Eco-Republic:What the Ancients Can Teach Us about Ethics, Virtue, and Sustainable Living by Melissa Lane In this provocative and accessible reflection on the potential contributions of Platonic political thought to the resolution of contemporary environmental problems, Lane (Princeton) attempts to craft “an intuitive and imaginative model inspired by the ancients” (p. 6). As a work in [...]
A number of Americans, fancying that the world is governed mainly by economic doctrines and practices, are inclined to think that an era of international good feeling lies before us. I intend to sprinkle some drops of cold water on such hasty hopes. I have no faith in the notion that an abstract “democratic capitalism” [...]
Toward the end of my undergraduate days, I came across a passage in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Nobel Lecture which I found startling and even a bit disturbing. Solzhenitsyn begins his address on the nature and role of literature with a brief, enigmatic quotation from Dostoevsky: “Beauty will save the world.” Solzhenitsyn confesses that the phrase had [...]
John Adams was a true statesman, committed to republican principles, conducting himself in a virtuous manner that served the public good. Without him, it is entirely possible that there would be no United States of America. What kind of person is worthy of being called a “statesman”? What type of character, what accomplishments, what life [...]
Sixteen months after the United States abandoned its loyal satrap of 30 years, President Hosni Mubarak, to champion democracy in Egypt, the returns are in. Mohammed Morsi, candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood, is president of Egypt, while the military has dissolved the elected parliament that was dominated by the Brotherhood, and curbed his powers. The military [...]
With the present cancer of decay infecting the body politic, a virulence so debilitating that it induces complacency in the face of not only flagrantly unconstitutional acts of the national government but even of murder, it is an understatement to say that the “common good” is threatened. To deny, in the face of angular reality [...]
The colonies were “not only under different governors, but [had] different forms of government, different laws, different interests, and some of them different religious persuasions and different manners,” Benjamin Franklin wrote to a British audience in 1760. Ethnicity, religion, geography, economic systems, political systems, and degrees of freedom and servitude divided the population against itself. [...]
I am grateful to the founding parents and benefactors of the Lyceum that you have not had to grow up in a cultural wilderness as I did. Why anyone would be nostalgic for the 70’s I do not know. To give you an idea of how bad it was: In 1973, Admiral Jeremiah Denton returned [...]
So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their view, and demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and its purpose in the service [...]
Russell Kirk The bicentenary of the French Revolution occurs in this year of 1989 [Ed., originally published in 1989]; and still the world is tormented by ghastly political upheavals and acts of terror that are inspired by what was said and done in Paris two centuries ago. English-speaking countries, nevertheless, have been relatively free of [...]
President Obama’s political operatives—if Vice President Joe Biden merits even that honorific—are going to the wall this campaign season on the government bailout of the automakers from a few years back. “Bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive,” mouthed Biden ten days ago to a campaign throng. Obama himself wants Republican presidential candidate [...]
Thomas Aquinas not only sought wisdom as part of his intellectual endeavors, but he also daily prayed for wisdom. On occasion, but it should be with great frequency, within the context of a class discussion or even a lesson at Church, the topic of wisdom is discussed. Frequently, but it should be on occasion, the [...]
Modern political conservatism takes its origin in Edmund Burke’s insistence upon the rights of society and its historically formed groups such as family, neighborhood, guild and church against the “arbitrary power” of a political government. By common assent modern conservatism, as political philosophy, springs from Edmund Burke: chiefly from his Reflections on the Revolution in [...]
Whit Stillman has claimed that he does not want to make serious dramas, only comedies. This does not mean, however, that his work has no serious intention. Critics have classified his three films, Metropolitan (1990), Barcelona (1994), and The Last Days of Disco (1998), as comedies of manners, and are reminded of Jane Austen. And [...]