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.

Eric Voegelin’s Gnosticism

By |2016-03-28T10:39:17-05:00February 16th, 2016|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Christianity, Culture, Eric Voegelin, Featured, Friedrich Nietzsche|

In my previous essay, “Eric Voegelin: A Primer,” I had the privilege to offer a brief sketch of this German intellectual’s life and thought. In this essay, I would like to explore one of Voegelin’s three most important ideas: his critique of Gnosticism. As in the previous essay, I am drawing heavily upon the fine [...]

Eric Voegelin: A Primer

By |2021-08-12T02:19:16-05:00February 1st, 2016|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Eric Voegelin, Friedrich Nietzsche, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Hope|

On my religious position, I have been classified as a Protestant, a Catholic, an anti-semitic, and as a typical Jew; politically, as a Liberal, a Fascist, a National Socialist, and a Conservative; and on my theoretical position, as a Platonist, a Neo-Augustinian, a Thomist, a disciple of Hegel, an existentialist, a historical relativist, and an [...]

Science Fiction: Foothold to the Imagination

By |2018-11-28T13:04:39-06:00January 29th, 2016|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Culture, Featured, Fiction, Imagination, Ray Bradbury|

Do you want to rule a world? Blow apart a sun? Test a theory of community? Explore the very depths of depravity? End slavery and misery? Destroy all empires? It is possible. . . At least in the imagination. The proper study of man is everything. The proper study of man as artist is everything [...]

Madness and Despair: Hitchcock’s “Vertigo”

By |2020-07-02T14:26:43-05:00January 23rd, 2016|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Film|

Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” explores pretended and real madness, its plot twisting and turning in ways perhaps only logical to the perplexing soul of its director. As with all his best movies, Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) brutally analyzes modernity, finding it schizophrenic and wanting. In contrast to the stripped-down minimalism of Rope, which also stars Jimmy Stewart, Vertigo is in every way [...]

Is Pulp Good Fiction?

By |2016-01-15T22:48:49-06:00January 15th, 2016|Categories: Books, Bradley J. Birzer, Literature|

In a critical moment in the plot of Stephen King’s It: A Novel, the protagonist finds himself distraught over a grade his creative writing teacher has given him for what he considered a first-rate story. The story comes back from the instructor with an F slashed into the title page. Two words are scrawled beneath, [...]

Russell Kirk: Peacenik Prophet

By |2015-12-23T09:24:20-06:00December 23rd, 2015|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Government, Politics, Russell Kirk, War|

While very few modern conservatives—especially those who sell conservatism as a consumer product—even remember the movement’s founder, Russell Kirk, those who do remember him often do so by envisioning him as an antiquated relic, having passed from this world long after he had contributed much to it. At best, Kirk might well represent a pre-1960s [...]

In the Beginning: Tolkien’s Mythology Before World War I

By |2016-02-12T15:27:53-06:00December 15th, 2015|Categories: Books, Bradley J. Birzer, Christianity, J.R.R. Tolkien, Myth|

Even J.R.R. Tolkien, interestingly enough, could not pinpoint exactly when the mythology began. One can most certainly date the mythology if only in its barest, least recognizable form sometime prior to his participation in the Great War, when the young man wrote his poem, “The Voyage of Eärendil the Evening Star.”[1] In a letter written [...]

The Challenge: How C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy Came Into Being

By |2020-05-29T17:16:50-05:00December 8th, 2015|Categories: Books, Bradley J. Birzer, C.S. Lewis, Christianity, Featured, J.R.R. Tolkien|

Hoping to prove successful in combining a love of things old with mythology and with a desire to uphold the dignity of the human person in a world rent asunder by warring ideologies, J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis challenged each other to create deep works of the imagination. After a “toss up,” the two men [...]

Driving Across Mars: Ray Bradbury at the End

By |2015-12-09T08:20:42-06:00November 19th, 2015|Categories: Books, Bradley J. Birzer, Featured, Ray Bradbury, Russell Kirk|

Ray Bradbury: The Last Interview and Other Conversations Sam Weller, ed., (Brooklyn, NY: Melville House, December 2014) One of the hardest things I’ve had to assess in my professional life as a historian and a biographer is just how much to take seriously in a person’s life. I consider, pass, and render judgments on a moment-by-moment basis! [...]

Triumph of the Will? Bill O’Reilly & Snake-Oil Conservatism

By |2015-12-18T00:36:49-06:00November 10th, 2015|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Conservatism, Featured, Modernity, Morality|

Few things reveal the degraded state of “conservatism” in America more than the recent, seven-minute exchange between Bill O’Reilly and George Will. What the two fought about really matters very little. To set the context, suffice it to state the debate had to do with the attempt on Ronald Reagan’s life and how well Mr. [...]

Tolkien’s War

By |2016-02-12T15:27:54-06:00November 3rd, 2015|Categories: Books, Bradley J. Birzer, C.S. Lewis, Christianity, Inklings, J.R.R. Tolkien, World War I|

Since the appearance of John Garth’s excellent Tolkien and the Great War in 2003, a number of scholars and writers have explored the role and influence of war on the fiction of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and other members of the Inklings. In reviewing Mr. Garth’s book when it came out, I noted that the [...]

Go to Top