being beautiful.
The pope's employment of the adjective "Orwellian" was a reference to George Orwell's cautionary dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four. In that novel, language is abused and distorted by the totalitarian government to prevent the discussion of politically "incorrect" ideas. The state controls language through "Newspeak," which limits vocabulary and simplifies grammar to make dissident views difficult to articulate. Such views are designated "thoughtcrimes."
Conformity to the state is also enforced through "doublethink," the process of indoctrination whereby people are induced to accept mutually contradictory beliefs simultaneously in defiance of both reason and common sense. An example of such Newspeak and doublethink in our own times would be the way that "love" is seen as the self-gratification of desire, free from self-restraint; love is "doing our own thing" because "love has no boundaries." This Newspeak definition of love assumes that doing our own thing does not harm ourselves or others and that the absence of boundaries does not put the weakest at risk.
The true definition of "love" as the laying down of our lives self-sacrificially for the beloved is clearly the very opposite of doing our own thing. Love is not doing what we want, it is doing what we should. It is the acceptance of boundaries on ourselves for the good of ourselves and others. Ironically, many people believe both definitions of love simultaneously without realizing that they are embracing mutually contradictory perspectives. This is classic Orwellian doublethink.
There is a huge difference between doublethink and paradox. Whereas the former is a self-contradiction which is utterly irrational, the latter is an apparent contradiction which points to a deeper truth. Thus, for instance, Oscar Wilde describes "anarchy," the absence of all laws that constrain individual liberty, as "freedom's own Judas."
In the absence of laws, the most ruthless of the lawless will do what they want with everyone else. This is why Edmund Burke, employing another paradox, insists that "liberty itself must be limited in order to be possessed." In the parlance of modern-day populism, "freedom is not free." It comes at a price. On the other hand, as Lord Acton reminds us, "power tends to corrupt and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely." This is the truth that Orwell's novel demonstrates in a fictional, cautionary mode.
The irony is that anarchy leads to tyranny. A society that drifts into moral lawlessness, as has our own country in the wake of "woke," will recoil in the direction of tyranny. When the streets and the governments are ruled by self-serving gangs, people will actually want the most powerful gang leader to take control so that some sort of "order" can be restored.
There is, however, an alternative. It is what the great Russian dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn called "self-limitation." Echoing the wisdom of Edmund Burke that liberty must be limited in order to be possessed, Solzhenitsyn insisted that self-limitation was the only way of avoiding the twin evils of anarchy and tyranny.
This is obvious enough on the personal level. If we don't discipline ourselves to do what is good for us, physically and spiritually, we will be harming ourselves and others, physically and spiritually. Properly understood, self-limitation is simply love, properly understood; it is not doing what we want but what we should. It is synonymous with virtue. It is the realization that being good is good for us and for our neighbors.
In terms of politics, Solzhenitsyn insisted that the need for self-limitation applied to nations and not merely to individuals. He considered each individual nation to be a unique cultural flower in the global garden. This is why he opposed globalism and all forms of internationalism which threatened the survival of these beautiful national flowers. He also opposed imperialism, which is the failure of one nation to practice self-limitation with respect to its neighbors; and he opposed realpolitik, the belief that politics was governed purely by pragmatism, by the practical "realism" which privileges power over virtue.
It is about the self-gratification of desire, about making ourselves "great," about self-aggrandizement free from self-restraint; it is about "doing our own thing" because "love of country has no boundaries." Such patriotic "love" assumes that doing our own thing to make ourselves "great" does not harm ourselves or others. The love of country that desires greatness over goodness is the antithesis of the true love of authentic patriotism.
True love of country is the belief that goodness is the only greatness. It's not about the pursuit of power but the practice of virtue. It's not about doing what we want to make ourselves great, it is doing what we should in pursuit of the good. It is the acceptance of boundaries on ourselves for the good of ourselves and others.
Ironically, many patriots believe both definitions of love of country simultaneously without realizing that they are embracing mutually contradictory perspectives. This is pure doublethink.
G.K. Chesterton wrote that "my country right or wrong" is like saying "my mother drunk or sober." We do not stop loving our motherland, even when she's drunk with power, but we are not truly loving her if we encourage her drunkenness by getting drunk with her.
Speaking personally, as a native of England, I am happy to confess a great debt of gratitude to George Orwell, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and G.K. Chesterton, each of whom helped me on the journey from being a Great Britisher to being a Little Englander. I once admired the British Empire for being great, for the way that it wielded its big stick of power to subject smaller nations to its will. I now love Little England for its smallness and beauty. I sought to encapsulate this poetically:
When Britain had an Empire
The sun would never set,
But the sun set over England
And Englishmen forget
That greater than the Empire
Are the rolling Yorkshire Moors
And more glorious the Dales
Than all the Empire's wars.
Today, as a citizen of the United States, I hope and pray that we might move beyond the desire for power, for political "greatness," to once again embrace the true greatness of goodness. I pray that America will be great because she is beautiful from sea to shining sea.