About Bradley J. Birzer

Bradley J. Birzer is the co-founder of, and Senior Contributor at, The Imaginative Conservative. He is the Russell Amos Kirk Chair in History at Hillsdale College and Fellow of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. Dr. Birzer is author of In Defense of Andrew Jackson, Russell Kirk: American Conservative, American Cicero: The Life of Charles Carroll, Sanctifying the World: The Augustinian Life and Mind of Christopher Dawson, J.R.R. Tolkien’s Sanctifying Myth: Understanding Middle-Earth, co-editor of The American Democrat and Other Political Writings by James Fenimore Cooper, and co-author of The American West.

Happy Birthday, America!

By |2023-07-03T16:20:26-05:00July 3rd, 2020|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Bradley J. Birzer, Declaration of Independence, Independence Day, Senior Contributors|

Happy birthday, America! The world wouldn’t be the same without you. It would be poorer, less ethical, less stable, and less humane had you never come into existence. Whatever America’s faults, her successes outweigh them all. As protestors around the United States tear down statues, brutally beat rosary warriors, attack neighborhoods, threaten the destruction of [...]

Revolutions: Today vs. 1776

By |2022-07-01T19:38:33-05:00June 24th, 2020|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Bradley J. Birzer, Declaration of Independence, History, Modernity, Revolution, Senior Contributors|

The revolutionaries of 1776 could be just as violent as those of today, but they were truly a lot more intelligent and interesting. Eighteenth-century Americans fought with several generations worth of finely-honed arguments—from law, from experience, and from scripture, whereas the protestors of today, while armed with anger, seem armed with little else. In every [...]

Thomas Jefferson, Whig Historian

By |2020-07-04T01:43:12-05:00June 12th, 2020|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Bradley J. Birzer, History, Senior Contributors, Thomas Jefferson|

Given how vital a role history placed in the English-speaking world of the 18th century, Thomas Jefferson’s own love of history should not be too shocking. Further, it should not be surprising that Jefferson embraced a rather Whiggish view of history, one that pervaded much of American political, social, cultural, and religious thought. It would [...]

The Odd History of the Whig Party

By |2020-06-09T14:03:41-05:00June 9th, 2020|Categories: American Republic, Bradley J. Birzer, History, Politics, Presidency, Senior Contributors|

Unlike the Democrats, the Whigs never fully coalesced as a party, at least in terms of their ideas. But if the members of the party agreed on anything other than their hatred of Andrew Jackson and the abuse of executive power, it was their relentless opposition to imperial expansion and Manifest Destiny. When Andrew Jackson [...]

Time and Our Present Whirligig

By |2020-06-02T01:41:34-05:00May 31st, 2020|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Conservatism, Culture, Literature, Ray Bradbury, Senior Contributors, Time|

What makes time so wonderful is that it humbles us as well as inspires us. And if we simply recognized each person on social media as a complete human being born into a specific place and a specific time, we might be able to get past so much of what we erroneously label as discourse. [...]

The First and Second Banks of the United States

By |2020-05-19T14:21:25-05:00May 19th, 2020|Categories: Alexander Hamilton, American Founding, American Republic, Bradley J. Birzer, Economic History, Economics, History, Senior Contributors|

The First Bank of the United States influenced much more than mere economics. Many scholars indeed believe that divisions caused by the Bank led to the creation of the first real political divisions in the country. By the standards set by the Second Bank of the United States, the First Bank was tame. The precious [...]

Science Fiction and the University of Chicago

By |2020-05-08T19:05:51-05:00May 8th, 2020|Categories: Books, Bradley J. Birzer, Fiction, Imagination, Literature, Science, Senior Contributors|

During the spring semester of 1957, the University of Chicago invited a number of distinguished speakers to campus to lecture on the meaning and significance of science fiction as a genre. Robert Heinlein, C.M. Kornbluth, Robert Bloch, and Alfred Bester each gave insightful speeches, all of which were collected by Basil Davenport and published in [...]

“Dark Black” by Sam Weller

By |2020-04-29T17:03:09-05:00April 29th, 2020|Categories: Books, Bradley J. Birzer, Fiction, Imagination, Senior Contributors|

With twenty stories, accompanied by lush but tenebrous full-page images, Sam Weller’s “Dark Black” is a thing of haunting beauty and voluptuous terrors. Dark Black, by Sam Weller (254 pages, Hat & Beard Press, 2020) Most readers of The Imaginative Conservative know Sam Weller as the extraordinary biographer of Ray Bradbury and as the author [...]

Is Conservatism an Ideology?

By |2020-04-25T03:15:59-05:00April 24th, 2020|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Conservatism, Ideology, Robert Nisbet, Senior Contributors|

In his excellent, short book, Conservatism: Dream and Reality, Robert Nisbet had no problem in identifying conservatism as an ideology. Whereas his friend, Russell Kirk, had repeatedly resisted defining the faith as anything other than a “way of being” quite contrary to all ideologies (in essence, an anti-ideology). Nisbet proclaimed it one of three ideologies [...]

Tolkien: Entering Faerie

By |2020-04-24T15:23:57-05:00April 20th, 2020|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Fiction, Imagination, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literature, Myth, Senior Contributors|

What, exactly, is Faerie? While not quite the realm of the supernatural, it is the realm of grace (and its enemies), and it can be, even in its greatest beauty, dangerous in the extreme. It is also, by its very nature, sacramental, tangible, and incarnational. On March 8, 1939, just five months shy of the [...]

Tolkien’s “The Lost Road”: Brilliant But Unfinished

By |2020-04-18T18:37:55-05:00April 18th, 2020|Categories: Books, Bradley J. Birzer, Fiction, Imagination, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literature, Senior Contributors|

An endearing story about fathers and sons—and almost certainly an autobiographical understanding of J.R.R. Tolkien himself and his own, mostly imagined father, as well as Tolkien and his son Christopher—”The Lost Road” begins with a son, Alboin, asking his father, Oswin, about the origin of his name. Though Tolkien had already written and published The [...]

Let Us Shun Imperialism, Always and Everywhere

By |2020-04-14T15:44:45-05:00April 14th, 2020|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Conservatism, History, Political Philosophy, Politics, Senior Contributors|

Let me begin this essay by simply throwing down the gauntlet. American imperialists—of whatever political persuasion or ideology—are not only traitors to the American cause and in violation of the deepest meanings and profundities of the American ideal, they are also embracing demonic goals of remaking the world in their own image, thus trampling on [...]

Loyalty and Betrayal on a Friday Afternoon

By |2023-04-08T17:52:14-05:00April 9th, 2020|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Christianity, Culture, Easter, Lent, Senior Contributors|

Of all the wounds Jesus felt physically on that Friday, probably none hurt Him as much as those inflicted by His friends, deserting Him in His greatest hour of need and comfort. The entire course of history changed on a Friday afternoon at 3. At that moment, when Jesus “gave up the ghost,” (Luke 24: [...]

Moving Toward Dread Conformity

By |2020-04-10T11:06:40-05:00April 8th, 2020|Categories: Books, Bradley J. Birzer, Civil Society, Civilization, Conservatism, Robert Nisbet, Senior Contributors|

In 1953, Robert Nisbet published “The Quest for Community,” a book that reveals to us that our own quest has become something both natural and unnatural. That is, it is natural to desire to belong, but it is horrifically unnatural in the ways we choose to commune. 1953 was a banner year for the conservative [...]

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