The necessity of personal morality in a thriving community is denied by the enemies of the permanent things, who do not believe that there are permanent standards of behavior or indeed an unchanging human nature, and who seek to create political systems that will make everyone happy without much effort. Enemies of the Permanent Things: [...]
The answers to the errors of modern times need to be given in philosophy and theology, but it is essential that we also experience the truth imaginatively. Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. —Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn” These famous lines of Keats [...]
“Neither she nor anyone else could have imagined how birth control would also contribute to the spread of divorce, infidelity, single parenthood, abortion, and pornography.” This matter-of-fact statement is a welcome acknowledgment of what has become abundantly clear—ready access to contraception has contributed to all of these destructive evils. A synod of Catholic bishops recently [...]
The modern secularist, T.S. Eliot argued, finds meaning either in the brute forces of the physical world or the arbitrary freeplay of the mind or the passing consensus of the human tribe. Looking for meaning in these places has not only led individuals to a sense of nihilism but has led whole nations to slaughter [...]
A liberal education is free in the sense that it is free of practical goals. We study our language and our literature or biology and chemistry and psychology just because it is a human instinct to do so, and because it is enjoyable to do so. Everything is Political Just as I began my college [...]
There have been theories about literature nearly as long as there has been literature, beginning with Plato and Aristotle. But the ancient theorists all assumed that they were thinking about something that had its own functions and ends, which they might help to explain. When the new professors think of theory it is exclusively more [...]
T.S. Eliot’s conservatism is “pre-political,” offering no simple formula for the modern polity. He reminds us that even if we could have our way in the political arena we would be unable to create a perfect society, given our own fallen nature. Such a wise mixture of hope and humility is what can keep conservatism [...]
Moral imagination is capable of grasping truth and goodness in ways that move us passionately to live in those objective realities. The answers to the errors of modern times need to be given in philosophy and theology, but it is essential that we also experience the truth imaginatively. Beauty is truth, truth beauty — that [...]
H.G. Wells sought to free humanity from the “bondage” of tradition, but T.S. Eliot saw history not as an evolutionary movement, but a return to the past. While T.S. Eliot never made any comments critical of Charles Darwin or his theory of the evolution of species, he was quite critical of various popularized versions of [...]
Eliot scholars have ignored the Dawson connection. The central claim Dawson and Eliot made, based on their wide-ranging knowledge of anthropology and history, was that every culture has a cult, some religious system that serves as an ultimate source of value and meaning. “Eliot’s reputation as a critic of society has been worse than his [...]
Jim Wallis is an intelligent and sincere person, someone worth listening to on serious subjects. But he appears to be politically illiterate. There is simply no engagement with serious conservative political writers—no hint that he knows such people even exist. This is typical of many intelligent and well-informed people on the Left... One of my [...]
I have noticed that my liberal friends have been very depressed lately. I used to think that my conservative pals and I were the ones who were constantly bemoaning the decline of Western civilization, but we just can’t match the moaning of our left-wing acquaintances in the time of Trump. […]
After the shock of the 2016 election, liberals got a civics lesson on the electoral college established by the Constitution, and they didn’t like it. In "The Road to Unfreedom," Timothy Snyder speaks for them in bemoaning the fact that the founders created not a direct democracy but a republic. The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, [...]