What H.L. Mencken thought was the case in his day likely remains the case today: Public schools have “done more harm than good.” How could they not, Mencken asked. Having taken the “care and upbringing of children out of the hands of parents, where it belongs,” the politicians of his day had “thrown” the entire [...]
As G.K. Chesterton observed what was happening all around him in England, he was led to conclude that there were historical moments when what he termed “over-civilization” and what he termed “barbarism” were close to becoming one and the same thing. Virtually the same thing might be said of America today. Just where is our [...]
Matthew Continetti may want a “viable” conservatism, but does he desire a winning conservatism. He seems more determined that the Republican Party and the conservative movement begin the difficult, but necessary, task of “untangling” themselves from Donald Trump rather than build a winning coalition. The Right: The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism, by Matthew Continetti [...]
G.K. Chesterton prophesied that the attack on the family would intensify, and his writings were an attempt to provide ammunition for those who would be on hand when his prophecy came true. And now we have Dale Ahlquist to give us the best of Chesterton's writings on the family in what we hope will prove [...]
The good life for "Stan" Evans was the simple life. A populist conservative, he both preached the virtues of the common man and lived the life of the common man—and all with the benefit of an uncommonly fine mind. M. Stanton Evans: Conservative Wit, Apostle of Freedom, by Steven F. Hayward (391 New York: Encounter [...]
Victor Davis Hanson links the long history of progressive dominance with the gradual “dying” of American citizenship. Is he wrong to do so? Victor Davis Hanson, The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America (419 pages, New York: Basic Books, 2021) Here and there Victor Davis Hanson tries [...]
I am increasingly persuaded that the great divide in this country between right and left comes down to a divide between those on the right who think that the United States has essentially been a force for good in the world and those on the left who think this country has essentially been a force [...]
As we look forward to Christmas dinner with our families, you may be surprised to learn that someone else who always enjoyed his Christmas dinner claimed to be a vegetarian. That someone was the portly G. K. Chesterton. How could that be? After all, he was anything but a slim, trim fellow. And yet by [...]
Well before his death, Harry Jaffa saw the American regime gradually descending into a deadly brew of positivism, atheism, and nihilism. Given this “collapse of the soul” of American politics, Jaffa’s America was becoming increasingly alienated from both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The Soul of Politics: Harry Jaffa and the Fight for [...]
Always a liberal and never a leftist, historian Richard Hofstadter’s over-arching theme in explaining twentieth-century America was what he termed “status anxiety,” which seems to be an effort to explain too much with too little. Richard Hofstadter: Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, The Paranoid Style in American Politics, Uncollected Essays, 1956-1965, edited by Sean Wilentz (1047 [...]
“You Americans have no idea what you have here.” That line was spoken to me in heavily accented English roughly a half century ago. It hit me hard at the time, and it has popped into my head many times since. The speaker was a Czech immigrant, who also happened to be my landlord. A [...]
George Orwell was initially tempted to dismiss Charles Dickens because he seemed to have “no political program” to offer. But soon Orwell recognized this presumed defect to be a virtue and decided that Dickens was a moralist, not a revolutionary. Having recently celebrated the anniversary of our revolution of 1776, let’s remember the kind of [...]
Do those who seek a transformation of American society believe or disbelieve in American exceptionalism? We can assume that they do not love the country they seek to transform. After all, how can you love anything or anyone you deem to be in need of a fundamental transformation? Questions abound as the Biden Administration goes [...]
Given that parents everywhere during the pandemic have been forced to think—and re-think—the role and place of public education, this might well be the very moment to “re-imagine” the whole matter of the organization and delivery of such education, so as to elevate the status of parents among schooling decision-makers. As our public schools gradually [...]