By Joseph R. Wood

A good friend and long-time prominent Catholic commentator called me this week to ask my perspective on current American foreign policy. Not for the first time, I had nothing coherent to offer. This has been the situation for some 15 years now. A Cold War-trained American military and foreign policy functionary, I have found myself unable to adapt to the realities of the 21st century.

I realized around 2012 or 2015 that if you marched me into the Oval Office (whose decor was different then than in the Bush 43 Administration, but not yet gold gilt-saturated) and said, "OK, smarty-pants, tell the President what to do about [name your region or policy problem]," I would have had nothing to say. Same today.

In 2017, the French embassy in Washington awakened in early January to realize that after eight jolly years with the Obama crowd, they knew no one who was likely to be installed in the new Trump Administration. Those Rolodex entries had been thrown out in comfortable, even joyful anticipation of a permanently "transformed" America, to use Obama's phrase. For the French, un problème sérieux.

The embassy apparently sent an emergency cable to Paris asking if anyone knew of Republicans from yesteryear who might be open to recultivating contact. In a clear signal of desperation, they invited me to an Inauguration party (I wasn't actually a Republican, but you get the point). The star that night was Rudy Giuliani. I saw a few familiar faces as surprised as I was to be suddenly à la mode again.

I subsequently declined a very tentative inquiry about a possible Trump Administration position. No more invitations to the French embassy.

I declined not because I was a high-minded never-Trumper, but because in a rare moment of self-awareness, I knew that I no longer had anything to offer the Washington policy world.

In the Bush Administration, I had realized that my foremost contribution was to ask occasionally, "Remind me what we're trying to do?" By 2017, even posing that question seemed out of reach.

I was by then well into my doctoral work in philosophy. My military and foreign policy jobs had, over the years, had the effect of sustaining my interest in fundamental questions about what unchanging truths might be had in this life.

That's to say that my active life only intensified my desire for a contemplative life. And not just a retirement from gainful employment with material advantages, but retirement in the French sense of the verb retirer, to withdraw or pull away from the world.

So, halfway here through my TCT allocation of 1000 words, dear reader may well be asking: So, where does this Epiphany-season autobiographical reminiscence lead?

It leads to Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, and the works of other philosophers about whom I like to scribble.

But perhaps a bit surprisingly, it leads also to Dante. At this point, our editor's eyebrows may be raised, since he knows a good bit about Dante. So I'll be careful.

My friend and CUA School of Philosophy mentor Dr. Kevin White has taught courses on Dante and philosophy, and I was fortunate to take one of those courses. A distinguished Thomist, he has taught at CUA for over three decades.

White (who, incidentally, owns a complete collection of the journal Idler, the great project edited by TCT contributor David Warren) encourages his students both to learn Italian and to read Dante daily. In this new year, I'm taking at least the second part of his advice.

I'm re-reading the Divine Comedy and am now a few cantos into the Inferno. I'm trying not to hurry, but also not to tarry because White also informs his students of the legendary dictum that where you stop reading the Comedy is where you go after you die. I need to get to Purgatorio quickly, and Paradiso promptly. You never know.

Besides, it's a pleasure to read and re-read. And Dante knew his Thomist philosophy. He invokes a vast range of references, making notes essential for those ...