Many so-called conservatives are buying into the progressive presumption that things are progressing inexorably in one direction, which the progressives think is a liberated future and which conservatives think is a libertine hell. Such conservatives agree with the progressive perspective; they just don’t like it! It is odd that those who consider themselves “progressives” assign [...]
The concerns of common-good conservatives about the harms caused by globalism and corporate wokeness are real. And to the extent that their calls for reform in the conservative outlook reflect those real concerns, then such calls are to be taken seriously. A spirited debate is occurring within American conservatism. The debate generally involves traditional conservatives [...]
With America in great need of political and intellectual warriors to fight for our “Constitutional morality,” what better man to learn from as one prepares for battle than Willmoore Kendall. Heaven Can Indeed Fall: The Life of Willmoore Kendall, by Christopher H. Owen (256 pages, Lexington Books, 2021) More than 50 years after his death, [...]
Robert Frost seemed stubbornly—even querulously—conservative, but it is often the case that he dramatizes political realities most shrewdly and profoundly in poems that never mention politics in the conventional sense. Shortly before the death of Robert Frost, the editor of a selection of critical essays on the poet summarized the case for his prosecution as [...]
Well before his death, Harry Jaffa saw the American regime gradually descending into a deadly brew of positivism, atheism, and nihilism. Given this “collapse of the soul” of American politics, Jaffa’s America was becoming increasingly alienated from both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The Soul of Politics: Harry Jaffa and the Fight for [...]
In his new book, Michael Warren Davis rescues the reactionaries. With a jaunty air and the panache of all the ridiculous warriors from Cyrano de Bergerac to Don Quixote, he stands up for all that is alternative, counter-cultural, strange, spare, and delightfully luddite. I thought I was a fogey, but Michael Warren Davis, in his [...]
One of the administrators at my school recently asked faculty to contribute a “solidarity statement.” The email specified what was being sought: For your statement, we’re asking you to share how you personally will engage in the work of creating an inclusive and equitable campus community that truly values all. What, specifically, will you do [...]
Younger conservatives are now thinking and speaking in different ways about politics, religion, economics, and education because they are racing to figure out how to operate in the world that is coming rather than in the post-war world that is fast disappearing. Generational differences are often exaggerated, but I’ve always thought them useful. Are younger [...]
Conservatives must preserve and pass on the riches of the past, but we must also be aware of and open to the opportunities of the present, so that the proper fusion of old and new will inspire and enable truly great art. From time to time I publish on Twitter my view of the social [...]
Everything worth conserving is menaced in our generation. Mere unthinking negative opposition to the current of events, clutching in despair at what we still retain, will not suffice in this age. A conservatism of instinct must be reinforced by a conservatism of thought and imagination. A friend of mine, whom we shall call Miss Worth, fell [...]
Is Robert Nisbet’s “The Quest for Community” a historical artifact or a living source of wisdom? Has his insight into the natural human desire for community become a moot point in light of the rise of the State, which has replaced the church, family, and neighborhood? Of the many books that Robert Nisbet wrote during [...]
Russell Kirk’s Ten Conservative Principles reflect the way William Faulkner wrote, acted, and organized his life. As a property owner with notions of limited government, he brought that orientation to his fiction, to his work in Hollywood, to his commentary on civil rights, and to his everyday relationships with his family and community. His conservatism [...]
Larry Elder’s film “Uncle Tom” is a must-see for anybody who thinks all black people think alike or that American black history is simply a history of victimhood. They’re black, they’re proud, and they’re all-American—just like the film they’re in. While it is unlikely that blacks will vote as a majority for Donald Trump or [...]
How close are Confucian ideas to the American conservatism of our day? Confucius himself is known in Chinese tradition as the “Model Sage for Ten Thousand Ages.” Thus, Confucius and his disciples and later followers held that there are indeed “permanent things,” to borrow the telling phrase employed to such great effect by Russell Kirk. [...]