Is Critical Race Theory Racist?

By |2020-09-30T15:38:27-05:00September 30th, 2020|Categories: Community, Education, Equality, Ethnicity|

Critical theory bulldozes all the complexities of history, education, and communities into a world of good guys and bad guys, oppressors and oppressed. And in doing so, it makes it nearly impossible to deal with the actual issues of denied opportunities, prejudiced expectations, and instances of real racism that need to be addressed. Most Americans [...]

Can Art Be Destructive?

By |2020-09-28T19:37:23-05:00September 30th, 2020|Categories: Art, Beauty, Culture, Michael De Sapio, Senior Contributors, Truth|

To maintain sanity and perspective, we must recognize that beauty is a transcendent ideal in which art imperfectly participates, and thus hold beauty above art. The wrong turn is due to a conflation of beauty with art and the related tendency to see art as an end in itself. As conservatives we often undertake to [...]

Politics and Its Christian Discontents

By |2020-09-29T16:07:13-05:00September 29th, 2020|Categories: Christianity, David Deavel, Politics|

Christians often emphasize not being “of” the world, but the command to be “in” the world is just as present in Christian tradition. We will certainly not be able to create a heaven on earth, but we are often able to put off the creation of little hells. Should Christians care about politics? Should they [...]

Will Justice Barrett Seal a Conservative Majority on the High Court?

By |2020-09-29T16:15:42-05:00September 28th, 2020|Categories: Donald Trump, Pat Buchanan, Politics, Presidency, Supreme Court|

President Trump's remaking of the Supreme Court for constitutionalism may well be the crown jewel of his presidency. If Judge Barrett becomes Justice Barrett, she will join Justices Clarence Thomas, Sam Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh to create a constitutionalist core of five justices, a controlling majority. By nominating Federal Judge Amy Coney Barrett [...]

A Call to the Joy of Life: Why Beethoven’s Ninth Matters to Me

By |2021-11-08T14:19:47-06:00September 28th, 2020|Categories: Audio/Video, Beethoven 250, Ludwig van Beethoven, Music, Timeless Essays|

For me, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony will be forever linked to my life as a Bosnian refugee. In a time of great suffering, this music brought me hope. No amount of ideological nonsense will destroy its inherent beauty and its constant call for the restoration of humanity’s greatness. Western civilization and culture have been under attack [...]

From Highest Heaven Handed Down

By |2020-09-28T16:33:34-05:00September 28th, 2020|Categories: Books, Christianity, Natural Law, Philosophy, St. Thomas Aquinas|

Russell Hittinger’s “The First Grace” deals mightily with the crisis of our time—namely, the failure of those who make, enjoy, and judge the constitutionality of laws to appreciate the dire consequences of denying the place of natural-law considerations in the ordering of public life. The First Grace: Rediscovering the Natural Law in a Post-Christian World, [...]

America Must Return to the Noble Traditions of Her Founders

By |2020-12-03T13:36:18-06:00September 27th, 2020|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Books, Constitution, Declaration of Independence, History, Politics, Slavery|

That it is the founding principles themselves to which we can turn to recover from the great evils of slavery, of the loss of virtue and moral standard, and of grotesque dehumanization should be a measure of the gratitude we owe to our Founding Fathers for their magnificent achievement. Robert R. Reilly is the author [...]

Pietas and Fallen Cities: America and Vergil’s “Aeneid”

By |2020-09-28T00:48:46-05:00September 27th, 2020|Categories: Aeneid, American Republic, Civilization, Culture, Great Books, Religion, Virgil, Virtue|

Authentic righteousness for a nation of natives, settlers, immigrants, and refugees requires the same whether for America or Vergil’s Rome: pietas. This is devotion to family, community, country, and deity. One so devoted does not fear the sublimation of the self in the fulfillment of these duties, for it is in the pursuit of these [...]

Catholic Claims and the Witness of Fr. Mankowski

By |2020-09-26T13:54:42-05:00September 26th, 2020|Categories: Catholicism, Christianity, David Deavel, Senior Contributors|

For those of us who believe in the claims of the Catholic Church but are disheartened by her sinking into chaos and corruption, what are we to do? Perhaps the beginning of an answer might be found in Flannery O’Connor’s evergreen observation that we do not so often suffer for the Church as from the [...]

Tolkien’s “The Return of the Shadow,” 1937-1939

By |2020-10-02T10:08:43-05:00September 26th, 2020|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Christian Humanism, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literature, Senior Contributors|

Christopher Tolkien, in “The Return of the Shadow,” breaks down J.R.R. Tolkien’s drafts of the sequel to “The Hobbit” into three phases. In the third phase, the situations around the characters do grow tellingly darker, with drastic implications for the story that could shake the foundations even of the Blessed Realm, the land of the [...]

The SCOTUS Pick: All the Chips Are on the Table Now

By |2020-09-25T11:35:32-05:00September 25th, 2020|Categories: Donald Trump, Pat Buchanan, Supreme Court|

On the court issue, Democrats are exhibiting something akin to panic. They are warning that if a conservative jurist like Amy Coney Barrett is confirmed, Democrats may retaliate by "packing" the Supreme Court — increasing the number of justices from nine to 11 and installing two new liberals — if they win the presidency and [...]

Tolkien Begins the Sequel to “The Hobbit”

By |2020-09-25T12:23:31-05:00September 25th, 2020|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Christian Humanism, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literature, Senior Contributors|

J.R.R. Tolkien intended the new book, which would later develop into “The Lord of the Rings,” to be a simple sequel to “The Hobbit.” Yet somehow the sequel was growing more adult, and Tolkien admitted it reflected the “darkness of the present days” in the shadow of the Second World War. On September 21, 1937, [...]

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