Unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads to cruelty. If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. —from [...]
The waiting room was empty at 11:40 that day, that day of the appointment, the last appointment. Jack and I had been coming and going weekly for a good three months. There was first the diagnosis and then the treatment, palliative radiation. The cancer was invasive, cartilage in his right nostril which had expanded the [...]
Do the so-called “Minor Prophets,” addressing their message some two thousand years ago to different kingdoms and crises, have significant relevance today? Is there any seed left in the barn? The vine, the fig tree, the pomegranate, and the olive tree still haven’t produced. But from now on I will bless you. —Haggai 2:19 I. The [...]
So who was this John C. Calhoun, someone who has so many sticky burrs attached to his reputation? And why turn our attention to him in this year of 2025? I. Constitutional Federalism Is a system whereby a written constitution divides and shares powers between a General Government and constituent state governments with each having [...]
I had not seen my former student, Adam, for a decade or so after his graduation from Hillsdale College when I ran into him and his young family at the supermarket. "You once asked me" he said, "for what purpose was the soul of man made. I had little in the way of an answer [...]
What is history if not a “survey,” and what are historians if not chain-bearers? Have you reckoned a thousand acres much? —Walt Whitman, Song of Myself History records that in 1763 two guys surveyed a demarcation line separating Pennsylvania and Maryland as well as bits of Delaware and West Virginia. The surveyors were Charles Mason [...]
Sidney Hook believed the university to be a community of scholars bound together by the ties of civility and intellectual respect, pursuing the truths, the goods, and the beauties—multiple visions which inspire the life of the mind. Those who accept this conception, he believed, must dedicate themselves to help those misguided students and their allies [...]
This year, when my father’s name is announced along with others from World War II, I will step forward and place that red carnation at the base of his white cross. Mid-week I’ll load the Jeep with a few things including food for Cora Jolene, the Dog. We will make a pilgrimage, a road-trip, some [...]
Daniel McInerny’s "Beauty & Imitation" is a superb reactivation not only of Aristotle’s understanding of mimesis but also with an Aquinas enhancement. From the first page forward, in fine prose, McInerny surveys with sincerity and depth the Catholic understanding of the arts, beauty, and sublimity. Despite, or perhaps in part because of its importance and [...]
Any attempt to interpret history as a whole, if it is not to succumb to gnostic myth, must posit some subject which works in and reveals itself in the whole of history and which is at the same time [the belief in] a being capable of providing general norms. —Fr. Hans Urs von Balthasar, A [...]
Plato argues that music is a moral law that gives soul to the universe and wings to the mind. And that music gives flight to the imagination, charm to sadness, gaiety to life and is the essence of order and leads to all that is good and just and beautiful. Is Plato right that musical [...]
Orestes Brownson believed that there must reside a sanction for justice and order which cannot be found apart from religious principles. Without such sanctions, we fight the same battles in political season after political season under the various ideologies intending to make America great again; but only the standards of those “permanent things” taught by [...]
Don Larsen didn’t know he was going to start that fifth game of the 1956 World Series until he arrived at Yankee Stadium and discovered a baseball tucked inside his baseball spikes. Shapes of Philosophical History Mr. Meyer passed away late spring in 1956 leaving behind his wife and one child, a son, Curtis, who [...]
I suspect that my true “political consciousness” began around the months surrounding mid-1963 to mid-1964 and for reasons you, my patient reader, I hope can understand and share. Can my awareness of what came across the airwaves and was broadcast in black and white on our family television be likened to an emerging “political consciousness?” [...]