Today we celebrate the five-year anniversary of The Imaginative Conservative. While it is true that we first published on July 10, 2010, the seeds of our efforts were planted much earlier. Friendships of decades, books inherited from the past, and lives spent in pursuit of eternal truths are the foundations of The Imaginative Conservative community. Among our writers many share friendships which help us to [...]
Thucydides' account of the twenty-seven-year war between Athens and Sparta is filled with timeless questions about human conflict: When are aggression and vengeance justified? Can peace ever truly be secured by war? How does war affect the integrity of language and character? What is the role of chance in war? Is war ever truly inevitable? Additionally, the participants [...]
Historian Jack Rakove talks about James Madison’s role in the creation of the Constitution and his arguments in support of the new frame of government in the Federalist papers. St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland, hosted this event as part of its “Great Issues Forum.” Mr. Rakove is introduced by the President of St. John’s College, Christopher [...]
We highly recommend this marvelous pilot episode for The Cosmopolitans, a new series by our friend Whit Stillman. Please watch this witty comedy and take the survey at Amazonoriginals.com so that they will support a complete series. Smart, clever, fun and beautiful cinematography. Well done Mr. Stillman! Read Richard Brody’s review in The New Yorker and essays [...]
Brief reflections on Henri Nouwen’s Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World In this sublime work Henri Nouwen offers to readers: “The greatest gift my friendship can give to you is the gift of your Belovedness. I can give that gift only insofar as I have claimed it for myself. Isn’t that what friendship is [...]
It is with sadness that we learned of the death yesterday of a great man, Stratford Caldecott, a Senior Contributor to The Imaginative Conservative. Stratford graced our pages with some sixty-six essays, on such wonderful and varied topics as: the nature of the human soul; the essence of beauty; the mythology of J.R.R. Tolkien; the philosophy of G.K. Chesterton; Prince Charles as [...]
Bradley J. Birzer has been appointed the second Visiting Scholar in Conservative Thought and Policy, the University of Colorado Boulder announced today. Dr. Birzer, a professor of history and the Russell Amos Kirk Chair in American Studies at Hillsdale College in Michigan, will begin his one-year appointment beginning in fall 2014. “Dr. Birzer brings impressive [...]
The Imaginative Conservative is pleased to announce that Stephen Klugewicz has joined its staff as Editor. Dr. Klugewicz previously served as president of Franklin’s Opus, as headmaster of Regina Luminis Academy, as director of education at the National Constitution Center, and as executive director of the Collegiate Network. He is the co-editor of History, on Proper Principles: Essays in [...]
On this Memorial Day do we remember what should not have been? Only the West’s soul is more scarred than its landscape. Do we still mourn the lost, do we treat the wounds, do we rub the scars with oil? Do the children of the children lost still weep for the embraces that might have been? [...]
The Common Mind by Andre Gushurst-Moore A hallmark of the current age is the ease with which it embraces any number of rival moral narratives in the name of “open-mindedness” or “diversity.” Indeed, the thousand and one “isms” that are impossibly espoused serve only to erode further even the very concept of a common culture. [...]
Liberty or Equality by Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn In Liberty or Equality, Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn first examines the historical and current meanings of both democracy and liberalism, demonstrating why the two do not necessarily coincide. He then puts forward a series of propositions, the first of which is that the impulse of democracy as popular government [...]
Against Inclusiveness by James Kalb Diversity. Inclusiveness. Equality.—ubiquitous words in 21st-century American political and social life. But how do those who police the limits of acceptable discourse employ these as verbal weapons to browbeat their often hapless fellows into having a “real conversation”? How do these terms function as mere doublespeak for the expectation of full-scale [...]
The Academy Award nominated filmmaker will offer thematic and cultural commentary in Houston on October 1st. (To register for this event, please click here.) “Whatever Whit Stillman’s politics may be, the very form of his artistic sensibility illuminates what an imaginative conservative cultural intervention in our time might entail… In each of [his] films a note [...]
by W. Winston Elliott III There is still time to sign up for this Saturday’s conference celebrating the 60th anniversary of the publication of Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind. The program is being held at Houston Baptist University. Speakers include The Imaginative Conservative’s Bradley J. Birzer, Gleaves Whitney, W. Winston Elliott III and Barbara J. Elliott. Please use [...]