The premise that the soul does not exist has practical consequences in society. If there is no soul, then there is no final destination where evil is punished and good rewarded forever. Morality itself becomes irrelevant… Evolutionists rarely proclaim their incompatibility with Christianity so as not to alarm Christians. They will generally try to present [...]
For Jane Austen, happiness in general is the goal of human action done according to morality, a code of conduct according to which every person has value; and happiness in marriage is the result of each spouse valuing and pursuing the other’s happiness above all else… In our time, according to one of several divergent [...]
Winston Churchill, who is the subject of Martin Gilbert’s book, comes out of it all a towering public figure—an inspiring wartime leader who never lost his confidence in the darkest hours of the war, a man of enormous vitality and energy, unsparing of himself, but who never lost an opportunity to enjoy what life had [...]
The left is politicizing our calming safety-valve institutions—the national anthem, marriage, statues, even leisure—damning them as expressions of an oppressive regime that must be overthrown. But these institutions need to be defended in order to relieve the pressures that are mounting and tearing society apart… If there is an image that represents the present state [...]
“Leave It to Beaver” was very much a medieval morality play, in which the character of the Beaver repeatedly succumbed to temptation, suffered the consequences, and was guided back on the path of virtue. Russell Kirk defined the moral imagination as “an enduring source of inspiration that elevates us to first principles as it guides [...]
Those colleges that neglect the heritage of their benefactors should cease living off their munificent endowments and chart their own course, which, if history gives witness, is the straight and narrow path to oblivion… With sonorous tones on the annual Founder’s Day in my school, the Reverend Sub-Dean clad in his academicals would slowly recite the long [...]
The college student needs the virtue that enables him to see the origins, the first principles. He will do this by reading and conversing—even by prayer and fasting. Even students in religious-founded institutions can lose their faith, while others find God at Ohio State University. Some students mold themselves to the prevailing campus ideology, while [...]
It is difficult to see ourselves as we are, even if this inner “seeing” is one of the most important things we must do for ourselves… In today’s world, when the topic of the defects of university teaching and curricula comes up, the most well-known alternative put forward is the “great books programs.” I take it [...]
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 as a tool in the service of life, and not an end in itself. The difference between the [...]
Our support for health, education, and welfare must take some form other than support for state systems that serve intrinsically destructive goals… To what extent should Christians support an essentially evil government? The question is unaccustomed. The Church views government as natural and necessary, and she normally favors obedience even to tyrannical governments as long [...]
To shun wickedness, to care for our souls, and to love one another without looking for rewards, if followed by all, would turn injustice, now a constant companion of human life, into a stranger. In his 2005 masterpiece, Match Point, Woody Allen explores moral failing in a universe governed by chance, or what the protagonist [...]
Ronald Reagan famously called the Soviet Union “an evil empire,” and as usual he was right. It was an empire and it was evil. But must an empire always be evil? […]
Many of Flannery O’Connor’s stories portray the ineptness of men to uphold traditional ideals of manhood. The men show no leadership, they do not protect or care for their family members, they lack all manner of chivalry, and they lose a sense of priority as they commit to careers and professions or social and political [...]
My American Enterprise Institute colleague, Jonah Goldberg, recently wrote a book entitled The Tyranny of Clichés. One of the clichés is that conservatives are rigid, judgmental ideologues. Progressives, by contrast, are praised as flexible pragmatists who seek practical solutions and go wherever the data lead them. Year after year, this tired old narrative yields an [...]