The West has been undone by consumerism, the Sexual Revolution, outsourcing, urbanization, and centralization—all defended by modern conservatives as “the price we must pay” to live in a free and prosperous country. They’re wrong. As Russell Kirk argued, the principal function of government is not to ensure the material security and comfort of its [...]
Frank Meyer was a man looking desperately for faults in the philosophy to which he was most attracted: traditionalism. Finding none, he simply made up another philosophy: fusionism. But instead of coopting the energy and scientific rigor of libertarianism for the traditionalist cause, he simply empowered the former at the latter’s expense… American conservatism [...]
Though, as with any high-church Protestant, conversion to Roman Catholicism is always in the back of my mind, I have really come just short of sticking my toe in the Tiber only twice. Both times I was deterred by the unscheduled absence of a priest from his office, once in Boston and once in [...]
John Adams Gathering my thoughts to once again tackle the question of monarchism, I glanced over the comments on my 2014 essay, “Why I’m a Monarchist.” One commenter, known only as Harris and identified only as an aging Maltese, noted that “Thomas Hobbes makes the argument more pungently, and more brutally. What [...]
Cultural relativism is that preferred meta-ethical philosophy of left-wing apologists for barbarities committed by Islamists and other violent fanatics, both at home and abroad. When some old-school liberal like Bill Maher condemns some Middle Eastern theocracy for preventing women from driving, executing apostates, or refusing to prosecute honor killings—for being, in a word, illiberal—he’s [...]
The concepts of the Apollonian and Dionysian are famously invoked by Nietzsche in the context of Greek drama, but not in such a way that we can transfer them directly to poetry and prose. Let it suffice to say that Apollo is typically represented as restrained, orderly, and logical; Dionysus is erratic, spontaneous, and emotive. [...]
I have been encouraged by Mr. Joseph Pearce’s two excellent essays, “How Many Loves? Arguing with C.S. Lewis” and “The Vulgar Mob: Arguing with G.K. Chesterton,” to offer up a little challenge to one thinker who has indelibly influenced my own conservatism. I have tremendous admiration for Roger Scruton’s courage in abandoning his academic [...]
The official position of the Obama Administration seems to be that our country is at war with extremism, including but not limited to those who commit acts of terror in the name of Islam. It is also the position of the executive branch that proclaiming war against radical Islam specifically is unjustified, and for two reasons: [...]
Justin Welby, the humble and good-humored Archbishop of Canterbury, marked himself from the beginning of his reign by the contrast he struck with his predecessor Rowan Williams, now Baron of Oystermouth. Lord Williams was one of the seminal reasons for my conversion to Anglicanism. He was born in Ystradgynlais in Swansea, Wales, to a [...]
Once after Mass, on a rare lazy Sunday afternoon, I dropped by the train station’s news agent and browsed the book rack for a light read—something one would pick up in an airport to keep occupied, but not busy. I picked out Deborah Crombie’s Leave the Grave Green. The blurb on the back cover [...]
On October 9th, thousands gathered at the Church of the Apostles in Atlanta for the investiture of Foley Beach as Archbishop and Primate of the Anglican Church of North America (ACNA). You would be forgiven for never having heard of Dr. Foley or his church body. The ACNA is the largest single umbrella organization [...]
I recently reviewed Leo Yankevich’s latest collection, and only just read an interview with Mr. Yankevich given by the publisher, Counter-Currents. I stand by what praise I gave the volume, in spite of Mr. Yankevich’s own admission that “One of the central themes of…Tikkun Olam is the destructiveness of Jewish power.” Such connotations never once occurred [...]
I regret that this review comes two years too late: Sea Changes was published in 2012, and better minds than my own already praised Mr. Turner’s first novel more deftly than I will be able to. Taki Theodoracopulos (whose ‘High Life’ article in The Spectator is the highlight of my post-church Sunday morning) called [...]
Thus spake the last of Boston’s Brahmin: “I place no stock in any faction Except those stalwarts of the Union And who prefer the Greek to Latin.” I. Mayor Nichols was well before my time. (He was, I read, a Swedenborgian; I’ve always thought that to be somewhat strange, Not that I would’ve held [...]