One the things that Robert Nisbet made perfectly clear in the 1950s is that we could never understand the West and the new Western character under democracy and democratic influences without understanding the nuanced and complex thought of Alexis de Tocqueville. One of the things that Russell Kirk made perfectly clear in the 1950s, as [...]
Calls for “social justice” have a bad habit of appearing in caricature: the throwback hippiedom of Occupy Wall Street, the race-baiting rallies of Al Sharpton and other hucksters, the abortion proponents who think the First Amendment was written to protect their “right” to dress up as genitalia. If ever “social justice” was a content-rich term, [...]
Listening to George Will pontificate recently on Fox News about his “conservative” principles, I had to ask for the millionth time what Mr. Will and his likeminded friends mean by “conservative.” And I don’t ask this question as a neophyte, having published more on the subject of conservatism than probably anyone else on the planet. But [...]
The cause of the environment is not, in itself, a left-wing cause at all. It is not about “liberating” or empowering the victim, but about safeguarding resources. It is not about “progress” or “equality” but about conservation and equilibrium. Its following may be young and dishevelled; but that is largely because people in suits have [...]
Allen Tate’s contribution to I’ll Take My Stand poses a challenge. He concludes his “Remarks on Southern Religion” by stating that the way the Southerner can “take hold of his tradition” is by violence. In a group of essays that has eschewed a direct, political solution to the damaging cultural effects of industrialism, Tate challenges [...]
Let us now see how far the American constitution, both written and unwritten, accords with these principles; and how strongly prepared the American constitutional order may be to withstand powerful challenges in the dawning years. […]
Russell Kirk’s greatest gift to American political thought is his brilliant articulation and cultivation of a rich cultural patrimony that helps define the meaning of our most cherished ideals from within a context that is both historically textured and open to the transcendental. Since the nation’s founding, a salutary tension has informed American political thought—a [...]
“We are at the beginning of great troubles.” Once upon a time, it was the assumption of most of the people in the world that the fundamental constitutions of their society would endure to the end of time; or at least for a very great while; or certainly for the lifetime of those who had [...]
Writing with all the Romantic appreciation of the dialectic of opposites and polarities, Walt Whitman said, “Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.” Whitman and the Romantics expressed eloquently and frequently the profound observation that the essence of life is polarity, opposition, and contradiction, and that [...]
(This essay is the fourth in a four-part series; the first may be found here, the second here, and the third here.) It is clear that Publius’s deliberative process, with its emphasis upon accommodation, harmony, and consensus, is antithetical to the conflict-oriented majoritarianism of the egalitarians. As a corollary proposition, it is essential to note that [...]
Half-knowledge is more victorious than whole knowledge: it understands things as being more simple than they are and this renders its opinions more easily intelligible and more convincing. –Nietzsche Several years ago, I heard a scientist being interviewed on NPR declare that humans are “just sacks of rapidly degenerating amino acids,” or something similar. I [...]
II The related problems of “the public orthodoxy” and “the open society” were major concerns of Willmoore Kendall throughout his professional career. In his reappraisal of John Locke in 1941, Kendall’s Locke emerged as an exponent of the public orthodoxy as expressed through the majority. As Kendall sees it, in Lockean thought, “In consenting to be a member [...]
In October of 1997, I attended the Southern Historical Association’s convention in Atlanta because I wanted to hear Paul Conkin’s presidential address, “Hot, Humid, and Sad.” What I heard was largely a history of the South in which climate and geography shaped a complex skein of human choices. Mostly a dense and almost perversely analytical [...]
Neoconservatives have garnered a fair amount of media coverage in recent weeks for their determination to keep on with the #nevertrump fight. Bill Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard and son of neoconservative founder Irving Kristol, has been especially vocal in his determination to launch a third party challenge to Donald Trump and the eventual [...]