Another “Serious Man,” Claes Ryn, Writes a Novel

I have known Claes Ryn since the death of Dr. James Dornan, Chairman of the Politics Department at Catholic University.  Dr. Dornan was killed in an automobile accident and was succeeded by Dr. Ryn.

Dr. Ryn is well known in the small but select world of political conservatives due to his book, The New Jacobinism, that gave vivid warning that making the world safe for democracy would spell disaster for America’s concept of limited Constitutional government.

Dr. Ryn’s first novel, A Desperate Man, was reviewed in 2016 by law professor, Dr. Bruce Frohnen in a review titled “What Should a Moral Man Do in Desperate Times?”

Dr. Ryn writes that his novel “also triggered an entire issue of Humanitas that discusses the meaning of morality. The issue was edited by Justin Garrison and Ryan Holston. They had the idea of a symposium after listening to a speech that I gave at (Academy of Philosophy and Letters (APL). The speech, the topic of which had been suggested by then-APL-president Michael Federici, was supposed to discuss my novel. A revised version of the speech introduced the symposium. I and others had more to say about it later in the same issue. See here:  https://css.cua.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/ryn-how-desperate-should-we-be.pdf