Christopher Barker, Author at The Imaginative Conservative

About Christopher Barker

Chris Barker received his PhD in Political Philosophy from Claremont Graduate University in 2010. He has held positions at Harvard University and Boston College, and currently teaches constitutional history at Ohio University. He writes on the theory and practice of liberty in modern political thought, and also has an interest in literature and politics that has resulted in publications and forthcoming articles on Shakespeare and and Ernest Hemingway.

Choose Life

By Christopher Barker|2013-12-17T16:45:40-06:00December 17th, 2013|Categories: Christianity, Film, Morality|

Is it possible for a text to be conservative if it dwells upon the pleasures of drug use, celebrates (and deplores) hooligan violence, and shows us the deaths of a neglected baby, the extra-judicial execution of a rapist, and (among others) a twenty something’s squalid death following a stroke brought on by toxoplasmosis? Irvine Welsh’s [...]

Fear of State and Dragon Tattoos

By Christopher Barker|2015-08-11T17:03:21-05:00October 27th, 2013|Categories: Fiction, Film, Mystery|

In the recent trilogy of Swedish movies beginning with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, a rather unpleasant fantasy plays out for the viewer. A young, misfit girl (Noomi Rapace’s Lisbeth Salander) is sexually abused, and, as the films drive towards their conclusion, revenges herself upon her immediate tormentors, and then ultimately upon the more [...]