In 2023, a group of individuals and organizations, with the most prominent at the time being psychologist, speaker, and writer Jordan Peterson, founded the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC). The intention of this group was to counter the decline of Western civilization and put forward a positive agenda for the future.
“We reject the inevitability of decline and instead are seeking solutions which draw on humanity’s highest virtues and extraordinary capacity for innovation and ingenuity,” ARC’s mission statement reads, continuing, “we hope to develop a more hope-filled vision for the future and re-lay the foundations of our civilization.” Members of ARC today include academics, scientists, politicians, and ordinary citizens.
ARC crossed my radar last year when I stumbled across a YouTube video of British actress Sophie Winkleman’s speech at the 2025 conference. Her passionate and knowledgeable address on the damage done by digital devices to children moved me to listen to several other ARC speakers.
This year’s conference ran from June 23-25 in London with around 4,000 attendees. Winkleman was back, speaking even more powerfully as she critiqued the detrimental effects of screens in the classroom. Jonathan Pageau, a French-Canadian icon carver, public speaker, and YouTuber, also spoke powerfully on AI and our culture, providing valuable insights into the increasingly powerful grip of AI on the human mind and our culture and how we might resist these encroachments.
The ARC’s offerings on its website and YouTube channel speak to a variety of topics pertinent to our time: the centrality of home, family, and local community in resisting a globalization bent on eradicating traditional culture; the lies behind the hydra-headed communism that despite a record of murder, repression, and failure continues to attract followers; the need to restore many of the things we have lost; and the eternal need for truth, beauty, and goodness in the human being.
This most recent exposure to ARC also brought an encouraging revelation. The theme of restoration that runs through these speeches is identical to those you’ll find in the articles written on this website. In this year’s address, for instance, Winkleman takes time to strongly advocate using books, pens, pencils, and paper in classrooms rather than keyboards and screens, citing data that show the enormous benefits for pupils who use these traditional tools for learning. Writers on this website often champion this same approach.
Pageau also emphatically stresses that to cope with the technology now racing to influence us, we must become even more fully human, getting away from our screens and engaging in activities as simple as gardening, reading real books, and going to church. To fight the machine and avoid making technology our master rather than our servant, we must find ways to live outside the machine. Here again, writers on this site tout the same solutions.
My point here is not to boast, but to bring reassurance. Yes, we face enormous problems as we make our way through the 21st century, but they are problems with solutions if we think and act boldly and creatively. And yes, the traditions, heritage, and gifts of Western civilization are under constant assault from an assortment of enemies, but we have the weapons and means of resisting these attacks if we only choose to use them.
I encourage you to watch some of the ARC YouTube videos, like Michael Shellenberger’s “Diversity, Equity & Delusion” or Phillipa Stroud’s “I Bid You: Stand!” and listen to their warnings and their solutions. Each video will generally take less than 15 minutes of your time.
Without a doubt, there is a darkness creeping over the West. But the messages delivered by many speakers and writers fighting for renewal remind us that we’re called to be points of light illuminating and dispelling that darkness. By living virtuous lives, honoring traditional institutions like marriage and the family, cultivating faith and community, learning more of our history, and loving the good, we will eventually make a bonfire of those lights – while also restoring and preserving our culture.
