Being neither a religion nor an ideology, the body of opinion termed conservatism possesses no Holy Writ and no Das Kapital to provide dogmata. So far as it is possible to determine what conservatives believe, the first principles of the conservative persuasion are derived from what leading conservative writers and public men have professed during [...]
Blue Highways Conservatism embodies the restoration of individual rights, humane national loyalty, and confidence in the American spirit. It looks to the towns without malls, and the in-between places, to speak with an authentic voice in an attempt to foster community and the restoration of public virtue necessary to sustain democracy in America. The joy of reading [...]
“Imagination rules the world,” Russell Kirk used to say.[1] He meant that imagination is a force that molds the clay of our sentiments and understanding.[2] It is not chiefly through calculations, formulas, and syllogisms, but by means of images, myths, and stories that we comprehend our relation to God, to nature, to others, and to the self. [...]
We need a resistance in these dark days to fight those whose bumper stickers say “resist” but whose voices and actions tell us to “submit.” For those who cannot be in the frontlines, funding the campaign is an honorable and necessary task. And one that might just bear fruit. If you are on the side [...]
Russell Kirk gave voice to a myriad of persons, personalities, and ideas circulating in the decade after the Second World War, just as the West was trying to understand what it stood for, rather than what it stood against. The latter was easy. Communism and fascism were evil. But, what exactly did the West stand [...]
What remains of traditional conservatism? Should we concede defeat and see the great conservative figures of the past as women and men of beauty who had their say but who are now relegated to some obscure museum of lost humanist causes? No! To my mind, these voices have never been more needed and more relevant. [...]
I believe we are stepping into a new era for the arts, particularly for Christians and conservatives, if we are willing to fight hard for it. We have been hidden too long, and our new digital world, as foreign and alien as it may seem to the thoughtful artist, can be an ally rather than [...]
For the conservative Benjamin Disraeli, the answers to the political problems of the present lie in the restoration of the ideals of the past. Restoration is not an attempt to reject the present and escape or return to an earlier state of a society; it is rather a creative, imaginative effort to infuse the present [...]
'National Review' magazine remains my constant companion, even when I sometimes disagree with her. Indeed, NR's mission has been just and worthy, as she has remained adamantly anti-communist, pro-life, and just about right on every social issue, while accommodating the variety of “sects” within the American conservative movement. Sometime around 1981 or so, Bill Buckley [...]
In the wellspring of classic nineteenth-century American literature, a spectacular theme unites our greatest authors. They, in various ways, challenge the naïve optimism of the “American Adam” and American liberalism. They are deeply conservative in their skepticism toward human and civilizational progress and perfection. It is true that the classics, especially Virgil and Cicero, along [...]
‘National Review’ seems collectively incapable of seeing that it is no longer standing athwart history but is instead mostly athwart rank-and-file conservatives. NR is more liberal echo than conservative choice these days, and I don’t see any sign of recovery. William F. Buckley “Every young writer, I imagine,” wrote Ross Douthat, “has their [...]
As techno-totalitarianism really gets into gear, it is up to each one of us to root our lives, our homes, our schools, and our parishes in the eternal values of the Christian faith and classical learning—and we need to do so with imagination and realism, avoiding the temptation to become nostalgic dreamers. Live Not by [...]
My first and last care is not politics but education. Education seems to me inherently conservative, being the transmission, and thus the saving, of a tradition’s treasures of fiction and thought. But education is also inherently imaginative. Author’s Note: I wish to dedicate this essay to a writer of books whose greatness is at once [...]
Today’s Democratic party is not the party of Joe Biden’s youth or middle age. As author Fred Siegel correctly observes, it is a top-bottom coalition of the well-credentialed (but not well-educated) upper-middle class and beyond, plus those who work for, depend upon, or otherwise presume to shelter under the benevolent arm of government. The Crisis [...]