There are two fundamental ways of looking at life.
The horizontal view sees everything on one level. People, values, cultures, and goals are treated as roughly equal. Difference is reduced to preference or power. Nothing is allowed to stand genuinely above anything else. This view dominates the institutions that shape young men today. Equality is presented as the highest moral fact. Any ranking of human types is treated with suspicion or hostility.
The vertical view sees ranks of being. Some things are higher, some are lower. Some ways of living are more complete, more ordered, more in contact with what is essential. Hierarchy is not an opinion. It is a fact of reality that must be recognized if a man is to orient himself correctly. When you first take this view seriously you will feel the pressure of the surrounding culture pushing back. That pressure is information. It shows you how thoroughly the horizontal view has been installed.
Modern life is almost entirely horizontal. It flattens. Tradition is vertical. Everything that follows in these pages rests on this distinction. You do not need to announce it. You need to see it clearly and hold it under pressure.