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 [...]
Below is one of the most moving moments from the third of the Ransom/Space Trilogy by C.S. Lewis. From Chapter 15, “The Descent of the Gods,” of That Hideous Strenth, one of the best and most underrated novels of the 20th century: They danced. What they dance no one could remember. It was some round dance, no [...]
Murray Rothbard If you’ve not had the chance, please check out the Ludwig von Mises website, www.mises.org, as the archival resources available are astounding. This afternoon, I had the chance (as a reward to myself for each final exam graded!) to read through one of the site’s free e-books, Murray Rothbard’s Strictly Confidential: [...]
J.R.R. Tolkien Myth connects us to those of the past and to those of the future. Through myth, we grasp the continuity of all of God’s Creations, of all of the soldiers in the Army of Christ: those who came before Him to prepare the way, those who fought beside Him during his [...]
Feel free to label me a “nerd.” You wouldn’t be the first. Winston, our fearless The Imaginative Conservative leader, does so all of the time. In such a spirit, I give you what is below. For a variety of reasons, I decided this morning to come up with a series of bumper stickers to defend [...]
As the politicos battle it out (or, at least make a show of battling it out) in D.C., I can’t help but be struck by Kirk’s brief but solid definition of “ideology” from his “Errors of Ideology.” Unleashed by the French Revolution, ideologies have plagued the world for well over 200 years now. They continue [...]
As that beautiful and intellectual force of nature, Annette Kirk, has mentioned in conversation many times, Russell was an Augustinian, and she was a Thomist. She was also more Aristotelian and he more Platonic. In one of his most under-appreciated works (now, perhaps, more necessary to republish than ever), Decadence and Renewal in the Higher [...]
John Willson’s most recent post makes me want to revive the Whig Party. Well, at least the part of the Whig Party that knew that executive power could be readily abused. Our earlier Whig allies once called Andrew Jackson, “King Andrew.” Somehow, this always rubbed me the wrong way, as I often think of figures [...]
While North African and Middle Eastern Christians have long suffered at the hands of Muslims, the last six or so months seem to have been especially brutal. Does anyone else see the irony in the fact that Obama unilaterally decided (from Brazil of all places) to take sides in the Libyan Civil War, but he’s [...]
Today, the White House—at least through its press security—defended its policies in Libya, claiming no need to consult the House or Senate as the president is not declaring war against Libya. As CNN reported today: “We are not engaged in militarily-driven regime change,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters. Instead, the administration is [...]
If The Imaginative Conservative readers are interested in the American Civil War, please check out the latest issue of THE FREEMAN (expertly edited by Sheldon Richman). The April 2011 issue includes articles by Jeff Hummel, Burton Folsom, Joe Stromberg, and yours truly. http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/gaining-a-nation-losing-the-republic-reconstruction-1863–1877/ I'm happy as a clam about this (actually, growing up in Kansas, [...]
Russell Kirk “This present life here below, Kirk had perceived often in his mind’s eye, is an ephemeral existence, precarious, as in an arena rather than upon a stage: some men are meant to be gladiators or knights-errant, not mere strolling players,” Russell Kirk wrote, using the third person in reference to himself, [...]
Eliot’s “Ash-Wednesday,” a monumental work—the Purgatorio between the Inferno of “The Waste-land” and the Paradiso of the “Four Quartets”—has always been, as long as I can remember in my adult life, a comfort and a mystery to me. I assume it remained as such even to the Great Bard of the Twentieth Century himself. Stephen [...]
Paul Elmer More’s final statement—a religious one—as offered in his book, Pages from an Oxford Diary, is one of the great short works of the last century. If offers a profound statement of faith from a man who spent most of his life being skeptical regarding Christianity. Though he consented to Christian truth later in [...]