Albert Jay Nock believed that the Jeffersonian project depended on the improvability of citizens through education, but that the ordinary mass of humans simply could not be so improved. In Zen Buddhism, the lineage of student to master is extremely important—it is the channel through which the Dharma is transmitted. There is a story of [...]
Editor’s Note: This is the third and final essay in a series; the first essay may be found here; the second may be found here. Analyzed Partial Responses Two other responses to crisis can be identified: economic individualism and spiritual individualism. Here we can give only a simplified characterization of each position. For unlike the unanalyzed [...]
One of the wonderful things about The Imaginative Conservative is the way in which it has become a powerful forum for thoughtful and thought-provoking writers to exchange thoughtful and thought-provoking ideas. There’s none of the knee-jerk and thoughtless reaction to events to be found on other cultural and political journals. Deo gratias! This does not mean, [...]
Even when wealth and noble birth are connected with talents, the two sets of talents differ, and those possessed by the nobleman are likely to be of greater worth than are those possessed by the man of wealth. Within his general view of man as naturally social, John Adams explored the nature of the passion [...]
Many Catholics treat the High Middle Ages as a veritable ideal of civilization. But the medieval period produced problematic ideas about aesthetics, eccentric theories of economics, and dangerous assumptions about politics. Over a decade ago a then-acquaintance of mine inquired as to my economic views, my response being that I was “a distributist by default.” [...]
At first sight, it would seem that G.K. Chesterton and Alexander Solzhenitsyn have very little in common. The one has a reputation for jollity and rambunctiousness, the other for sobriety and solemn sternness. One penned swashbuckling fantasies about lovable eccentrics, the other wrote gritty works of realism set in prison camps or cancer wards. Although [...]
The policies of the American Solidarity Party come as a breath of much-needed fresh air in the stale and suffocating atmosphere of contemporary politics. I was greatly heartened to read Paul Gottfried’s excellent essay in The Imaginative Conservative in which he lambasts so-called “conservatives” for their abandonment of all that has always been meant by [...]
It’s quite easy to forgive those who experience an attack of nausea upon hearing the phrase “Catholic Social Thinking.” In light of the misuse from which that phrase has suffered over the past half-century alternative responses are all too likely to indicate either that a person has not been paying attention or is lacking in [...]
The city of Santa Rosa, just north of San Francisco, has declared a “homeless emergency.” This entails “allowing” the homeless to live in their cars year-round instead of only in winter and inclement weather. There also will be some additional services for homeless people. San Francisco itself decided to address this growing problem by adding [...]
A forthcoming book called Lesson Plan throws cold water on the fear that student debt may stunt the lives of college graduates. […]
Russell Kirk posed as one of the “canons” of conservatism the existence of orders in society. Critics have responded for decades that such a view shows that traditional conservatives are by nature aristocratic in their orientation, that they are in some sense “un-American” in their rejection of egalitarianism. The assumption appears to be that a [...]
The Free Enterprise System is dynamic. It is disruptive, yet also full of opportunities in its competitive nature. It requires hard work and virtue in order for it to be possible. If capitalism is to rise above cronyism, a proper understanding must not only be cultivated but also promoted. Dr. David Azerrad offers us such an [...]
The art of war… as it is certainly the noblest of all arts, so in the progress of improvement it necessarily becomes one of the most complicated among them. The state of the mechanical, as well as of some other arts, with which it is necessarily connected, determines the degree of perfection to which it [...]
James R. Otteson, the Thomas W. Smith Presidential Chair in Business Ethics at Wake Forest University, possesses one of the greatest minds in defense of classical liberalism in the modern era. He has authored two definitive works on Adam Smith, a clear rebuttal of the ethics of Peter Singer, and now a crucial attack on [...]