Review - "The War for Middle Earth," Joseph Loconte, PhD

 While familiarity with J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis will add to your appreciation of this book, that is not necessary to realize the pertinence of this story to today’s world where evil still exists in the China, Russia, North Korea and Iran axis.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Burrowing into Books

The War for Middle Earth, Joseph Loconte

March 14, 2026

 

“Societies cannot thrive under conditions of disorder, disorientation and degeneration. The human soul craves

meaning and purpose. The new political religions of the twentieth century promised to deliver the goods.”

                                                                                The War for Middle Earth, 2025, Joseph Loconte, PhD

                                                                                                                                

Following World War I, Europe searched for answers amidst devastation. Civilization suffered and so did religion. Why, people asked, would God permit such suffering? Dictatorships, in Russia, Italy and Germany, rose to meet the challenge, becoming the “new political religions” that Mr. Loconte refers to in the epigraph. Following the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II in 1917, Lenin became the leader of Communist Soviet Russia. The Fascist Mussolini was appointed Prime Minister by King Victor Emmanuel in 1922; eleven years later the Nazi Party leader Adolph Hitler was named Chancellor of Germany by President Paul von Hindenburg. All three men used violence in their accession to and maintenance of power. The people of those three countries, devastated by four years of war, were willing to accept totalitarian leadership.

 

It was in that environment – the end of innocence and the end of faith – that two friends, J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, both Oxford professors of English literature and both veterans of the Great War, decided a new path was necessary: a path based on the virtues embedded in their Country’s Judeo-Christian heritage and in the individual liberalism inherent to Western civilization, a path that followed ancient tales and myths of heroes and villains, of fights won against great odds. As the Second World War commenced, Loconte writes “There was a savage war of aggression devouring the European continent and threatening the survival of Great Britain. Yet there was also an ideological war: the widespread assault on the classical and Christian ideals that had nourished Western civilization for centuries.” This is the story Joseph Loconte tells.

 

He follows Tolkien and Lewis, and how the rise of tyranny influenced their careers. “They began writing their epic stories (The Lord of the Ring and The Chronicles of Narnia.) when the darkest shadow of modern history was cast over the West and, for a crucial part of that time, over England in particular.”

 

In 1939, the Allies were unprepared: “The failure to imagine the likelihood of this act of aggression (Pearl Harbor), given Japan’s brutal war in China – indeed the reluctance to believe in the capacity for human wickedness on a vast scale – remains one of the enigmas of the Second World War.”

 

By September 1945, the Fascists in Italy, Nazis in Germany and the Japanese Imperialists had been defeated. Forty-five years later the Soviet Union collapsed. Western civilization, which Tolkien and Lewis did so much to preserve during those middle years, prevailed. 

 

His tale is pertinent today. The world is not static. We must ever be mindful that there will always be those whose desire for power threatens the West – our governments, history, culture and lives. While they assume different forms, the world will never be rid of a Sauron or a White Witch. But there will always be individuals, like Frodo and the Pevensie siblings, willing to sacrifice their comforts, and there will always be a Gandolf or Aslan to guide us. This is both a compelling and pertinent read.

"Marriage"

All marriages are spirited but not as dynamic as the world in which we live. Thank God. It is necessary from time to time to retreat from the day’s news and to reflect on what has brought happiness, and to let humor and lightness have their play. In my case, what has brought happiness (and smiles) has been the family Caroline and I raised, and the families being raised by our three children. 

 

The photo was taken after our wedding ceremony and on the way to the reception.

 

...and, by the way, don’t forget that Daylight Savings starts tomorrow. Get to bed early!

 

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

“Marriage”

March 7, 2026

 

“A woman’s life is not perfect or whole till she has added herself to a husband.

Nor is a man’s life perfect or whole till he has added to himself a wife.”

                                                                                                                                Anthony Trollope (1815-1882)

                                                                                                                                Miss MacKenzie, 1865

 

On April 11 Caroline and I will celebrate our 62^nd wedding anniversary. We have been married longer than either of our parents or grandparents. 

 

The concept of marriage dates back four or five thousand years, but for most of that time it was a contract for managing property. Marriage for love only gained traction in the late 18^th and early 19^th Centuries. Over time, attitudes changed. The courtships described by Jane Austen show partners standing in opposing lines. In 1828 Noah Webster wrote that marriage “was instituted by God himself.” In 1906 in The Devil’s Dictionary the satirist Ambrose Bierce defined the word marriage: “The state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress and two slaves, making in all, two.” Our 1964 wedding vows were to last until death do us part. Marriage has always been considered the most stable environment in which to raise children. 

 

However, marriage is not a case of “one size fits all.” First, it is not for everyone, and second, not all marriages work. “Marriage,” the humorist Will Rogers once wrote, “is a habit. Divorce is a necessity.” It is impossible that two people can know all about one another after a few months or even after a couple of years. So luck plays a role. Nevertheless, when a marriage works angels sing.

 

Tens of thousands of books have been written, offering advice for a successful marriage – prioritizing your spouse, practicing forgiveness, maintaining a sense of humor, and committing to navigating both good and bad times together. While those words sound substantive, they sport an institutional tone; they could have been spit out by a ‘bot.’ When asked of lessons learned from our marriage, I demur. But love comes first.

 

“Vive La Différence,” sang Maurice Chevalier. And certainly Caroline and I are different. I am sensitive; she is empathetic. I am short-tempered, especially when interrupted while writing; Caroline is patient. However, like magnets we were attracted. P. G. Wodehouse had a sixty-one-year marriage to Ethyl Wayman. In 1932, eighteen years after he was married, he wrote Doctor Sally. The book includes humorous marital advice: “Chumps make the best husbands. When you marry, Sally, grab a chump. Tap his head first and if it rings solid, don’t hesitate. All unhappy marriages come from husbands having brains.”

 

While I don’t think I am a chump – there, my sensitivity is showing! – Caroline and I have had a good marriage. Besides being lovers, we are good friends. There is no one with whom I would rather take a trip or share a meal. But the glue has been the children we produced, and the children they, with their chosen spouses, have produced. There is something magical in knowing that the genes we inherited from our forefathers and foremothers will live on in generations yet to come. While the future is unknowable, we pray that their lives will be happy ones. And all this because of a young woman my sister introduced me to at a small ski area in New Hampshire more than sixty-four years ago. Fortune has smiled upon us.

"Wolves, Sheep and Shepherds"

 

The photo is from Aesop’s Fables, “The Wolf and the Shepherd.”

 

The essay is my own invention and reflects something about which I have spent many hours thinking. Many of you will disagree with my conclusions, But I have always felt we are best off when we express our opinions...and remembering that they are only opinions.

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Wolves, Sheep and Shepherds”

March 6, 2027

 

“The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,

And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;

And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,

When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.”

                                                                                                “The Destruction of Sennacherib,” 1815

                                                                                                Lord Byron (1788-1824)

 

The war in the Middle East pits forces of good – Israel and the U.S. – against forces of evil – Iran and its proxies. With their support of Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and various Shia militias in Iraq and Syria, Iran has been the leading sponsor of terrorism in the Middle East and around the world. For forty-seven years, they and their proxies have waged a relentless war against Israel and have murdered hundreds of Americans, citizens of the “Great Satan,” along with hundreds of Europeans. In providing funding for weapons, training and intelligence, they have destabilized the region. They are part of an Axis of evil that includes China, Russia and North Korea. As a nation, their leaders are wolves. President Biden said “Don’t.” The Mullahs ignored him.

 

Hitler and Tojo were exemplars of evil, and so was the late unlamented Ali Khamenei. They were wolves. Yet the potential for evil resides within all of us, something Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote about in The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956: “The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.” It is our moral duty, for the sake of ourselves and those who follow us, to keep evil at bay. How do we in the United States do that? By never losing sight of our Judeo-Christian heritage: honesty, integrity, perseverance, compassion and respect. Retaining our traditional traits: personal responsibility and accountability. In maintaining a strong military. And by refocusing on individualism, self-reliance, thrift and excellence – factors that allowed the United States to become the most powerful, freest and most prosperous nation in history – while avoiding excessive national debt, state-handouts and multiculturalism.

 

In his poem quoted in the epigraph that heads this essay, Byron wrote of the Assyrian king Sennacherib who in 701 BCE besieged Jerusalem to punish King Hezekiah of Judah. Hezekiah, a reformist and religious revivalist, is praised in the Bible as one of its righteous and faithful leaders of the Jewish people. He rebelled against Assyrian rule. With him as a shepherd, the wolf Assyrian Sennacherib failed in his goal to take Jerusalem and its Temple. There is a lesson for us in the fundamental morality of his story.

 

The United States stands today on a precipice. It is mired in debt, with a population – near to declining – that is increasingly dependent on government subsidies, and therefore ripe for pillaging by wolves in Russia, China, North Korea and Iran. We have lost contact with many of those attributes enumerated above that contributed to our economic success and made us a beacon for aspirant and freedom-loving people. 

 

The United States does not seek war. It knows its horrors, from the Civil War, when 360,000 Union soldiers died freeing four million slaves from bondage. In 1917-18, 117,000 Americans died in Europe, helping their allies in France and Britain defeat imperial Germany. Less than a generation later 410,000 American soldiers were killed in Europe and the Pacific, putting an end to the tyranny emanating from Japan and Germany whose armies threatened Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Another 100,000 Americans died in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. America has always been selfless in their sacrifices for freedom. No, the U.S. does not want war, but it knows the same cannot be said for its enemies, which is why it has understood the importance of a strong defense, and it is why the U.S. and Israel acted against Iran when they did. Obviously, I cannot speak for the 93 million Iranian people, but the numbers of protesters against the regime (and despite the murder of 32,000 of them) suggest many see President Trump as a modern-day Hezekiah. Whether the attack was “preventive” or “pre-emptive,” as discussed in last Wednesday editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, I leave for politicians to decide. From my perspective, it was necessary.

 

We must restore our basic beliefs in those self-evident truths given us by Thomas Jefferson – the ones that offer each of us the opportunity to be a shepherd, not a sheep – “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator (not the state) with certain unalienable Rights, that among those are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” We cannot let our defenses down, not unless we choose to be sheep, a target for wolves, with no shepherds to protect us.