Liberals and the Libel of “Christian Nationalism”

By |2024-03-07T18:56:33-06:00March 7th, 2024|Categories: American Republic, Christianity, Civil Society, Civilization, Liberalism|

Christ gave His disciples the Divine Commission to go and teach all nations, baptizing them. Christians are called to change society—all society, every society. They pursue this goal with charity and zeal, respecting the free will of individuals. Wherever Christianity has gone, its charity has transformed nations and peoples. Whenever the extreme left is in [...]

The Heroism of Civilization

By |2023-12-03T18:47:28-06:00December 3rd, 2023|Categories: Civilization, David Deavel, Family, Heroism, Marriage, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays|

What we need in American society are more imaginative resources for thinking about marriage and the great slog of parenthood. We need stories, plays, movies, and shows about the sort of heroism that requires long-haul fortitude and not just courage in the moment. A long-held but somewhat flexible fantasy I have engaged in periodically since [...]

Warfare in Epic Poetry

By |2023-11-30T18:26:47-06:00November 30th, 2023|Categories: Beauty, Civilization, Culture, Heroism, Homer, Iliad, Literature, Poetry, Timeless Essays, War|

A culture that fails to represent, or that misrepresents its wars in all their glory, gravity, and tragedy, is a weaker polity. Epic poetry, with its stark recording of the facts and feelings of war, can give cultures and communities access to the reality of warfare and inscribe its memory on the collective consciousness and [...]

Politics, Violence, & the Future of America

By |2023-06-19T17:12:29-05:00June 19th, 2023|Categories: American Republic, Civil Society, Civilization, Mark Malvasi, Politics, Senior Contributors|

Propelled by delusions and united by hatred, growing numbers of Americans believe that political violence is justified, necessary, and even at times desirable. If we no longer can, or care to, adhere to the dictates of civility and reason, then we will have surrendered control of our destiny and will become the authors of our [...]

Writing as a Moral Act

By |2023-03-26T20:37:13-05:00March 26th, 2023|Categories: Civilization, Timeless Essays|

Success in writing requires the virtue of temperance, self-mastery, which refers to an internal action less dreary and passive than mere abstinence. Temperance means disciplining oneself in order to realize one’s greatest potential. Writing is a moral act, I often tell my undergraduate students. At first, naturally enough, they are puzzled by this claim. Not [...]

Eating Alone: Aristotle & the Culture of the Meal

By |2023-02-26T17:46:43-06:00February 26th, 2023|Categories: Aristotle, Christian Living, Civilization, Family, Friendship, Paul Krause, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays, Tradition|

Eating together, as a social event, is meant to be time-consuming because it is meant to be an intimate experience where friendship—true friendship—is experienced, rekindled, and love stands at the center of the dinner table. It is, in its own way, a call to sacrifice. Aristotle identified man’s eating habits as one of the cornerstones of civilization—one [...]

The Radical Equality of Christianity

By |2023-07-18T17:03:28-05:00February 16th, 2023|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Christendom, Christianity, Civilization, Culture, Equality, Religion, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays|

In our world of recriminating hatreds—in which we desire more to label those we don’t like as sexist, imperialist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, and, simultaneously, mark ourselves as victims—we often forget some important historical truths. Here’s one we conveniently ignore, dismiss, or mock: Nothing in the world has brought about more equality and justice than has [...]

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 [...]

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, [...]

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 [...]

Is Specialization Killing Culture?

By |2022-12-11T16:31:38-06:00December 11th, 2022|Categories: Beauty, Civilization, Community, Culture, Michael De Sapio, Modernity, Permanent Things, Senior Contributors, The Imaginative Conservative, Timeless Essays, Truth, Western Civilization, Western Tradition|

If culture is simply a matter of private enthusiasms and hobbies, of small details and specialties, then what of a common culture? What about the collective project and shared sense of purpose that built Western civilization? “The expert takes a little subject for his province, and remains a provincial for the rest of his life.”—Jacques [...]

A Christmas Gift to Provoke Young People to Marvel Again

By |2022-12-04T16:27:45-06:00December 4th, 2022|Categories: Christmas, Civilization, Gifts for Imaginative Conservatives, John Horvat|

My simple suggestion for a Christmas gift to a young person is a fountain pen with beautiful ink. Perhaps it is wishful thinking to believe that those who receive so much instant gratification on their devices would embrace this soulful yet slow instrument of beauty. But who knows? They might be struck by the wonder [...]

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