BACK FROM THE WASTELAND: J. Budziszewski has been a University of Texas professor for 45 years, but the J strolling to the lecturn today might well not even recognize the one who first accepted the Austin position.

To understand why, check out Terrell Clemmons’ interview with one of the most intellectually courageous people you may encounter in American academia. The interview first appeared in Science & Culture Today. Here’s a taste of the conversation:

“I had come to think that there couldn’t be any real moral authority for anything, that good and evil were things we made up; I am just a process; I don’t have personal responsibility for my actions; I’m not free. But I loved my wife and children.

“Now consider: love is a commitment of the will to the true good of another person. But I didn’t believe in objective good, I didn’t believe in persons, and I didn’t believe my commitments were in my control. So it wasn’t that I didn’t love them. It was that I couldn’t make sense of this love. That was horrible.”