This week, on Facebook, The Imaginative Conservative republicized the late Joseph Sobran’s article regarding the supposed errors of Abraham Lincoln. While one should never have too much faith in commentators on the internet, especially those who hide behind anonymity, one rather outraged and intelligent young man posted something to the effect of “I don’t know why The Imaginative [...]
I must admit, I always have mixed feelings about celebrating Thanksgiving. It’s not that I don’t love giving thanks—in fact, I really do love it. And, I especially love how we Americans do it. If I had my way, we’d have cranberry relish, sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie, and turkey five times to six times to [...]
In one of the best comic book stories of the last several generations, Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns (1986), Batman confronts Superman. Years into a dystopian future in which the United States has become more or less imperialist, fundamentalist, and oppressive, the rather conservative and patriotic Superman has rather unthinkingly joined forces with America [...]
Civilization: The West and the Rest, Niall Ferguson ‘The West’, then, is much more than just a geographical expression. It is a set of norms, behaviours and institutions with borders that are blurred in the extreme.—Niall Ferguson, Civilization, Chapter 1. Before reading Civilization by Niall Ferguson, I’d never heard of the man. Well, more likely, I’d [...]
Prospects for Conservatives: A Compass for Rediscovering the Permanent Things by Russell Kirk, Imaginative Conservative Books, 2013, 278 pages In 1954, in a span of less than two months, Russell Kirk hammered away at what would become, arguably, his best book, A Program for Conservatives. Two years later, he revised and re-titled it, Prospects for [...]
The Dry Salvages. Photo by Hye Tyde. “I do not know much about gods.” So begins Eliot’s third of four quartets, “The Dry Salvages.” Many have argued that this is one of Eliot’s weakest poems and the least effective of the Four Quartets. I can’t write as a literary critic, but I can [...]
I’m no Russell Kirk when it comes to television. The Birzers own one, and, as patriarch, I’ve yet to throw it out the window of any floor of our house. But, we haven’t had any cable or any channels–not a single one–since 2002. Our decision to cancel all TV had little to do with principle. [...]
(This is the first essay in a series The Imaginative Conservative will be publishing in honor of the sixtieth anniversary of Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind.) A vital date for those of us who read Winston Elliott’s The Imaginative Conservative is May 11, 2013, the sixtieth anniversary of the publication of Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind. It’s [...]
“Lincoln himself, of course, was no enthusiast generally for millenialist imagery: for instance, his reply to the clergyman who told him that ‘God is on our side.” Lincoln said he knew nothing of the sort: he only hoped that we were on His. As Fisher Ames said at the beginning of the nineteenth century, ‘This [...]
T.E. Hulme reminded his audience that conservatism and humanism need not compromise on certain ideals. As Bearers of the Word, we too can recapture the spirit of Hulme as embodied in tradition, virtue, and heroic sacrifice. A few years ago, I had the privilege of writing an essay for The Imaginative Conservative about the almost nearly forgotten Cambridge [...]
At the beginning of this calendar year, I was near campus on my usual daily 4-mile constitutional, earbuds in ears, my mind a million miles away. “Hi Brad, what are you listening to?” a rather famous visiting scholar asked me, seemingly from out of nowhere. Hoping to move to another topic very quickly, I responded dismissively, “Just [...]
Dear researchers and writers, As you embark on your research paper for me, I’d like to offer a few thoughts and suggestions. Research can be incredibly fascinating, and it’s something I’ve much enjoyed since beginning high school debate, way back in the fall of 1982. Yes, the glory days—the days of Reagan, Rush, and Blade Runner. [...]
Willa Cather On Sunday, August 11, 2013, my family and I began our now-yearly odyssey into the West. As I write this, our vacation is ending, and I’m typing this from the second floor of a rented house in the Rockies, looking across my laptop out the window at Mt. Ouray. In two [...]
Dr. James Otteson In the world of ideas, things can move rapidly. On August 19, 2013, one of the single best minds of our era, James R. Otteson II, announced his move to North Carolina to become the Executive Director of the BB&T Center for the Study of Capitalism and a full professor [...]