American society has long idealized education as the ultimate panacea for every social ill and as the engine of economic progress. Today, however, Americans are abandoning their faith in education. Conservatives, as reflected by the Reagan-Stockman budget and the Proposition 13 movement, are trying to cut back on school spending at all levels; liberals have [...]
That Lena Dunham commercial might have made a real contribution to enhancing the president’s turnout, for all I know. Certainly it was consistent with the Democratic convention’s insistent appeal to women’s rights, especially the rights of single women. But there’s at least one irony: Dunham is a genuine defender of women’s right to choose, but [...]
Winston Elliott inquired whether I would like to update an article I wrote for Modern Age in 2005, “The Future of Conservatism”. I have gladly accepted his invitation since it allows me to emphasize and expand upon certain of its central points that I believe deserve our close attention, as well as to express my views on an [...]
The president is bent on raising taxes big time. The rationale? The deficit is getting out of control. Indeed it is. Since January 2009, when President Obama took office, the United States has run cumulative budget deficits of $5 trillion. Before that time, debt held by the public was $6.3 trillion. Now it’s $11.4 trillion, an [...]
In 1986, Russell Kirk gave a lecture titled “Ten Conservative Books” in which he identified ten important books that distilled or expressed conservative principles, from Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France to T. S. Eliot’s Notes Towards the Definition of Culture, the book Kirk pressed upon the hapless Richard Nixon. The essay is worth reading not only [...]
Nicholas Berdyaev stressed the primacy of culture and theological issues over politics and economics as truer forms of reality. He argued that only when society has realigned itself, individual by individual and community by community, “towards divine objects” could humanity save itself. One kind of weird but enticing academic puzzle for me is discovering and [...]
This is not a trick question. Britain is of course comprised of four ancient kingdoms united since 1707; Wales, Scotland, England and (now Northern) Ireland. But in a far more meaningful and dangerous sense it contains only three and America may suffer from the same problem. Bear with me, please, for gay marriage is only [...]
What do matchmakers know that eludes the common man? What does the common man know that escapes the matchmakers? Austen’s novel Emma shows that true romance originates from equality of social background and education, compatibility of temperaments, similarity of moral ideals and manners, natural attraction based on reason and feeling, and mutual admiration. Matchmaking ignores [...]
In a recent editorial in the New York Times, Louis Michael Seidman, a professor of constitutional law at Georgetown Law School, argues that our political system is broken because of “our insistence on obedience to the Constitution, with all its archaic, idiosyncratic and downright evil provisions.” Dr. Seidman asks why anyone should care about procedural provisions [...]
The American Cause by Russell Kirk Henry Regnery, publisher of Kirk's magnum opus, The Conservative Mind and friend of his, urged him to write a short book easily understood by the average person, setting forth the foundational spiritual, moral, social, political, and economic principles of the United States. Initially Kirk demurred, having other projects in [...]
Much of Britain’s literary heritage may be found in America, from the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C, to the manuscripts and letters of famous authors housed in wealthy universities from coast to coast. Not so for G. K. Chesterton’s own collection of his books and periodicals, and personal effects down to his hat, pince-nez [...]
Steven Mazie does well to criticize the complacency of Stephen Asma. Asma, citing obvious facts of evolutionary psychology, observes that our natural powers of knowing and loving are limited. So “universal love” is impossible. Our “empathy” extends with any significant force only to our family, friends, and “tribe.” According to the evolutionary psychologist, we are [...]
by Edmund Burke To complain of the age we live in, to murmur at the present possessors of power, to lament the past, to conceive extravagant hopes of the future, are the common dispositions of the greatest part of mankind; indeed the necessary effects of the ignorance and levity of the vulgar. Such complaints and [...]
Getting up in recent months an anthology of conservative writing, The Portable Conservative Reader, I had reason to reread much of Burke. More than ever before, I was impressed with how relevant Burke’s thoughts - and, indeed, Burke’s actions - remain to our present discontents. (It is with some reluctance I employ that word “relevant,” [...]