About John Horvat

John Horvat II is Senior Contributor at The Imaginative Conservative and a scholar, researcher, educator, international speaker, and author of the book Return to Order, as well as the author of hundreds of published essays. He lives in Spring Grove, Pennsylvania, where he is the vice president of the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property.

The Problem of the Young, White Males

By |2026-01-08T12:05:49-06:00January 8th, 2026|Categories: Catholicism, Christianity, John Horvat, Liberalism, Senior Contributors, Virtue|

The leftist man fears the Christian ideal of manhood. He trembles in the face of its purity. He is terrified by its chivalry. He is afraid of its manly prayer. He even fears its compassion. Far from the meek caricature of the Nietzsche world, with the help of supernatural grace, the virtuous Christian man can [...]

Do We Let the Barbarians In?

By |2025-12-26T22:41:51-06:00December 26th, 2025|Categories: Beauty, Catholicism, Conservatism, John Horvat, Senior Contributors|

There are signs that some conservatives, "Roman" and "barbarian" alike, are questioning certain liberal premises and expressing a desire for a grand return to grace and God, to fill the vacuum created by a world without beauty and truth. During the long decline of the Roman Empire, the Roman legions defended the borders against the [...]

How a Trip to Poland Convinced Me That Socialism Works

By |2025-12-03T14:24:24-06:00December 3rd, 2025|Categories: John Horvat, Poland, Senior Contributors, Socialism|

We are not threatened by the socialism that does not work according to Western standards. We are threatened when socialism works, radiating its egalitarian and gray presence everywhere. The victory of socialist candidates in recent elections has highlighted the renewed appeal of the Marxist system. Some now see socialism as the wave of the future. [...]

The Art of Political Fencing in an Age of Polarization

By |2025-11-19T12:26:05-06:00November 19th, 2025|Categories: Civil Society, Civilization, John Horvat, Liberalism, Morality, Politics, Senior Contributors|

In the present polarized climate, there is a constant battle between two ever-more irreconcilable sides. I think this is a good trend since the two parties do not live the fiction of getting along when the points of division are so great. I applaud any effort that results in moral clarity. It clears the air [...]

And the Nobel Prize in Literature Goes to… an Absurdist

By |2025-10-31T12:19:29-05:00October 31st, 2025|Categories: Beauty, Goodness, John Horvat, Literature, Senior Contributors, Truth|

It makes no sense to reward someone who frustrates the purposes of literature with a major prize. Imagine literary works with plots in dystopian settings where the characters act within an unraveling social order. Apocalyptic events abound inside absurd situations. This is the literature of Laszlo Krasznakorkai. There is more. Imagine an unreadable and drawn-out [...]

How Our Lady Gave Us Back the Color Blue

By |2025-09-29T20:07:38-05:00September 29th, 2025|Categories: Catholicism, Christianity, John Horvat, Mother of God, Senior Contributors|

Medieval man gave blue to Our Lady as her color. She rescued it from its barbarian captivity and elevated it for all the world to see. Devotion to her gave rise to a rich civilization full of the vitality and color the ancient pagans lacked. Most people imagine that antiquity was much like our own [...]

Charlie Kirk’s Assassination: Turning Point or Breaking Point for America?

By |2025-09-21T17:54:07-05:00September 17th, 2025|Categories: Christianity, Culture, John Horvat, Morality, Politics, Senior Contributors, St. Augustine|

Charlie Kirk's assassin symbolizes a subculture of rebellion found in recent shooters: full of dark, video-gaming, and Satanic themes. Indeed, like the biblical Cain, the assassin took his rage against the moral law to the point of killing one who embodied the ideal of that law. The assassination of Charlie Kirk is forcing the nation [...]

To Stop School Shootings, We Must Reject Three Liberal Premises

By |2025-09-01T16:26:01-05:00September 1st, 2025|Categories: Catholicism, Civil Society, Civilization, Evil, John Horvat, Liberalism, Morality, Senior Contributors|

The Minneapolis killings prove that evil exists and hates good. The act was so heinous that Satan unmasks himself by showing his role in inspiring the shooter's hateful messages against the Catholic Church. Satan is real and working inside the postmodern world despite the liberal premise to the contrary. He showed his fiendish face at [...]

Putting Freedom Above Order

By |2025-08-18T13:56:19-05:00August 18th, 2025|Categories: Christianity, Common Good, Freedom, John Horvat, Liberalism, Senior Contributors, Social Order|

We need a return to Christian order and freedom, with God at its center. Only then will society no longer appear broken, and things will work properly. A general sense that society is broken prevails in America today. Polls show that people are not satisfied with the direction the nation is going. Things and institutions [...]

Sit Up Straight & Take Note: Why Posture Matters

By |2025-07-08T09:36:57-05:00July 7th, 2025|Categories: Civil Society, Civilization, John Horvat, Senior Contributors, Virtue|

While slouching may not be sinful, it can create an atmosphere of disregard, carelessness, and sloth. It favors bad habits that may facilitate vice. Hence, people can combat these horrible consequences by living up to standards of propriety that favor effort and consideration in a well-ordered society. One great tragedy of radical individualism was the [...]

Yes, Gen Z Can Read Books

By |2025-05-24T16:13:43-05:00May 19th, 2025|Categories: Books, John Horvat|

Everyone criticizes Gen Z as a generation that grew up with computer screens and iPhones and is thus unable or at least unwilling to read books. The scenes I have witnessed on streets and in airports seem to confirm this reading-averse characterization. Everywhere you go, Gen Z is online, staring at screens. College professors report [...]

Why Altar Rails Are Returning to Churches

By |2025-05-06T09:52:58-05:00May 5th, 2025|Categories: Architecture, Beauty, Catholicism, Faith, John Horvat, Senior Contributors|

Faith must have its physical and visual expression. The return of the altar rail is a refreshing and sublime response to a distorted vision of the Church. It reintroduces the traditional teachings of the Church with awe and wonder, delighting the worshiper and resurrecting fervor for Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. In churches across [...]

Where Is AI Taking Us?

By |2025-04-11T09:38:00-05:00April 7th, 2025|Categories: Books, John Horvat, Liberalism, Technology|

Yuval Harari, in his latest book, "Nexus," believes that AI endangers the utopian dream of unbridled license that has long been the goal of countless revolutionaries on the left and libertarian anarchists on the right. Modernity is replete with philosophers who interpret reality through prisms. By simplifying their perceptions, such figures seek to change history. [...]

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