“I venture to hope that some of them will agree, that there is a range of public problems in which we all have, irrespective of nationality, language or political bias, a common interest and about which we might hope to have a common mind; and I hope that some will agree that I have stated [...]
Thomas Molnar No one I know personally who knew Thomas Molnar (1921-2010) has ever said a kind word about his personality. If anything, he gained notoriety, even among those who respected him, through an infamy of intolerance, often under the unimaginative guise and excuse of “not suffering fools gladly.” This, in part, helps [...]
From May 2001 to January 2010, professor of creative writing, fiction author, and biographer Sam Weller interviewed one of America’s greatest and most original talents, Ray Bradbury. Not every moment of every day, of course, but over countless hours, nonetheless, throughout the decade. As Mr. Bradbury himself admitted not long before his death, “Sam Weller [...]
[N.B. the content of this post is rated PG13] Purity of Essence We must do everything possible to protect our bodily fluids. After all, the human body is mostly water. If one’s water becomes corrupt, his “essences” will follow, and man will lose what power he possesses. He must, no matter the cost, protect his [...]
In his stunning book, States’ Rights and the Union, the historian Forrest McDonald offers the best insights in print regarding the very complicated history of the understandings of sovereignty in early American politics. As McDonald correctly notes, a complicated but generally accommodating tension held together those who disagreed with one another. As Bruce Frohnen has [...]
When I first read a book about the meaning of liberty by Robert J. Ringer, my freshman year of high school, I knew that I wanted to be a writer. Indeed, I had suspected this for a long time. As early as fifth grade, I was that ultra weird kid who asked his teachers to [...]
We live in insane times. Yes, I know, most times in the history of this world of sorrows are a bit insane, but our post-modern insanity tests the limits. We imaginative conservatives crave to know where it all went wrong. It’s one of our greatest strengths. We’re either lamenting the loss of the golden age [...]
For the longest time while in graduate school, I simply could not figure out academic writing or the academic culture of writing. Almost every article, review, and book I read left me perplexed. I couldn’t decide if academics were dumb or merely bad at writing. I never presumed, at least as a graduate student, that [...]
Shortly after he published The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury met one of his great heroes, Aldous Huxley. The author of Brave New World had not only read the younger man’s book, he had found it profound. “You know what you are, young man,” Huxley asked. When the 30-year-old Bradbury admitted he did not, Huxley replied: [...]
As much as a Catholic might want to embrace Thomas Woods’ thesis that the Church built Western Civilization, one must pause at such a statement. Rather than having built or having destroyed Western civilization, the Church sanctified what it found and gave the West new life. How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, by Thomas [...]
In this video, Dr. Bradley Birzer of Hillsdale College discusses the humane tradition of the American founding and conservatism. We hope you will join us in The Imaginative Conservative community. The Imaginative Conservative is an on-line journal for those who seek the True, the Good and the Beautiful. We address culture, liberal learning, politics, political economy, literature, the arts and [...]
In the twentieth century it would be hard to find a better prose writer than Russell Amos Kirk. The competition is certainly stiff. Some of the best prose writing in the history of the English language sprang from the souls, minds, and hands of G.K. Chesterton, George Orwell, Albert Jay Nock, and William F. Buckley. [...]
One of the more bizarre orthodoxies quickly emerging among an entire generation of young conservatives and libertarians over the past decade or so is that Alexander Hamilton represents the beginning of the end of republican liberty in America. Amazingly enough, for a whole set of folks in their early to late twenties, the demonization of [...]
Famously, Thomas Jefferson cited four men in his lineage of thinkers who had played central roles in inspiring the American common sense of the subject as declared on July 4, 1776, by the Second Continental Congress. “All its [the Declaration’s] authority rests then on the harmonizing sentiments of the day, whether expressed in conversation, in [...]