I’m a Batman snob. There, I’ve admitted it. And, I’ve been a Batman snob since I was a kid in the mid 1970s when I first became aware of the mythic superhero. And, though I don’t collect comics anymore (too time consuming and too money consuming), I have a fairly good collection of Batman, Green [...]
Where are the Heroes? Where in this modern and post-modern world do we find an embrace of heroism and the heroic virtues? Certainly not in most literature published since the 1960s. There exists much irony and tragedy, certainly—remnants, perhaps, of late Greece as well as late Rome. But, in present-day serious literature, there exists almost [...]
The cynicism of modern-day youth presents us with a great teachable moment. We must tell history as a great myth, for myths are often the best way of expressing truths. They are also the lifeblood of civilizations. “History is marble, and remains forever cold, even under the most artistic hand, unless life is breathed into [...]
…Stand up and keep your childishness: Read all the pedants’ screeds and strictures; But don’t believe in anything That can’t be told in coloured pictures. Chesterton would not have liked many of the stories told in coloured pictures by American comic books, which these days tend to dystopia and sado-eroticism—an all-too predictable reflection of the [...]
Below are quotes from Russell Kirk’s first published academic article, “Tragedy and the Moderns.” The article appeared in January 1940, when Kirk was just beginning his second semester of his senior year in college. He wrote it, however, during either his freshman or sophomore year at Michigan State, under and with the encouragement of his [...]