Like "Junimism", Iorga's conservatism did not generally rely on religion. A secularist among the traditionalists, he did not attach a special meaning to Christian ethics, and, praising the creative force of man, saw asceticism as a negative phenomenon. However, he strongly identified the Romanian Orthodox Church and its hesychasm with the Romanian psyche, marginalizing the Latin Rite Church and the Transylvanian School. In rejecting pure individualism, Iorga also reacted against the modern reverence toward Athenian democracy or the Protestant Reformation, giving more positive appraisals to other community models: Sparta, Macedonia, the Italian city-states. As argued by political scientist Mihaela Czobor-Lupp, his was an "alternative" to the rationalist perspective, and a counterweight to Max Weber's study on "The Protestant Ethic". His theories identified the people as a "natural entity its own organic life", and sometimes justified the right of conquest when new civilizations toppled decadent ones—the conflict, he argued, was between Heracles and Trimalchio. In his private and public life, Iorga's conservatism also came with sexist remarks: like Maiorescu, Iorga believed that women only had a talent for nurturing and assisting male protagonists in public affairs.