Subscribe
Donate
Subscribe
Facebook X-twitter Instagram Youtube

Build Back Beautiful

City Journal
August 23, 2026
Read The Full Story

The movement to restore beauty in public architecture is gaining surprising adherents beyond just conservatives, notes Paul Shakeshaft in City Journal. While deciding whether a new design meets the beauty test is guaranteed to remain contentious, Shakeshaft welcomes the recognition that it should be a key criterion. As he puts it: “We don’t need to arrive at a metaphysical consensus over the definition of beauty to reestablish its place in our public life.”

Love C2C Journal? Here's how you can help us grow.

More for you

Catalyst for Civilizational Collapse

There’s no longer any doubt, writes Spiked’s Brendan O’Neill: the radical left, “keffiyeh-adorned lowlifes”, Islamofascists and the Green Party of England all want the same thing. Not “to end the war in Gaza but to end Israel.” Their behaviour shows they actually enjoy Jewish suffering. If anti-Semites get their way, O’Neill warns, “7 October [will] look like a tea party.” And as Hannah Arendt famously warned, generalized Jew-hatred becomes the catalyst for civilizational ruin.
For more on this topic, check this C2C article by Lynne Cohen.

Britain’s Tories Continue to Avert Their Eyes

Although the hour in the UK is late indeed, the country’s Conservatives still seem scared to focus on the key issues of mass migration and multiculturalism, warns Fred de Fossard in The American Conservative. “If the party is serious about returning to power,” de Fossard writes, it must clearly commit to “reversing 30 years of political vandalism.” But to the dismay of many rank-and-file members, party brass remain dangerously aligned with Labour’s “open borders welfarism.”
Want to explore this subject? Check this C2C essay by John Weissenberger.

“No” Sure Means a Lot More Than It Used to

Sexual assaults against U.S. women have dropped substantially, notes Christina Buttons in City Journal. But the unhinged coverage of the Cornell University “Jane Doe” group-sex scandal might lead most people to conclude the opposite. And that may not be a coincidence, Buttons suggests. The ever-expanding legal definition of sexual non-consent – silence, a lack of enthusiasm, intoxication and now, apparently, going back on a sworn statement – is “encourag[ing] women to reinterpret regretted sexual experiences as evidence that someone wronged them.”
For insight into a culture that practices real sexual oppression of women, read this C2C column by Aruna Papp.

Institutional Betrayal

Writing in City Journal, Ilya Shapiro considers Canada’s expanding habit of cancelling anyone with unpopular opinions in his review of Collin May’s new book From Cancel Culture to Incarceration Culture: Prosecutorial Democracy and the Future of Cancellation. Shapiro notes the book carries “unusual immediacy” since May knows of what he writes, having lost his position as chair of the Alberta Human Rights Commission due to politically motivated complaints about a C2C Journal essay he wrote 13 years earlier. For more on May’s journey, see this C2C article.

Catalyst for Civilizational Collapse

There’s no longer any doubt, writes Spiked’s Brendan O’Neill: the radical left, “keffiyeh-adorned lowlifes”, Islamofascists and the Green Party of England all want the same thing. Not “to end the war in Gaza but to end Israel.” Their behaviour shows they actually enjoy Jewish suffering. If anti-Semites get their way, O’Neill warns, “7 October [will] look like a tea party.” And as Hannah Arendt famously warned, generalized Jew-hatred becomes the catalyst for civilizational ruin.
For more on this topic, check this C2C article by Lynne Cohen.

Britain’s Tories Continue to Avert Their Eyes

Although the hour in the UK is late indeed, the country’s Conservatives still seem scared to focus on the key issues of mass migration and multiculturalism, warns Fred de Fossard in The American Conservative. “If the party is serious about returning to power,” de Fossard writes, it must clearly commit to “reversing 30 years of political vandalism.” But to the dismay of many rank-and-file members, party brass remain dangerously aligned with Labour’s “open borders welfarism.”
Want to explore this subject? Check this C2C essay by John Weissenberger.

“No” Sure Means a Lot More Than It Used to

Sexual assaults against U.S. women have dropped substantially, notes Christina Buttons in City Journal. But the unhinged coverage of the Cornell University “Jane Doe” group-sex scandal might lead most people to conclude the opposite. And that may not be a coincidence, Buttons suggests. The ever-expanding legal definition of sexual non-consent – silence, a lack of enthusiasm, intoxication and now, apparently, going back on a sworn statement – is “encourag[ing] women to reinterpret regretted sexual experiences as evidence that someone wronged them.”
For insight into a culture that practices real sexual oppression of women, read this C2C column by Aruna Papp.

Institutional Betrayal

Writing in City Journal, Ilya Shapiro considers Canada’s expanding habit of cancelling anyone with unpopular opinions in his review of Collin May’s new book From Cancel Culture to Incarceration Culture: Prosecutorial Democracy and the Future of Cancellation. Shapiro notes the book carries “unusual immediacy” since May knows of what he writes, having lost his position as chair of the Alberta Human Rights Commission due to politically motivated complaints about a C2C Journal essay he wrote 13 years earlier. For more on May’s journey, see this C2C article.

Share This Story

Donate

Donate

Subscribe to the C2C Weekly
It's Free!