Conservative Humanism & the Challenge of the Post-Humanist Age

By |2023-01-22T22:39:34-06:00January 17th, 2023|Categories: Christian Humanism, Conservatism, Humanism and Conservatism, Philosophy, Politics|

Since humanism has been the core of the Western tradition through the centuries, the emergence of anti-humanism and post-humanism represents an inflection point of our civilizational crisis. In confronting this crisis, conservative humanism aims not to erase the positive achievements of modern humanism, but to graft them back onto their roots where they can draw [...]

America: Devolution, Revolution, or Renewal?

By |2023-01-16T15:39:14-06:00January 16th, 2023|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Conservatism, History, Politics, Revolution|

The truth is that for all its failings, America has provided more opportunity, security, and freedom to a group of people more diverse than any other nation in history. It is not because America is systemically rotten; but because it is foundationally good. Justice for all calls for those foundations to be defended, not destroyed. [...]

What Exactly Is Conservatism: Russell Kirk Edition

By |2023-01-08T20:14:12-06:00January 8th, 2023|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Conservatism, Russell Kirk, Senior Contributors|

I can think of few men of the twentieth century who thought more deeply about the nature and meaning and definition of conservatism than did Russell Kirk. We can accept, reject, or take in partial form what he said, but we’re fools if we don’t take him seriously, especially as we think about the present, [...]

Conservatives and Sociology: A Complex Dilemma

By |2023-01-04T16:49:29-06:00January 4th, 2023|Categories: Community, Conservatism, Timeless Essays|

Sociology is, without a shadow of a doubt, a Left-wing field of study as of now. But that doesn’t mean conservatives have to be unarmed in the intellectual battle. For nearly 40 years, the field of sociology has been dominated by Left-leaning academics. There are a variety of reasons for this, ranging from the influence [...]

T.S. Eliot as Conservative Mentor

By |2023-01-03T12:07:00-06:00January 3rd, 2023|Categories: Conservatism, Roger Scruton, T.S. Eliot, Timeless Essays|

Should modern man devote himself like Sartre to undermining bourgeois society and scoffing at manners and morals? Should he play the part of Socrates, questioning everything and affirming nothing? To answer yes to any of those questions is to grant nothing to human life beyond the mockery of it. T.S. Eliot’s solution was to embrace [...]

What Exactly Is Conservatism?

By |2023-01-04T19:27:46-06:00January 1st, 2023|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Conservatism, Senior Contributors|

If conservatism is true, it is true for all times, all places, and all persons. It might take on a Christian character here, or a Jewish character there, or a Stoic character way over there, but it remains universally tied to certain humane principles, whatever its local manifestations. It is imagination, perhaps our highest faculty [...]

A Conservatism of Joy, Gratitude, and Love

By |2023-07-10T10:46:20-05:00December 18th, 2022|Categories: Cicero, Classics, Conservatism, Essential, Featured, Russell Kirk, Support The Imaginative Conservative, Timeless Essays, W. Winston Elliott III|

Will you join us in our mission to pursue Truth, Goodness, and Beauty by making a gift to us today? I am yearning for conservative voices offering great depth, thoughtfulness, and dare we say, grace. Is it possible to be strong in conservative principles and to present those principles in a manner which is attractive, [...]

Pull Down Thy Vanity

By |2022-12-17T17:06:00-06:00December 17th, 2022|Categories: Advent, Character, Christian Living, Christianity, Conservatism, Glenn Arbery, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays, Virtue, Wyoming Catholic College|

This Advent season does not center on our achievement; it is not the time of puffing ourselves up, but of waiting for God to reveal, as only God can, the new thing under the sun that breaks the great cycle of vanity. The greatest things are born from humility. There is something essentially comic about [...]

The Challenge Confronting Conservatives: Sustaining a Republic of Hustlers

By |2022-12-08T18:21:22-06:00December 8th, 2022|Categories: Conservatism, Foreign Affairs, Timeless Essays|Tags: , , |

If in fact the prudential, im­mediate goal of conservatives is simply to defend what remains of our heritage and forestall a slide into anarchy, then what is it conservatives can do to sustain our Republic of Hustlers? At our 2009 annual meeting, the Scholars Council of the Library of Congress was exposed to some surreal [...]

The Popular Roots of Conservatism

By |2022-11-24T18:21:34-06:00November 24th, 2022|Categories: Conservatism, Featured, George W. Carey, Politics, Timeless Essays|Tags: |

American conservatism is rooted in what it understands to be the principles which guided our Founders; principles which, in turn, it sees as rooted in the better part of Western civilization, though adapted to the peculiarities of the American condition. The chief difficulty in assessing the state of contemporary American conservatism is arriving at some [...]

Conservatism’s Central Meaning: Gratitude

By |2023-07-22T09:36:51-05:00November 22nd, 2022|Categories: Conservatism, Politics|

Anger has come to characterize our polarized political environment. And in recent years, conservatives and Republicans have seemingly been injected with anger. But this angry identity is not compatible with the central meaning of conservatism. An admirable trait of conservatives is their willingness to openly reexamine their policies and prescriptions. Then again, the troubling trait [...]

All That Is Beautiful & Terrible: The Feast of Saint Cecilia

By |2022-11-22T14:48:49-06:00November 22nd, 2022|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Catholicism, Christendom, Conservatism, Sainthood, Timeless Essays, Western Civilization|

No matter how corrupt and bleak and depressing the world may appear, we can always turn to the many Cecilias of the world and see the goodness that is possible through grace and love. Properly remembered, these true symbols and true myths can re-orient our souls, our cultures, and perhaps even the world itself toward [...]

A National Conservatism?

By |2022-11-21T14:29:55-06:00November 21st, 2022|Categories: American Republic, Bradley J. Birzer, Conservatism, Senior Contributors|

Conservatism since Edmund Burke has been about the cultivation and protection of intermediary institutions, of local communities, and of families. Rarely, if ever, does the nation-state, known as The United States of America, serve to protect any of these things. Over the last few years, we’ve seen many divisive conversations about such things as “national [...]

Books That Make Us Human

By |2023-07-25T17:10:41-05:00November 16th, 2022|Categories: Books, Books that Make Us Human, Catholicism, Conservatism, St. Augustine, Timeless Essays|

Here are my ten recommendations for reading, from Augustine’s “Confessions,” to Shakespeare’s Sonnets, to Eliot’s “Four Quartets.” 1. The Bible. It is one of the first books I read (not cover-to-cover, at first, of course), and the first book I memorized passages from as a child. I cannot imagine trying to think about or comprehend the [...]

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