I have never given considerable thought to the institution of marriage. I’ve been married for 13 years, and the vast majority of my relatives and extended family have not suffered the pain of divorce. Consequently, I’ve probably taken a lot for granted. I am especially appreciative of Thomas Peters and his responses to my three [...]
For twelve years, I’ve taught philosopher William James’s thought on pragmatism and progressivism to Hillsdale College freshman; it’s a part of our core, western and American heritage sequence, a history course of important ideas, political, legal, theological, and cultural. I’ve never liked or agreed any of the thought that I’ve encountered, but I’ve always found [...]
In the very first history of the American Revolution, published in 1789, David Ramsay wrote: “In establishing American independence, the pen and the press had merit equal to that of the sword. As the war was the people’s war, and was carried on without funds, the exertions of the army would have been insufficient to [...]
I should really be preparing three lectures on the liberal arts and Christian Humanism I’m giving this weekend, but I became so infuriated by this article (well, what it describes) that I had to take a short break from lecture prep and vent. Not that I think The Imaginative Conservative should be used for personal [...]
Several years ago (January 2004), I had the privilege of meeting Hank Edmondson at a Liberty Fund colloquium in Arizona on the thought of C.S. Lewis. Hank and I found we were kindred spirits, immediately. We’ve seen each other several times since, and we’ve maintained a correspondence since then, sometime purely out of friendship and [...]
John Willson Lots of The Imaginative Conservative news this morning. Everyone’s favorite curmudgeon John (“Don’t call me isolationist to my face”; “If you post anonymously one more time, I’ll kick your butt”) Willson is, today, celebrating his 50th wedding anniversary. Our sincere congratulations to John and his beautiful bride, Helen. Happy anniversary! Winston [...]
Our beleaguered republic has been blessed mightily with the artistry, dedication, wit, tenacity, and wisdom of Mike Church. Not only does he ask the questions that need to be asked, he also talks to the best men and women of our age. Anyone who has had the privilege of listening to Mike on his radio [...]
I realize we at The Imaginative Conservative (no relation to the NICE) rarely publish photographs unless connected, in some rather direct way, to a specific essay. If you're interested in some excellent photographs, though, I highly recommend going to Chuck Grimmett's blog: http://cagrimmett.com/blog/ Chuck Grimmett is a student and a friend, currently traveling with our [...]
Leo Strauss My close friend and colleague, Mickey Craig, chair of the Department of Political Science at Hillsdale, has given me a couple of pointers as well as sources to consider regarding Russell Kirk’s relationship to Leo Strauss’s students. As frequent The Imaginative Conservative readers know, we’ve had a discussion—but only, thus far, a [...]
“From this concept of the dignity of man—dignity which exists only through our relationship with God—there has grown up recognition of what are called “natural rights.” These are the rights which all men and women are entitled to: rights which belong to them simply because they participate in human dignity. There are other rights in [...]
Charles Kesler A week or so ago, I published a critique of Russell Kirk from Murray Rothbard, dating back to the 1950s. Today, I came across a different sort of critique of Kirk, written four years after Dr. Kirk passed away from this world of sorrows. Frankly, there are so many errors in [...]
The teaching of ‘enduring values’ was called yesterday the true end of a university by Dr. Russell Kirk. In 1957, St. John’s University (New York City—not to be confused with the colleges in Annapolis and Santa Fe) awarded Russell Kirk a Doctorate of Humane Letters. The New York Times reported on the speech Kirk, then holding [...]
In this article, “The Trap of Disintegrated Liberalism,” Russell Kirk challenged an argument advanced by an economist, Professor Bruce Knight, who seems to have defended a twentieth-century conception of “Social Justice.” I have not found Knight’s original piece. When writing or speaking of liberal utilitarianism, Kirk frequently used the dismissive term, as Gleaves Whitney first [...]
The issue of freedom and liberty served—rather needlessly from the perspective of hindsight—as a nasty sticking point between libertarians and conservatives in the 1940s and 1950s. Each side desired freedom and liberty (I’m using them here as roughly interchangeable terms), of course, but one side believed liberty absolute and abstract, the other considered it [...]