No book shows how little we care to find out the truth, how little we know ourselves, how even less we know others, how rumor, prejudice, and illusion, rule our world as Alessandro Manzoni’s "The Betrothed." Set in Lombardy in the 17th century, it covers the whole horror of a plague in whose deadly grip [...]
What, exactly, is Faerie? While not quite the realm of the supernatural, it is the realm of grace (and its enemies), and it can be, even in its greatest beauty, dangerous in the extreme. It is also, by its very nature, sacramental, tangible, and incarnational. On March 8, 1939, just five months shy of the [...]
An endearing story about fathers and sons—and almost certainly an autobiographical understanding of J.R.R. Tolkien himself and his own, mostly imagined father, as well as Tolkien and his son Christopher—”The Lost Road” begins with a son, Alboin, asking his father, Oswin, about the origin of his name. Though Tolkien had already written and published The [...]
From arches old, the fire enfolds the spire. The holy relics, art, and host were saved. The stellar ceiling now reveals the graven Sky. The circling stars shine through the fire. […]
So what do I believe? What do I really believe? I presently believe that I feel the sun warming my skin, that I see light streaming through my windows, that I am sitting at my desk, that I am holding a pen in my hand. I believe that it is Wednesday and that I am [...]
As our physical and political freedoms are increasingly curtailed by Leviathan due to the Coronavirus pandemic, we are hopefully becoming more aware of the value of what we are losing. Hopefully, it will be the occasion for a more urgent and honest reflection on the true meaning of freedom. Freedom from Reality: The Diabolical Character [...]
Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not over me; but weep for yourselves, and for your children. Luke 23:28 All gardens have now become Gethsemane: forsaken shadowscapes of sterile blight where no solace may be found, nor any light. Branches cruciate dominate cruelly. […]
It is no exaggeration to suggest that the idea of the gentleman stands as the lynchpin of Russell Kirk’s entire social theory. Well-educated, well-read, and virtuous, the gentleman stands as the living link between the present and the past; in many ways, he is the moral imagination embodied. After decades of neglect, the Gothic fiction [...]
Our sense of time is actively shifting in this virus-ridden world. The quickness and ease of getting what we want—information, groceries, entertainment, medicine—is in constant flux. Forget wanting. What is it we really need for ourselves and our families? […]
The stakes of our current drama are high. They require our full attention and clear-sightedness. They call for heroic actions. And in short, they demand greatness of soul. Will the real human nature please stand up? We need it now more than ever. “Is man no more than this,” King Lear famously asks as he [...]
As we are forced into isolation and confronted by our mortality in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, we begin to ask ourselves an important question: What does it mean to be human? Gleaves Whitney, Director of Grand Valley State University’s Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies, and Winston Elliott III, The Imaginative Conservative’s Publisher and Editor-in-Chief, [...]
No one knows what will happen with COVID-19—whether it will spread and peak and go away, or whether it will stay around for years, even centuries, as the plague did in Europe. It is good nonetheless to remember that true culture arises out of the joy and beauty we find anyway in the midst of [...]
When set in motion, panic does not care what is in the way of its mad flight. All must be sacrificed—economy, society, and even worship—in the name of irrational fear. Moreover, it proves difficult to stop. What is missing in our reaction to the coronavirus pandemic is wisdom. In the face of the coronavirus crisis [...]
The celestial lights were spoken into being, One to govern day, the other night. […]