Against Moral Progress

By |2024-03-08T19:20:31-06:00March 4th, 2024|Categories: Conservatism, Morality, Progressivism, Religion|

Morality only “progresses” as a phenomenon of gift, in which what is good and worth doing is seen as good and worth doing by a subsequent generation, which takes on the morality of their fathers and repeats it, as their own morality. But this means that progress in morality is never assured. It may not [...]

Repentance and Regret: The Secret of Jane Austen’s Success

By |2023-07-17T22:45:33-05:00July 17th, 2023|Categories: Character, Christianity, Dwight Longenecker, Great Books, Jane Austen, Morality, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays|

The secret of Jane Austen’s genius is that she conceals the most serious of themes within light-hearted tales: true repentance and regret. Our own vanity and egotistical deceptions are revealed, and having been made self-aware, we stop and laugh and realize that our delight has filled us with light. Along with Granada Television’s Brideshead Revisited, [...]

“Thoughts That Wound From Behind”: Great Books & the Power of Allusion

By |2023-07-05T00:03:56-05:00July 4th, 2023|Categories: Alfred Tennyson, Dante, Great Books, Literature, Morality, Poetry, Timeless Essays|

One value of reading truly great works of literature, works that have stood the test of time for decades or even centuries, is the opportunity such reading affords for exploring the tradition that has since built up around them. Any such truly great work—the Iliad, the Aeneid, Paradise Lost, Shakespeare’s Hamlet—will have accrued innumerable allusions [...]

Robert Penn Warren’s “All the King’s Men”: The Agony of Will

By |2023-04-23T17:24:24-05:00April 23rd, 2023|Categories: Books, Imagination, Literature, Morality, Timeless Essays|

All the King’s Men (1946): It’s as if Robert Penn Warren (1905-1989) wrote this classic American tale principally for college and university students. With a solid foundation in the liberal arts, they will recognize the philosophical and psychological theories that a central character, Jack Burden, has in mind when he transforms them into excuses for [...]

A Republic If You Can Keep It: Religion, Civil Society, & America’s Founding

By |2023-04-16T17:46:30-05:00April 16th, 2023|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Civil Society, Morality, Religion, Timeless Essays, Virtue|

Though civil libertarians rightly point out the dangers of an unchecked government, they blissfully ignore the dangers of an unchecked, unrestrained populace. It is thus worthwhile to return to the founders and examine what role they desired religion and morality to play in their new Republic. The story goes that as Benjamin Franklin departed from [...]

A Sign of Uselessness

By |2023-11-10T08:46:04-06:00March 16th, 2023|Categories: Catholicism, Christianity, Essential, Liberalism, Morality, New Polity|

The cloistered nun reminds us that, despite appearances, the purpose of our lives is not to be useful—not for the liberal project, nor even for the Church. Rather, the meaning of every vocation is simply to "be" for God alone, a "being-for that," as the monastery reveals, is never really useless in the end. Liberalism cannot [...]

Lost Temples, Giant Spiders, & the Death of Western Civilization

By |2023-02-01T12:10:37-06:00January 31st, 2023|Categories: Christopher Dawson, Modernity, Morality, Russell Kirk, Stephen Masty, Timeless Essays, Western Civilization|

All civilizations wither and die. But maybe the inevitable death of civilizations is partly a lesson in the Vanity of Human Wishes and partly God’s jest, rescued from cruelty because He also designed a Heavenly Reward to be seen in the next movie. You will need to wear your Indiana Jones fedora and stick with [...]

How a Fairy Tale Prince Became an Anti-Hero

By |2023-01-18T18:18:48-06:00January 18th, 2023|Categories: England, John Horvat, Modernity, Monarchy, Morality|

There is nothing unique in Prince Harry’s story. The same plot applies to all who have walked down the selfish, disastrous road of postmodernity, where every tradition and social structure must be questioned, and every narrative denied. If there is a figure that is not a role model, it is Prince Harry, son of Charles [...]

Iris Murdoch, Moral Philosopher

By |2022-05-21T14:51:37-05:00May 21st, 2022|Categories: Morality, Philosophy|

Best known as a novelist and least known as a philosopher, Iris Murdoch was a contributor to the literature and the philosophical thought of the past century. To read her is to follow a process by which she emerged with international stature. "Love is the last and secret name of all the virtues." —Iris Murdoch, [...]

Resentment and the Gang of Gollums

By |2022-01-08T12:05:25-06:00January 8th, 2022|Categories: Civil Society, Community, Dwight Longenecker, Morality, Senior Contributors|

If you want to understand 98% of the unhappiness in the world — whether it is on the stage of international politics or the stage of your kitchen or bedroom, or wherever your arguments happen—consider the roots of resentment. By resentment I mean something quite dark within the human heart. This heart of darkness is [...]

Why Are We Restless?

By |2023-07-18T17:12:18-05:00June 30th, 2021|Categories: Books, Dwight Longenecker, Morality, Senior Contributors, Worldview|

Enlightenment individualism prepared the foundation for self-expression, which has culminated in the identification of oneself with one’s sexual urges. Not only can the modern individual define who he is, but, in so doing, can also contribute to the re-definition of what humanity itself is. In checking the news it is reported that a man who [...]

The Plight of the Conservative Artist in a Liberal World

By |2021-02-26T14:20:14-06:00March 1st, 2021|Categories: Art, Culture, Morality, Timeless Essays, Virtue|

The left has long understood the power of the arts in furthering radical ideas, in a way conservatives have largely failed to grasp in defending theirs. Conservatives with the financial means must increase their support of conservative artists for the sake of a culture in immediate need of the wisdom that a long intellectual, cultural, [...]

Moral Realism in Christmas Fantasy: “The Family Man”

By |2020-12-25T12:56:16-06:00December 25th, 2020|Categories: Christmas, Culture, David Deavel, Family, Film, Morality, Senior Contributors|

Just as the advent of the Savior at Christmastime did not eliminate the consequences of human sin and foolishness but opened a new way forward, so too the vision of Jack Campbell in “The Family Man” does not change his wasted last thirteen years but opens up the possibility of a very different future for [...]

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