Confronted with choices between evil and good, man frequently chooses evil with its accompanying anguish. Would not wisdom and prudence dictate that man ought to be modest, restrained, and humble—in a word, pious? Born in Weaverville, North Carolina in 1910, Richard Malcolm Weaver was raised in Lexington, Kentucky. Elected to Phi Beta Kappa, Weaver graduated [...]
Ronald Reagan did not read his way to conservatism, as some people do. He experienced his way. The concerns and travails of middle Americans taught him that unaccountable government could be a grave obstacle to the pursuit of happiness, and the experience of dealing with Communists and bureaucrats strengthened his lifelong distrust of overbearing elites. [...]
If a single descriptor would define conservative activist and scholar, Lee Edwards, it would have to be Lee Edwards, anti-communist. And that would be anti-communism at home and abroad. Just Right: A Life in Pursuit of Liberty by Lee Edwards. (378 pages, Regnery, 2024) If the repeated call of the old Popular Front was “no [...]
The fundamental principle of Christian politics is that all power ought to be used for the common good. As Pope St. John XXIII put it, the realization of the common good is the “sole reason for the existence of civil authorities.” But what is the common good? The political right is in a state of [...]
Classical music is born of the accumulating wisdom of the ages, with a canon that represents, like all canons, the mind of a civilization. And yet we have not learned to articulate our own defense. Or rather, like our compatriots, we have forgotten how to articulate it. I founded the Foundation for the Future of [...]
The currently pervading approach to American history presents America in the worst possible light, distorting the full truth of our past and damaging our political health. Our K-12 schools need a restoration of temporal continuity, the key to revitalizing history and civics education that forms young people who both appreciate the gifts of the past [...]
Christopher Owen tells Willmoore Kendall’s story in an interesting way that keeps the reader’s attention while conveying Kendall’s struggles that led to his evolution of thought and conservative philosophy. In our time when populist ideals are on the rise, this book is required reading to understand what it means to be conservative. Heaven Can Indeed [...]
The greatness of the American myth is that it is mostly real. Enough of the faux-conservatives, these woke rightists, judging America as not worth saving and smearing our heroes as tyrants or war criminals. On December 3, 2024, James Lindsay, rightish provocateur, revealed that he had “very lightly edited” “several thousand words straight out of” [...]
What did William F. Buckley’s "Firing Line" teach me about our modern democracy? Simply this: It is not too late to reclaim intelligent and competent, moral and visionary political conversation. Nor is it too late to right the direction of our flagging democracy. The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous [...]
Historical consciousness is to civilized society what memory is to individual identity. Without memory there are no workable rules of conduct, no standard of justice, no basis for restraining passions, no sense of the connection between an action and its consequences. A culture without memory will necessarily be barbarous. I am delighted to be with [...]
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. [...]
Both John Paul II and T.S. Eliot give people something to hope for: St. John Paul speaks of a new springtime on the horizon signaling the emergence of a culture of life, and Eliot ends “The Waste Land” on a hopeful, if cryptic, note. We are all familiar with Saint John Paul II’s description of [...]
Russell Kirk is best described as a cheerful malcontent: ever aware that we are peering over the brink into a gulf of dissolution, yet filled with wonder and gratitude at the fact that "you and I are moral beings meant to accomplish something good, in a small way or a big, in this temporal world." [...]
Russell Amos Augustine Kirk is one of America’s foremost and most important thinkers, especially in the desiccated and mutilated 20th century, an era of horrific inhumanities and incessant blood-letting. Kirk stood for a more humane age that valued the dignity and uniqueness of each human person and that unabashedly sought the good, the true, and [...]