The modern system of public education has been, for the most part, a miserable failure. Our current educational crisis has been eroding the moral and intellectual fabric of the American Experiment for too many generations to count. Yet the occupiers of the Ivory Towers openly aver that our public schools are doing a fantastic job, [...]
We finally find ourselves past the point of no return concerning a virtuous republic. We have been vanquished by the moral and intellectual errors following the demise of authentic theology and philosophy, whose peak was in the high Middle Ages. The skein of moral and intellectual confusion spanning the centuries has become a Gordian knot [...]
If we can get the three views of man in their proper orders and give them their proper weights, we can see that the three views are meant to be complementary and of service to one another. A recovery of an authentic understanding of the true nature of the human person is vital. In fact, [...]
One of C.S. Lewis’ lesser-known essays, “Good Work and Good Works” was published in the Catholic Arts Quarterly close to Christmas, 1959. Lewis’ assertions in the essay are a testimony to the prescience achieved by authors whose thought is grounded in principles of truth combined with the right use of reason. Over half-a-century ago, Lewis lamented the divorce between [...]
G.K. Chesterton remarked on insanity in Orthodoxy. He said “Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that [...]
I grew up in a secular humanist home with highly “educated” parents who were very much the product of the modern age when it came to morality. My parents were good folks, and when I would ask for advice about a particular moral quandary, they would invariably tell me to “pick a course of action [...]
The cacophony of the modern public square often includes voices that employ rights rhetoric aimed at promoting licentious views, especially in regard to human sexuality. Those who dare to disagree with these advocates by promoting virtue instead of vice will likely have their livelihoods ruined, and consequently what little remains in America of the innocence, decency and common sense required [...]
It is a shocking reality that the vast majority of “teachers” have no idea what it means to be an “educated” human being. If this is true, and indeed it is demonstrable, then it should not be a surprise to learn that most Americans have no idea what it means to be a good teacher. [...]
The feminist movement may have been started by women with legitimate gripes but it has become reactionary to the point of the absurd. Early on as the movement began to pick up steam it meandered into an ill-advised liaison with Marxism. Licentious cohabitation yielded a hideous progeny, a hydra we call “radical feminism.” The radical [...]
There are seven deaths and ninety injuries on record attributed to seven nights’ worth of Black Friday Shopping for the last seven years. Not exactly an actuarial tsunami, and perhaps not an iron clad statistic, but imagine how much insult and damage go unreported? Though chances of surviving Black Friday are very high, even if you [...]
It is our moral duty to arm our children both intellectually and morally against the prevailing and shifting “norms” of the day. Let us confront the “soul of madness” in modern society by prayerful courage and then cooperate with grace for the sake of all in our society. Madness reached these shores long ago. Just [...]
Ogre or King? It is not in every circle that being an ideologue is a bad thing. It was not in every circle during Socrates’ day that being a sophist was a bad thing. In the early Church, there were some very popular heretics. Arius captured nearly the entire imagination of an early age leaving [...]
One of the finest American teachers acquiesced a few years ago to be my mentor. I am a stranger to the good man, but he agreed to answer my questions because he is in possession of a proper understanding of the nature of a true teacher, a public figure whose work is ultimately for the [...]
I have been absent from the pages of The Imaginative Conservative these last several weeks, a place that I consider to be my literary home. The diversity of topics that The Imaginative Conservative publishes helped to foster a growing place of residence in my mind, a residence forged by the character of this journal and [...]