The divide between conservatism’s old elements may represent the “end” of the fusionism that built the “conservative movement” and, after a half-century, of the dominance of this thinking within one of America’s major political parties. The intellectual battle between the factions claiming the brand “conservatism” has become “the fight over, well, everything” perceives even outsider [...]
The rise of populist movements across Europe is seen most potently in the success of the Hungarian Civic Alliance, which, under the tenacious leadership of Viktor Orbán, has been the ruling party in Hungary since 2010. A recent speech by Mr. Orbán, given on September 21 in Rome, will be music to the ears of [...]
While in London, my wife and I went to evensong at Westminster Abbey. Throughout the trip, evensong somehow gave us the symbol—high, formal, and beautiful—of the end of the day, both of British greatness and the vitality of Europe. After the Vanenburg Conference at Oxford earlier this month, my wife and I went to London [...]
“Sketches of Exile” is a real gift for those who admire Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, enabling us to see his first years of exile, in Switzerland and the United States, through his eyes. We should be grateful for these sketches and the insight they offer, as well as for their glimpses of the lovable man behind the publicly [...]
Those who object to globalism find themselves in a frustrating, even infuriating position, even now in the age of Brexit and Donald Trump. Three years after the 2016 votes were counted there is still no wall, Britain is still stuck in the EU, and an anonymous White House “adult in the room” has gotten away [...]
What does the European Union have in common with Hotel California? The answer is that you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave. Take, for instance, the ongoing Brexit saga. Over and again, in one democratic vote after another, the British people have made it abundantly clear that they have [...]
With the phenomenal success of The Conservative Mind—selling over a million copies during the three decades after its initial release—Kirk worried that “conservatism” might prove to be a hollow answer for the post-war world. Afterall, he reasoned, conservatism must, by necessity, be highly subjective, centered around a specific time and place, even while embracing universals. [...]
Near the end of his recent book, Conservatism: An Invitation to the Great Tradition (highly recommended), the English philosopher Roger Scruton makes a very interesting observation about what is possible in America but not in Europe. As he puts it, the burden of American conservatism has been to define the customs and traditions most in [...]
Russell Kirk thought that because justice is rooted in nature and because in its perfection transcends all time and space, one can innately observe virtue in the actions of wise men. Such observation of those we admire might be the best teacher in our current day, serving as a reminder of what has always been [...]
If you ask those who attended the debate between Sohrab Ahmari and David French at Catholic University who won the encounter, you will get different answers. However, most would agree that the packed event moderated by New York Times writer Ross Douthat did not get to the core of the matter. If you ask those [...]
Archaisms renew the language; they are the means by which language is renovated and restored to its original splendor. It is the old things that make all things new. The “coming peril” was not Bolshevism, G.K. Chesterton said in 1927, only ten years after the Bolshevik Revolution, it was “standardization by a low standard.” For [...]
The constitutional inheritance is not merely a gift to be expended or consumed; it is a responsibility to be stewarded. This sense of intergenerational obligation—debts to the past and future—is the most solid and powerful grounding for originalism and respect for constitutional form. Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords our readers the opportunity [...]
One of our earliest examinations and appraisals of the Germanic peoples—those tall, blonde or red-haired, light-eyed barbarians to the North—comes from the Roman republican, Tacitus. Tacitus, to be sure, wrote with distinct bias. He wanted to show the Germans as natural republicans while implying that the Romans had lost their republican simplicity and manners by [...]
When I was forty years old, I left my native land to begin a new life with my new wife in the New World. Although I was escaping neither poverty nor persecution, I realized that I was now an immigrant. I could look at life and immigration from both sides now. Life is full of [...]