Culture War

Two Kinds of Jesuits

Whereas heroic missionary effort and martyrdom seemed the hallmark of the first Jesuits, the second generation moved in a different direction... In the Roman calendar, October is a harvest for militant saints. Kicking off with Saint Therese of Lisieux...

The American Descent Into Uncivil War

When we say Americans are divided and polarized, it can conjure up the image of cloth stretched to the point of ripping. However, this image does not represent everything we are experiencing as a society. Indeed, the...

Victor Davis Hanson on Daily Life in “Mexifornia”

For those on the Left and the economic-libertarian Right who glibly say, “Build bridges, not walls,” Victor Davis Hanson would reply, “It’s easy to say that when you don’t live in Mexifornia”... With its elegant prose and page after...

Banning Shakespeare: Exposing the Haters of Humanity

What are we to make of the call to ban Shakespeare and other dead white men because they are dead? It is time that those who have declared a neo-racist war on humanity be named and shamed. It is time to unite in defence of the humanities in the...

The Left’s Cyber-Censorship of Conservatism

We are witnessing storm troopers in cyber-space “pulling the plug” on those whose voices they refuse to tolerate. Two personal experiences of such censorship—both of which relate to The Imaginative Conservative itself—will suffice to illustrate the trend...

The Taming of the Adolescent Male

The largely-forgotten rules of etiquette were part of an overall project of turning testosterone-driven male lust into meaningfully-directed male courtship. Parents have to remember that teaching their children how to dance, how to date, and how to court and be courted is their job...

How Margaret Sanger Tried to Enslave Us All

The birth control for which Margaret Sanger so passionately fought has led not to freedom, but to slavery of the worst kind, for both men and women. Of this, we as a nation should be very afraid...

The Closing of the Western Mind

Allan Bloom’s diagnosis in The Closing of the American Mind can explain far more about the sorry state of American higher education and the Western condition than popular stories that blame the Enlightenment, or democracy, or medieval nominalism. And it is therefore a valuable starting point...

The Opioid Crisis: A Spiritual Solution

The abuse of opioids, like other addictions, stems from a profound spiritual problem deep inside the souls of countless Americans. But when people turn to the sublimity of heavenly things, they acquire the ability to overcome their frenetic appetites and look for spiritual solutions...

John Paul II, T.S. Eliot, and the Culture of Life

Both John Paul II and T.S. Eliot give people something to hope for: Blessed 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...

Why Ladies and Gentlemen Are Forbidden on New York Trains

The seemingly insignificant suppression of ladies and gentlemen on New York’s trains represents a giant step backward. It affirms that we need no longer behave like ladies and gentlemen, but rather like whatever we want to be, or happen to be, at the moment...

Can Only a God Save Us Now?

Western civilization has been gutted from within. At the core of this moral bankruptcy is a watered-down Christianity that lacks the conviction to defend itself... Today mankind enjoys unprecedented technology, but lacks the wisdom to regard technology...

When the Benedict Option Is the Only Option

The Benedict Option is more about a change of heart and mind than growing a beard, getting some chickens, and building a utopian religious community in the woods. The Benedict Option means coming to the realization that the time for dialogue and debate is over and the time for...

The Enduring Relevance of G.K. Chesterton

We need to remember, as G.K. Chesterton never forgot, that evil is its own worst enemy. If Chesterton were alive today he'd be exposing the lies of relativism, secularism, and the culture of death, and showing our generation, as he showed his, that Christian orthodoxy is the...