A Republic If You Can Keep It: Religion, Civil Society, & America’s Founding

By |2023-04-16T17:46:30-05:00April 16th, 2023|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Civil Society, Morality, Religion, Timeless Essays, Virtue|

Though civil libertarians rightly point out the dangers of an unchecked government, they blissfully ignore the dangers of an unchecked, unrestrained populace. It is thus worthwhile to return to the founders and examine what role they desired religion and morality to play in their new Republic. The story goes that as Benjamin Franklin departed from [...]

The Commonality of Freedoms

By |2023-02-22T11:35:22-06:00February 22nd, 2023|Categories: Civil Society, Free Speech, Freedom, Freedom of Religion, Politics|

The assault on religious freedom is not occurring in a vacuum. Freedoms of speech and association have also come under siege. These attacks prove a more general truth: that freedom is interconnected; when one basic freedom is undermined, all freedoms are undermined. On the culture-and-religion front, so much has changed over the past three and [...]

A Backwards Civilization: Unthinking Leaders, Frenzied Citizens

By |2023-02-07T17:08:49-06:00February 7th, 2023|Categories: Civil Society, Civilization, Democracy, Featured, Meno, Modernity, Plato, Political Philosophy, Politics, Socrates, Timeless Essays|

In America today, we are living in a toxic political climate that is the product of a very dangerous combination: Our rulers lack the learning necessary to ask the kinds of deep and fundamental questions that leaders and lawgivers ought to make a habit of pondering, while our people rebelliously scrutinize all orthodoxies and impose [...]

The Limits of Liberty

By |2023-01-22T21:00:13-06:00January 22nd, 2023|Categories: Bruce Frohnen, Civil Society, Freedom, Government, Liberty, Rule of Law, Senior Contributors, Social Order, Timeless Essays|

While the rule of law is an essential public good, the actual number and extent of laws also are important factors in determining whether there will be liberty—and, indeed, the rule of law itself. Moreover, as too much law undermines freedom and its own proper character, it also tears apart the very fabric of the [...]

Integralism and the Common Good

By |2023-01-16T15:28:46-06:00January 16th, 2023|Categories: Books, Catholicism, Christianity, Civil Society, Civilization, Community, Politics|

Just as in the case of the head of a household, the heads of localities and nations must direct their minds first and foremost toward the common good of some specific, limited group of people. Integralism and the Common Good, Volume One:  Family, City, and State, edited by Edmund Waldstein & Peter Kwasniewski (356 pages, [...]

The Phone Lady vs. Smartphone Culture

By |2023-01-10T12:31:37-06:00January 10th, 2023|Categories: Civil Society, Community, John Horvat, Technology|

One enterprising lady has noticed the social void caused by texting and instant messaging and has started a company that teaches phone skills to young people. But can she help resolve the moral problems of an age of superficial and self-centered relationships? Smartphones supposedly made possible an age of unprecedented communication. Everyone, especially young people, [...]

Consumer Materialism and Christian Hope

By |2023-01-07T15:58:22-06:00January 7th, 2023|Categories: Catholicism, Civil Society, Civilization, Community, Economics, Pope Benedict XVI|

Man needs ethos in order to be himself. Ethos, however, requires belief in creation and immortality. The impossibility of a human existence cut off from this is indirect proof for the truth of the Christian faith and its hope. Without the glad tidings of faith, mankind cannot endure in the long run. This lecture was [...]

Sweet Reason and the Spirits of Contention

By |2022-11-04T13:27:15-05:00November 4th, 2022|Categories: Catholicism, Civil Society, Democracy, Glenn Arbery, Politics, Wyoming Catholic College|

A radical polarization is going on in our own day. Knowing better, people interpret others as short-sighted and selfish, demonize their affiliations, and tar them with imputed evil. The hard question facing us is a political one: how long will we be able to sustain our constitutional forms? The still harder question, though, is what [...]

How to Keep Quarreling: A Brief Guide

By |2022-09-18T15:06:10-05:00September 18th, 2022|Categories: Civil Society, David Deavel, Satire, Senior Contributors|

The fault of polarization is not in our stars or even our social media constellation of follows and followers. It is, alas, in ourselves. Rather than give people advice about “civil discourse” or “ways to have productive conversations leading to truth"—which might well produce peace, some shared knowledge, or even humility—I want to help Imaginative [...]

The Honorable Roger Scruton and His Enemies

By |2022-09-14T17:22:52-05:00September 14th, 2022|Categories: Books, Civil Society, Conservatism, Roger Scruton, Timeless Essays, Western Civilization|

I know of no more comprehensive and reflective summary of conservatism than Sir Roger Scruton's "Conservatism: An Invitation to the Great Tradition." We should not expect conservative establishmentarians on either side of the Atlantic to pay it much heed, though, for the author has now been pushed into the ranks of the untouchables. Conservatism: An [...]

The Old-Fashioned Art of Visiting

By |2023-08-18T18:02:26-05:00September 6th, 2022|Categories: Civil Society, Culture, Literature, Mitchell Kalpakgian, Timeless Essays, Tradition|

Social visits are done for their own sake, for disinterested reasons, for the pleasure of others, and as a gracious act of thoughtfulness that dignifies both the visitor and the visited. In the novels of Louisa May Alcott, a time prior to the invention of the telephone, and even into the middle of the twentieth [...]

Don’t Talk to Your Children

By |2022-08-29T10:22:13-05:00August 29th, 2022|Categories: Civil Society, Education, Family, Truth|

Our kids don’t need arguments, they need a childhood. They need to have their healthy imaginations nourished and their innate prejudices in favor of truth, beauty, and goodness affirmed. It’s hard to be a kid these days. Your blue-haired teachers appear on Libs of Tik-Tok videos bragging about selling you into sex slavery, and people [...]

America Faces Problems That Refuse to Be Left Behind

By |2023-08-21T18:26:39-05:00August 28th, 2022|Categories: American Republic, Civil Society, John Horvat, Senior Contributors|

The American system is breaking down, forcing us to confront the problems that refuse to be left behind. But we can handle this crisis. All it takes is a change in perspective, embracing Christ’s Cross. The philosopher George Santayana (1863–1952) once observed that we Americans don’t solve problems: We leave them behind. If there’s an [...]

Ernst Jünger’s “The Glass Bees” & Our Dystopian Present

By |2022-08-17T16:22:26-05:00August 17th, 2022|Categories: Civil Society, Fiction, Literature, Science, Technology|

In our protean age of artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and virtual reality, Ernst Jünger’s uncanny vision of a dystopian world dominated by the machinations of high tech seems strikingly prescient. “The secret force behind technology appears to be the intention to make things insipid. The flower without fragrance is its emblem.” ~Nicolás Gómez Dávila When Ernst [...]

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