The Roots of American Order

Seeking for the roots of order, we are led to four cities: Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, and Lon­don. In Wash­ing­ton or New York or Chicago or Los Ange­les today, the order which Amer­i­cans expe­ri­ence is derived from the expe­ri­ence of those four old cities. If our souls are dis­or­dered, we fall into abnor­mal­ity, unable to con­trol our impulses. If our com­mon­wealth is dis­or­dered, we fall into anar­chy, every man’s hand against every other man’s. For, as Richard Hooker wrote in the six­teenth cen­tury, “With­out order, there is no liv­ing in pub­lic soci­ety, because the want thereof is the mother of con­fu­sion.” This sav­ing order is the prod­uct of more than three thou­sand years of human striving.–The Roots of American Order

We hope you will join us in The Imaginative Conservative community. The Imaginative Conservative is an e-journal for those who seek the True, the Good and the Beautiful. We address culture, liberal learning, politics, political economy, literature, the arts and the American Republic in the tradition of Russell Kirk, T.S. Eliot, Edmund Burke, Irving Babbitt, Paul Elmer More, Wilhelm Roepke, Robert Nisbet, M.E. Bradford, Eric Voegelin, Christopher Dawson and other leaders of Imaginative Conservatism.

We address a wide variety of major issues including: What is the essence of conservatism? What was the role of faith in the American Founding? Is liberal learning still possible in the modern academy? Should conservatives and libertarians be allies? What is the proper role for the American Republic in spreading ordered liberty to other cultures/nations?