Joseph Epstein’s life and writing exemplify the ideal essay writer’s tendency to be a humane generalist rather than an academic specialist. Aiming at well-roundedness, the essayist also becomes freed from vogue words and jargon, a bad influence against which Mr. Epstein campaigns vigorously and wittily in “Gallimaufry: A Collection of Essays, Reviews, Bits.” Gallimaufry: [...]
Even though it is not easy, and often impossible, to make our enemies our friends, it is nonetheless true that there is no other way of making our enemies our friends except by loving them. Any honest soul in genuine pursuit of the truth is a friend of mine. Three unsolicited e-mails, received in [...]
"Sgt. MacKenzie" is a lament written and sung by Joseph Kilna MacKenzie, in memory of his great-grandfather who was killed in combat during World War I. It has been used in the 2002 movie We Were Soldiers.... Joseph MacKenzie wrote the haunting lament after the death of his wife, Christine, and in memory of his great-grandfather, [...]
The pride of place that cultural Christianity once enjoyed in America is increasingly sidelined by a new, woke progressivism which, though purporting to be neutral and science-based, is in fact a competing religious ideology. The more that it dominates our cultural and political institutions, the more it can misuse the coercive powers of the state [...]
The Mellon Foundation’s "Monuments Project" is totalitarian in its proposed scope and radical vision, something utterly in conflict with American pluralism and preference for localism, a brazen effort to wrest control away from communities as to the state of their own public spaces. Not to be outdone by The New York Times' 1619 Project, the Mellon Foundation [...]
In "That Time of Year," Garrison Keillor engagingly tells his tale as a shy, awkward writer who found fame and fortune almost by accident as a radio personality. That fame and fortune might have ruined him, but it didn’t. Humor, it seems, has helped him more than once—and more than a little. That Time of [...]
Pierre Cardin destroyed fashion by introducing chaotic, irrational, bizarre, and immodest themes to his clothing lines. He is a product of postmodern thought, which denies all universal narratives and meaning, reducing life to the limitless freedom to create one’s own reality. This is a life without God or restraint that ends up enslaving people [...]
I propose to address the question, how does one survive—and I mean survive as something—in a world that may not? How does one remain sane in a world that is insane; how does one live without fear in a world in which the only certainty is that nothing is certain? As the new year arrives, [...]
Arthur Foote’s “cult of the restrained in art,” so well expressed in “A Night Piece,” represents another America, a parallel native culture pushed aside by the “cult of unrestrained expression.” Foote demonstrates that one need not be Aaron Copeland or Leonard Bernstein to be fully American. Nestled in the late nineteenth and early twentieth [...]
The refusal to consider the possibility that the Magi were historical figures and not mythical magicians reflects the bias of both modernists and conservative believers. For Saint Matthew’s Gospel to actually be true rocks both their boats. As the new year begins, The Imaginative Conservative looks back at some of its finest essays of [...]
Historiography is not an exchange in the marketplace but a fight on the battlefield. It has a particular point of view on the past and punishes opponents; it is power politics masked as tolerant neutrality. The Left—like those behind the 1619 Project—understand the stakes and are fighting to maintain their legitimacy. It is time the [...]
Latin, as the primary historical language of erudition and learning in the West, is the sole gateway into the halls of Western thought and humanistic learning. Without the use of this language, we can hardly know ourselves, and certainly not the road that brought us to the modern day. As the old year ends [...]
True culture is a liberation from the ephemeral, a journey toward permanence and value. A cultured life, therefore, consists in more than just piling up facts; it must include reflecting on the meaning of man’s works—especially those works which have stood the test time—and how they fit into the larger scheme of reality. As [...]
As the old year ends and the new year arrives, The Imaginative Conservative looks back at some of its finest essays of 2020. —Editors In the late 1950s, as Russell Kirk considered what needed to be conserved in the Western tradition as well as what needed to be discarded, he lamented that much of [...]