William F. Buckley did not resist the ideas of collectivism as successfully as he thought. Instead, he chose to aim for winning a contemporary battle rather than defending the Permanent Things. Conservatives today would do well to guard against falling into the same trap. William F. Buckley’s God and Man at Yale is one of [...]
Conservatives are people who defend certain traditional goods, because they know they’re worth defending. Political philosophy, by contrast, is animated by concerns quite different from political battles or external goods. It’s fundamentally a quest for insight, not influence. Eric Voegelin and Leo Strauss were essentially philosophers, not conservatives. For more than fifty years, American conservatives [...]
I see in the resurgence of radical nationalism one of the principle threats to the United States and the world. Nationalism serves the needs and interests of the tribe at the expense, and often to the detriment, of everyone else. I. In 1992 Francis Fukuyama announced the end of History.[i] (The capitalization is essential to [...]
Unlike our present politicians, George Washington and Russell Kirk cared about the common good, strove for it, and constantly reminded us what it means to be a citizen of a republic. Dear Imaginative Conservative reader, as we approach this journal's fourteenth birthday, I owe a humble apology (bless me, Father, for I have sinned!) to [...]
Nathaniel Hawthorne held this resolute conviction: that moral reformation is the only real reformation; that sin will always corrupt the projects of enthusiasts who leave it out of account; that progress is a delusion, except for the infinitely slow progress of conscience. Conservatism in America, though so often defeated at the polls, always has held [...]
In “The Conservative Mind,” Russell Kirk sought to identify, elucidate, and cultivate the best of the Western tradition as the West itself weathered, rather roughly at times, the storms of ideologies. Conserve the past, yes, but Kirk also wanted us to rally to the standards of the past to leave an inheritance for our children. [...]
I rarely have any trouble finding available in the stacks works by and about the major conservative writers whom I esteem. Am I truly the only reader of Kirk, Weaver, and Voegelin in a town with a university of 30,000 students? I often reserve my Sunday afternoons for trips to the local university library. These [...]
In his many works, W.H. Mallock successfully developed a science of conservatism based upon an affirmation of personal restraint, aristocratic rule, and market economics. To challenge the prevailing social and political orthodoxies of one’s time and place often encourages recrimination and eventual neglect. Such has been the fate of William Hurrell Mallock (1849-1923), a seminal [...]
Bradley J. Birzer’s definitive biography is clearly a victory for old-school conservatism and the imagination. Old friends of Kirk and new ones alike will benefit from this work, and hopefully, even optimistically, will do so for generations to come. A few years ago I had the honor and pleasure of visiting Piety Hill, the familial home [...]
The importance of George Ticknor lies in contrasts, which bring into relief another America. As an old Federalist who worked to undergird volatile American democracy with traditions, Ticknor and his Brahmin compatriots “wove a tapestry of conviction and hope, doubt and despair, which became a conservative testament.” In July 1836, a European statesman and an [...]
In one of his last writings, Pope Benedict XVI afforded a key insight into the conservative ideal. Though he was writing as a Catholic about Catholic problems, the late pope’s reflections are truly universal. Speaking directly to the sexual abuse crisis that reached fever pitch during his pontificate, Benedict observes: “The crisis caused by the [...]
Like their British counterparts, the American Jacobites bitterly criticized the damage done to the working class and cities by the industrial system and listening to their neo-feudal critiques one sees similarities with Progressivism and Populism. While these latter movements analyzed from the perspective of the political left, the Jacobites did so from the political right. [...]
Many in our society consider religion merely an instrument of power, and they believe that the “correction” of inherited beliefs and practices can be forced upon the unwilling. But there’s an enormous difference between people who choose the real common good and people forced to submit to a state ideology. When I went into the [...]
Morality only “progresses” as a phenomenon of gift, in which what is good and worth doing is seen as good and worth doing by a subsequent generation, which takes on the morality of their fathers and repeats it, as their own morality. But this means that progress in morality is never assured. It may not [...]