Ronald Reagan’s version of conservatism was far more pro-government than was Barry Goldwater’s. Compassion, not liberty, was Reagan’s guide. This raises the question: To what extent is the success of modern political conservatism dependent upon the conservation of liberal, even progressive, reforms? The Working Class Republican: Ronald Reagan and the Return of Blue Collar Conservatism [...]
The 1928 Book of Common Prayer is an important cultural artifact, whose influence on English language and literature rivals that of the Authorized Version of the Bible and the works of William Shakespeare. You will recall Parson Thwackum in Henry Fielding’s classic novel History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749). Mr. (never, in proper ecclesiastical usage, Reverend) Thwackum [...]
The first and most fundamental principle, if one would undertake to alleviate the condition of the masses, must be the inviolability of private property. The main tenet of socialism, community of goods, must be utterly rejected. The fact that God has given the earth for the use and enjoyment of the whole human race can [...]
All must go through purification to attain union with God. In this life it is called the Dark Night of the Soul; in the next life, it is called Purgatory. No one can avoid it. Mystical theology teaches how this purification is brought about in this life. When studying Philosophy, I had a brief flirtation [...]
American culture is surely decadent. Its decay is palpable to any sensitive observer who reads the feuilleton section of the local newspaper or attends a university. But is our decadence terminal? Is our civilization on a collision course with extinction? The Culture We Deserve by Jacques Barzun (200 pages, Wesleyan University Press, 1989) Politically America [...]
Chris Gibson's "The Spirit of Philadelphia" helps us to rethink the role of Common Sense Realism as a unifying principle of American life. But that idea rests on a greater idea. The spirit of Philadelphia has no sustaining power to preserve order in soul or republic unless wedded to the genius of Christianity. The Spirit [...]
In his lectures about three musical geniuses—Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert—Dietrich von Hildebrand shows how the integration of music with spiritual and philosophic insight can enrich our musical understanding. Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, by Dietrich von Hildebrand, trans. John Henry Crosby (109 pages, Hildebrand Project, 2025) When a distinguished Catholic philosopher discourses on three distinguished composers of [...]
Father Nussbaum was under no illusion. Like all great missionaries he was thinking of martyrdom. He accepted it in advance, and even, deep in his great Christian heart, he hoped for it. He remembered all those who before him had wet this hostile soil with their blood. He thought of Father Mussot who, on April [...]
As one of the greatest bridges from the ancient world to the medieval, St. Augustine of Hippo’s "Confessions" illuminates the path forward through the gloom of the modern world. And C.C. Pecknold's new book, "Fire on the Altar" is a wonderful guide to this masterpiece. Fire on the Altar: Setting Our Souls Ablaze through St. [...]
In "The Fall of the House of Usher," Edgar Allan Poe takes the Gothic setting, with all its machinery and décor, and the preposterous Gothic hero, and transforms them into the material of serious literary art. “Commentary on Poe’s Fall of the House of Usher,” from The House of Fiction, edited by Caroline Gordon and [...]
Saint John of the Cross restores, to a world which had nearly lost it, a sense of the transcendence of Almighty God. This is not to say that he loses sight for a moment of the Divine immanence, a subject which no mystical work treats with more delicacy and insight than the Spiritual Canticle. But [...]
Historian Walter McDougall is that rare "twofer": a wonderful writer of history and a wonderful lecturer. In this book, he combines essential tips for the writer with a series of uniformly sparkling essays that range from the era of the American Revolution to the present day. Gems of American History: The Lecturer’s Art, by Walter [...]
To enter a universe peopled with objects whose function is to give pleasure is also to establish contact with the order of pure beauty. The words “beauty” and “beautiful” have become unfashionable, not indeed with artists, who use them quite freely even in our own day, but rather with the school of those aestheticians who [...]
Joel J. Miller is as much a movement as a man. Of everything his new book "The Idea Machine" has to offer, I most appreciate his argument that books not only reflect our humanity, but they also, in dialogue with one another, teach us to be more humane. Joel J. Miller, The Idea Machine: How [...]