When we survey that last 100 years in even the most cursory manner possible, the one objective and rather obvious thing that holds the century together is both the attempt to deconstruct the human person and the counter effort to uphold his dignity. Contempt and defense, seemingly in a Manichaen-like struggle. While the Gulags, the [...]
There is a cartoon that has, as they say, “gone viral” on the internet in the last two weeks or so. It’s one of the oldest threads from the Schultz empire, and one never tires of its utterly predictable and utterly funny ending. Lucy the capitalist progressive always wins, and Charlie Brown never learns. Here [...]
That “friend” is now so widely verbified Online (I friended someone new just now) Calls friendship into some degree of question Does it not? Perhaps “that ship has sailed”? And does this not imply a shipping charge If ship is also verb instead of noun? But even online friends who seem asea There being a [...]
To our Friends in The Imaginative Conservative community: Do you frequent Facebook, Google+, Reddit, Tumblr, StumbleUpon or Twitter? Please share TIC with your friends and they will praise your name in song & dance with joy! Give the gift of Imaginative Conservatism! (Share buttons for each of these services are at the bottom of all [...]
Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius, by Sylvia Nasar, Simon & Schuster, 558 pages In December 1974, in the midst of the first energy crisis, Friedrich Hayek received the Nobel Prize in Sweden and confessed, “we have little cause for pride: as a profession we have made a mess of things.” He admitted that [...]
Among the many dangers for traditional conservatives, and Catholics in particular, as the culture becomes increasingly hostile to us and our way of life, is the view that we always must defend “our” people when they come under criticism—and of course never criticize them ourselves. Such has been especially the case with pizza magnate Tom [...]
My wife is a librarian and daily interacts with children and books. If I were not a Professor, I cannot think of a more appealing calling. We talk daily about the little ones in her school, books, and the relationship between bookish children and their overall demeanor. A picture book that we recently became aware [...]
I will admit, with only the slightest embarrassment, that the November elections depressed me mightily. As early as mid summer, I promised myself not to get worked up about the current state of politics. One candidate seemed frightful, and the other dreadfully dull. Neither vice presidential candidate did much for me, either, though a [...]
A few weeks after the Presidential elections, anger and dismay among conservatives appear to have given way to malaise. In some places (such as at The Imaginative Conservative) public and intellectual life go on much as before—in part because few of us, here, were terribly surprised by the election returns, in part because we simply do [...]
How can the federal government be prevented from usurping powers that the Constitution doesn’t grant to it? It’s an alarming fact that few Americans ask this question anymore. Our ultimate defense against the federal government is the right of secession. Yes, most people assume that the Civil War settled that. But superior force proves nothing. [...]
The other day, I had the occasion to look over some of my past essays at The Imaginative Conservative. Much to my surprise, I’m quickly approaching my 250th essay. I might actually have reached and passed this number. Because I’ve failed to label my essays correctly, I am probably over 250 essays. Officially, though, Google [...]
Like all great nations through history, America borrows freely, adopting and adapting. Her Pilgrim Fathers included parlous few, say, Jews or Italians or Africans, yet look at how they later added to American culture and her living traditions. When America borrows some aspect of another culture she often gains a perspective of something that [...]
Russell Kirk What is this “moral imagination”? The phrase is Edmund Burke’s, and it occurs in his Reflections on the Revolution in France. Burke describes the destruction of civilizing manners by the revolutionaries: In the franchise bookshops the shelves are crowded with the prickly pears and the Dead Sea fruit of literary decadence. [...]
“There’ll never be another Camelot,” said Mrs. John F. Kennedy forty-nine years ago this week, in the wake of her husband’s assassination in late autumn, 1963. “Camelot,” of Knights of the Round Table fame, was a Broadway hit at the time, and Jackie saw in all the genius advisors surrounding Kennedy another mythical fraternity the [...]