It would be difficult to find a more beautiful republican thought in all of Edmund Burke’s writings than this: “A man full of warm speculative benevolence may wish his society otherwise constituted than he finds it; but a good patriot, and a true politician, always considers how he shall make the most of the existing [...]
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 [...]
The trouble with our civilization, Albert Jay Nock declared, is that it makes exceedingly limited demands on the human spirit and the qualities that are distinctly and properly humane. We have been trying to live by mechanics alone, the mechanics of pedagogy, politics, industry, commerce. Instead of experiencing a change of heart, we bend our [...]
Faith and culture are inextricably connected because a culture is always an expression of the faith which informs it. If a culture is animated by a belief in the triune splendour of the good, the true, and the beautiful, it will shine forth goodness, truth, and beauty… Why “faith and culture”? Do they go together? Can [...]
The principal difficulty of mankind today is the decay of the moral imagination in our civilization… In the spring of 1989, videographer Ken Martinek and I made the trip to Piety Hill to interview Russell about the moral imagination (as first conceived by Edmund Burke and expanded by Dr. Kirk). This concept had held an [...]
Power, in and of itself, has become an “ideology,” according to Robert Nisbet. It is, by its very nature, incapable of understanding nuance… As I had the opportunity to write in my previous essay for The Imaginative Conservative, Oxford University Press gave the grand sociologist and historian of ideas, Robert A. Nisbet, a chance to [...]
President Orbán has the courage and integrity to stand up to the secularist bullying of the European Union and to the efforts to force Hungary to allow countless Islamic immigrants into its midst. And yet even heroes need correcting when they get things wrong… The discussion of Hillaire Belloc’s writing on Europe and the Faith, [...]
The abuse of opioids, like other addictions, stems from a profound spiritual problem deep inside the souls of countless Americans. But when people turn to the sublimity of heavenly things, they acquire the ability to overcome their frenetic appetites and look for spiritual solutions… An opioid crisis is devastating America. Every day, more than ninety [...]
What we need is a love for both our country and our humanity, whether it be through religion, reason, or both. Such a position steers clear of the perfectionist aspirations of cosmopolitans and draws back from parochial nationalist sentiments by combining the best elements of American conservatism and liberalism… Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay [...]
A living system getting too close to the edge of chaos risks incoherence, but moving too far away risks rigidity, either case leading to extinction. Complex systems flourish at the edge of chaos. For the imaginative conservative, real thought, reflection, and learning often take place at the edge of chaos… Studying history teaches us not [...]
Let it be known that I am not a prophet, and I will quite happily eat crow, eat my hat, eat my words… eat whatever is necessary when my prognostications prove preposterous and my prophecies prove to be not prophetic, but pathetic. Nevertheless, with my finger to the wind and my squinty eye on the [...]
I can guarantee that we will soon forget the absurd characterization of “KKKolumbus” in the South Bend History Museum. But every time I bring my son to walk through those museum rooms, I will be haunted by the characterization of our white ancestors as ravens who pluck out the eyes of children. My son and [...]
The great tradition of Western culture has proven peculiarly absorptive; it has brought influences from many disparate sources into a rich conversation. But it is Christianity that has for centuries formed its core. And it is, above all, this core to which “conservatism at its highest” remains faithful. The question before us is whether religious [...]
Richard Weaver claimed his homeland was the “last nonmaterialistic civilization in the western world.” Modernity to him meant at bottom institutionalizing most of the Seven Deadly Sins… Though his worth and stature were early established among them, while yet living Richard M. Weaver was something of a puzzle for his friends within the American “conservative [...]