Hoffman Nickerson and a coterie of essayists in the 1920s and 1930s comprised the “Old Right,” a loose confederation of thinkers and writers animated by anti-modernism, suspicion of democracy, and worries over the debasement of Western culture. In 1934, the cartoonist David Low created the cartoon character of “Colonel Blimp,” an exaggerated caricature of older [...]
The importance of George Ticknor lies in contrasts, which bring into relief another America. As an old Federalist who worked to undergird volatile American democracy with traditions, Ticknor and his Brahmin compatriots “wove a tapestry of conviction and hope, doubt and despair, which became a conservative testament.” In July 1836, a European statesman and an [...]
The aristocratic element of democracy is its long-term quality. It has reverence for the past and it plans for the future. This is the necessary instinct democracy needs anew. Seneca, the Roman philosopher, relates the story of the murder of Callisthenes by Alexander the Great, the “everlasting crime” of the Macedonian leader. Seneca wrote: “For [...]
The role of Harry and Meghan, the former Duke and Duchess of Sussex, was to be the almost fairy-tale models for a world in need of elite leadership. They were called to embody all that is excellent in the British nation so that others might strive to imitate them. But they have utterly failed in [...]
For I agree with you that there is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents. Formerly bodily powers gave place among the aristoi. But since the invention of gunpowder has armed the weak as well as the strong with missile death, bodily strength, like beauty, good humor, politeness and [...]
Only where Democracy and Aristocracy are harmonized and unified culturally can a nation really be healthy and advanced; its history becomes the awe of the world. “Be it known to you that a son is born to me; but I thank the gods not much that they have given me him as that they have [...]
A true natural aristocracy is not a separate interest in the state, or separable from it. It is an essential integrant part of any large body rightly constituted. It is formed out of a class of legitimate presumptions, which, taken as generalities, must be admitted for actual truths. To be bred in a place of [...]
TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES Sir.— The traditional use of the word [aristocracy] implies, I believe, an emphasis upon inheritance: not merely the inheritance of property, however important that may seem to some, but the inheritance, partly through biological transmission and partly through environment, of, other less tangible values. In other words, the unit [...]